Rawls J. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

tainly he expects that free institutions will lead to greater cultural diversity,

and this he thinks desirable. But his emphasis is on free self-development

and self-government; the latter implies self-discipline, and neither, alone or

together, should be confused with eccentricity. The basic idea is our interest

in individuality understood as the free and reﬂective formation of our

thought and character within the strict limits set by the equal rights of jus-

tice for all.

In regard to this last, one must note the very important paragraph on

the limits of justice in III: 9:

It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in them-

selves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits im-

posed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become

a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; ...Inproportion to the

development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable

to himself, and is therefore more capable of being valuable to others.

...Tobeheld to rigid rules of justice for the sake of others, develops

the feelings and capacities which have the good of others for their ob-

ject. But to be restrained in things not affecting their good, by their

mere displeasure, develops nothing valuable, except such force of char-

acter as may unfold itself in resisting the restraint....Togiveanyfair

play to the nature of each, it is essential that different persons should

be allowed to lead different lives.

Mill’s thought here suggests the further idea which unhappily we do

not have time to discuss, namely: the greater overall value achieved under

free institutions by human diversity when it is the outcome of the self-de-

velopment of individuality within the limits of self-government, which in-

clude respecting the rights of justice. This is an important theme of Mill’s

and of other modern liberalisms. It would not have occurred to Locke: he

wouldn’t have supposed that religious diversity itself was good, although he

might have thought that it had its compensations by making possible the

acceptance of the principle of free faith and toleration.

§7. The Place of Perfectionist Values

1. I conclude with two points. The ﬁrst concerns the place in Mill of

perfectionist values, which he often mentions. Plainly these have a role in

[ 311 ]

His Doctrine as a Whole

EXAM COPY

connection with the principle of dignity and of individuality. But how is

this role best understood? In what sense is Mill advocating or endorsing

perfectionist values? What political and social institutions, if any, do they

justify?

Now Mill certainly recognizes the existence of the perfectionist values

of the admirable and the excellent and their opposites, the degrading and

the contemptible. And for him, these are signiﬁcant values. Moreover, he

takes it for granted that these values are recognized by us, since in the form

of the principle of dignity they underlie his central idea of the decided pref-

erence criterion which always involves a judgment of what is appropriate

for us. Thus, our recognizing the existence of these values and their great

signiﬁcance for us is a fundamental part of his normative doctrine and is

supported by his basic human psychology.

However, in view of the content of the principle of liberty—its exclu-

sion of perfectionist grounds for limiting individual liberty—these values

cannot be imposed by the sanctions of law and common moral opinion as

coercive social pressure. It is up to each of us together with our friends and

associates to settle this for ourselves. In this sense, his doctrine is not perfec-

tionist.

2. The fundamental values of Mill’s political and social doctrine are

those of justice and liberty as spelled out in his principles of the modern

world. If one were to object that he has left out the perfectionist values, he

would reply, I suggest, that he has not left them out. Rather, he would say

that he has taken them into account as they should be, namely, by setting

out principles that, when realized in social arrangements, will be most ef-

fective in leading people freely—and in accordance with their own nature

and the advice and urgings of friends and other associates, as best suits

them—to give those values a central place in their life.

It is not necessary, I think he would say, to coerce people to pursue ac-

tivities that realize these values, and trying to do so when the institutions of

justice and liberty are not in place does more injury than good. On the

other hand, once these institutions are fully in place, the values of perfec-

tion will be realized in the most appropriate way in free lives and associa-

tions within the bounds of just and free institutions. The values of justice

and liberty have a fundamental background role and in that sense a certain

priority. Mill would say that he gives perfectionist values their due.

3. As for the second point—the role of Mill’s psychological principles—I

[