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A Reconsideration of John Stuart Mill's Account of Political Violence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 August 2014
Abstract
The received view that John Stuart Mill opposed the use of violence to attain desirable political goals has been undermined by authors stressing Mill's defence of revolutionary causes during his lifetime and his efforts to outline a justificatory theory of political violence. In light of this scholarship, claims of Mill's ostensible ‘gradualism’ with regard to the appropriate methods and pace of social progress may merit reassessment. At the same time Mill's account appears to sanction violence that respects criteria of justice but not of expediency and vice versa, making it untenable as a cogent guide for carrying out or evaluating acts of violence. That this tension is analogous to tensions elsewhere in Mill's writings provides more evidence for the view that his theoretical project was a systematic one, and raises new questions about his philosophical enterprise.
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References
1 Williams, Geraint, ‘J. S. Mill and Political Violence’, Utilitas 1 (1989), pp. 102–11, at 102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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3 See Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’; Cohan, John Alan, ‘Necessity, Political Violence and Terrorism’, Stetson Law Review 35 (2005–2006), pp. 903–82, at 50–4Google Scholar; Corlett, J. Angelo, Terrorism: A Philosophical Analysis (Dordrecht, 2003), pp. 910–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 I follow Williams's definition of political violence as that which, broadly speaking, undermines the legitimacy of the state (‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 102 n. 3), and restrict my inquiry to the potential of violence as a means for fostering political and social progress, i.e. as a means to expedite reform ‘from below’. (For a recent reappraisal of Mill's attitude towards state coercion, or perhaps progressive violence ‘from above’, see Gregory Claeys, Mill and Paternalism (Cambridge, 2013).)
5 Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 111; see also Corlett, Terrorism, pp. 50–1.
6 Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, pp. 102, 111.
7 For useful remarks, see John Gray, introduction to Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty and Other Essays, ed. Gray, John (New York, 2008), pp. vii–xxxGoogle Scholar.
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13 Mill, ‘Civilization’, vol. 18, p. 125.
14 See Mill, Principles, vol. 2, bk. 1, ch. 7.
15 Mill appears to have said this only in light of what he considered the great recklessness of Continental revolutionaries in the late 1860s. See Mill to Georg Brandes, 4 March 1872, Later Letters, vol. 17, pp. 1874–5. Not until his final years did Mill make the acquaintance of working-class leaders, and his relations with them were ‘never intimate’ (Robson, Mill, p. 256).
16 ‘It will now be seen whether any considerable number of the English working people have the intellect and love of independence to desire to be their own masters, and the sense of justice & honor which will fit them for being so. I am sorry to say my expectations at present are not sanguine. I do not believe that England is nearly as ripe as most of the Continental countries for this great improvement. . . . [T]he English of all classes are far less accessible to any large idea or generous sentiment than either Germans, French or Italians. They are so ignorant as to pride themselves on their defect as if it were a virtue, & give it complimentary names, such as good sense, sobriety, practicalness, which are common synonyms for selfishness, shortsightedness, & contented acquiescence in commonplace’ (Mill to Heinrich Rau, Karl D., 8 July 1852, Later Letters, vol. 14, pp. 94–6, at 95)Google Scholar. See also Reeves, Richard, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand (London, 2007), pp. 192–7Google Scholar.
17 Famously there were periods of Mill's early adulthood when he became so dissatisfied with the ability of England's ‘so-called free institutions’ to deliver reforms, and viewed so dimly the prospect that workers would use them to better effect, that he fantasized about the progressive potential of a Saint-Simonian association or Comtean dictatorship. See e.g. Mill to Comte, October 1842, The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte, ed. Oscar A. Haac (New Brunswick, 1995), pp. 108–11; Capaldi, Nicholas, John Stuart Mill: A Biography (Cambridge, 2004), p. 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robson, Mill, p. 78.
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19 Mill, Principles, vol. 3, p. 763; see also Levin, ‘Mill’, p. 78.
20 Mill identified the rise of civilization with the enervation of those classes not accustomed to pain and sacrifice. These ‘cannot undergo hard labour, they cannot brook ridicule, they cannot brave evil tongues’ (‘Civilization’, vol. 18, pp. 130–1).
21 Mill, Principles, vol. 3, p. 763.
22 Mill, Principles, vol. 3, p. 765.
23 On this point see Mill, ‘Claims’, vol. 4, pp. 376–8.
24 Mill to Soetbeer, Dr Adolf, 18 March 1852, Later Letters, vol. 14, pp. 84–5, at 85Google Scholar. The socialistic experiments and revolutionary fervour observed under the short-lived Second Republic had led Mill ‘to attach much less weight’ than he had to his previous objections to socialism, and the second (1849) and especially third (1852) editions of Principles (1848) showed Mill considerably more receptive to socialism than he had been before. (See also Mill to Rau, in Later Letters, vol. 14, pp. 86–7; Capaldi, Mill, p. 217.) Harriet Taylor played an ‘important, but not by any means revolutionary’ role in the maturation of Mill's position on the practicability and justice of socialism, and her influence should not be overemphasized (Robson, Mill, pp. 247–65 (p. 248 for quotation)).
25 Mill indicated his ideal preference for a socialistic vision tentatively in 1845 and definitely by the early 1850s. See ‘Claims’, vol. 4, p. 382; Robson, Mill, p. 248. His position on cooperation and socialistic production was of course never simple. For discussion, see Gregory Claeys, ‘Justice, Independence, and Industrial Democracy: The Development of John Stuart Mill's Views on Socialism’, The Journal of Politics 49 (1987), pp. 122–47; Sarvasy, Wendy, ‘A Reconsideration of the Development and Structure of John Stuart Mill's Socialism’, The Western Political Quarterly 38 (1985), pp. 312–33.Google Scholar
26 This point is discussed in Robson, Mill, p. 261.
27 Mill understood that the emergence of mass socialistic agitation was accompanied by the articulation of ‘definite political doctrines . . . scientifically studied from the point of view of the working classes’ (Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, p. 707).
28 See Robson, Mill, pp. 260–8.
29 Mill, ‘Claims’, vol. 4, p. 375.
30 Mill, ‘Claims’, vol. 4, p. 370.
31 Mill, Autobiography, Autobiography and Literary Essays, ed. John M. Robson and Jack Stillinger (Toronto, 1981) [CW, vol. 1], p. 173.
32 Mill, Autobiography, p. 247.
33 See the young Mill's (unpublished) admission to his Owenite rivals that his views were ‘unfortunately very far from popular in this society’ (‘Cooperation: First Speech’, Journals and Debating Speeches, vol. 26, p. 308). Besides defending the views of his father and Bentham in the press, the young Mill was arrested for distributing literature on contraception (see Gray, introduction to On Liberty, p. xxiv).
34 Reeves, Mill, p. 462.
35 See e.g. Reeves, Mill, p. 186; Medearis, John, ‘Democracy, Utility, and Mill's Critique of Private Property’, Journal of Political Science 49 (2005), pp. 135–49, at 146CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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37 Private property in land was theoretically justifiable in so far as it was expedient, but it virtually never was in reality. Ideally Mill believed that the leasing of land from society to individuals ought not to be less useful to the community than if the land had remained under social ownership. See Mill, Principles, vol. 2, bk. 2, ch. 1.
38 Robson, Mill, p. 254; Medearis, ‘Mill's Critique of Private Property’, pp. 144–6.
39 See Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, p. 748.
40 Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, pp. 752–3.
41 See e.g. Miller, Dale E., ‘Mill's “Socialism”’, Politics, Philosophy & Economics 2 (2003), pp. 213–38, at 219, 223CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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43 Claeys, ‘Mill's Views on Socialism’, p. 142. It should be remembered that Mill actually began Chapters on Socialism in the belief that the work would rival Considerations on Representative Government in its importance and depth (see Reeves, Mill, p. 463).
44 Reeves, Mill, p. 463. For arguments that Chapters presents a slightly less optimistic outlook on such schemes and a considerably more charitable one, see, respectively, Miller, ‘Mill's “Socialism”’ and Medearis, ‘Mill's Critique of Private Property’.
45 See Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, p. 737.
46 Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, p. 746.
47 Notably Mill considered the theories of the French socialist Proudhon very dangerous. Proudhon himself abhorred insurrection, strikes and all manner of interference in economic contracts, and the doctrines of the socialists he inspired bore little resemblance to his own (see e.g. Ridley, F. F., Revolutionary Syndicalism in France: The Direct Action of its Time (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 30–2)Google Scholar. Nevertheless, his impassioned rhetoric was sufficiently menacing that of this ‘firebrand’ Mill declared: ‘I heartily wish Proudhon dead . . . all his influence seems to me mischievous’ (quoted in Levin, ‘Mill’, pp. 75, 81n.).
48 Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, p. 708.
49 Mill, ‘Claims’, vol. 4, p. 382; Mill, Principles, vol. 3, p. 792; Sarvasy, ‘Mill's Socialism’, p. 330.
50 Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, p. 749.
51 Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, p. 749.
52 Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, p. 707.
53 See e.g. Feuer, L. S., ‘John Stuart Mill and Marxian Socialism’, Journal of the History of Ideas 10 (1949), pp. 297–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robson, Mill, pp. 275–6.
54 Moreover, its observance ‘alone preserves peace among human beings’ (Mill, Utilitarianism, Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society, ed. J. M. Robson (Toronto, 1969) [CW, vol. 10], p. 255).
55 Quoted in Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 102.
56 ‘I learnt with astonishment, that the principles of democracy, then apparently in so insignificant and hopeless a minority everywhere in Europe, had borne all before them in France thirty years earlier, and had been the creed of the nation. . . . What had happened so lately, seemed as if it might easily happen again: and the most transcendent glory I was capable of conceiving, was that of figuring, successful or unsuccessful, as a Girondist in an English Convention’ (Mill, Autobiography, pp. 65, 67).
57 See Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’; Mill, Autobiography, pp. 266–8; Reeves, Mill, ch. 8; Capaldi, Mill, ch. 7; Cairns, John. C., introduction to Mill, John Stuart, Essays on French History and Historians, ed. Robson, J. M. (Toronto, 1985) [CW, vol. 20], pp. vii–xcii, at lv−lxii, lxxxiii−xciiGoogle Scholar.
58 Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 105.
59 Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’; see Corlett, Terrorism, p. 51.
60 This account is informed by Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, esp. p. 110 and Corlett, Terrorism, pp. 52–4.
61 This schematic presentation of Mill's theory should be treated cautiously. These criteria were not of equal strength, and the tensions between them are examined below.
62 Namely, in Mill to Cremer, William Randal, 1 March 1867, Later Letters, vol. 16, pp. 1247–8Google Scholar. In this letter Mill stipulated conditions (1a−c) in order to criticize the recent demagogic appeals made by some members of the Reform League at a meeting several days before. Onerous conditions of type (1) did not exist in England, nor had peaceable means been exhausted, so insurrection was impermissible.
63 Quoted in Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 106.
64 Quoted in Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 109.
65 Quoted in Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 105.
66 Quoted in Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 105.
67 Mill, ‘Parliamentary Reform [1]’, in Journals and Debating Speeches, vol. 26, pp. 261–71, at 261–70. Unpublished in Mill's lifetime, this speech appears to have been delivered at a meeting of the Benthamite ‘Mutual Improvement Society’ in August 1824.
68 See Corlett, Terrorism, p. 156.
69 See Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 111n.
70 See Mill to Brandes, Georg, The Later Letters, vol. 17, pp. 1874–5Google Scholar.
71 Quoted in Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 110.
72 Mill, ‘The President's Message’, Newspaper Writings, ed. John M. Robson and Anne P. Robson, 4 vols. (Toronto, 1986) [CW, vols. 22–5], vol. 23, pp. 543–5, at 544.
73 Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, p. 708 (my emphasis).
74 Mill, Chapters on Socialism, vol. 5, p. 737 (my emphasis).
75 Mill to Rau, Later Letters, vol. 14, p. 87.
76 Mill, Autobiography, p. 266. Mill compared Brown's ‘wit, wisdom, and self devotion’ favourably to those of Thomas More.
77 See e.g. Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 107.
78 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 249 (my emphasis).
79 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 249.
80 Cf. Cohan, ‘Political Violence’, p. 913; Corlett, Terrorism, p. 55.
81 Every French regime during Mill's lifetime witnessed numerous uprisings, conspiracies and assassination attempts. Of particular note are the coup attempts and insurrections during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1, which led, through the suppression of the Paris Commune of March−May 1871, to the slaughter of tens of thousands of Parisian workers and the effective destruction of the French radical movement. Mill did not live to see the period of attentats that gripped Europe, Russia and America between 1878 and the end of the First World War, and it is interesting to read his account against the events that were soon to follow.
82 Quoted in Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 111.
83 J. Angelo Corlett's critique of Mill's formulation (‘[i]t surely does not follow logically from the fact that success at using violence to achieve a just political end is desired that it is thereby morally required’ (Terrorism, p. 54)) does not appear to address this point. Strictly speaking, for Mill success was not always required to employ violence aiming at a decent end.
84 Mill, Utilitarianism, p. 250.
85 He did this especially in the last years of his life. See Reeves, Mill, p. 187; Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, pp. 109–10.
86 Quoted in Reeves, Mill, pp. 186–7.
87 Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 106.
88 Mill, Autobiography, p. 278. These conditions correspond roughly to the criteria of justice and of expediency.
89 I will leave aside the difference between a good or decent prospect of success and a sure or nearly sure one; Mill alternatively stipulates each of these. Compare Mill's account of his meeting with members of the Reform League with his emphasis upon a merely ‘reasonable prospect of success’ in Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 106.
90 Quoted in Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 106.
91 Gray, introduction to On Liberty, p. vii; see also Salwyn Schapiro, J., ‘John Stuart Mill, Pioneer of Democratic Liberalism in England’, Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1943), pp. 127–60, at 131–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
92 See Feuer, ‘Mill and Marxian Socialism’, p. 300.
93 See Gray, introduction to On Liberty, p. ix.
94 On this point see Lloyd Thomas, D. A., ‘Liberalism and Utilitarianism’, John Stuart Mill's Social and Political Thought: Critical Assessments, ed. Smith, G. W., 4 vols. (London, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 307–22Google Scholar.
95 Gray, introduction to On Liberty, p. xxvi; see also Brown, D. G., ‘Mill's Act Utilitarianism’, John Stuart Mill's Social and Political Thought, vol. 1, pp. 285–7Google Scholar.
96 I do not think this point is recognized in Cohan, ‘Political Violence’, pp. 910–12; Corlett, Terrorism, pp. 50–4.
97 For reflections see Gray, introduction to On Liberty, p. xxviii.
98 Mill, Autobiography, p. 137.
99 Quoted in Williams, ‘Mill and Political Violence’, p. 108.
100 I am indebted to J. P. Betts for his perceptive criticisms of earlier drafts of this article.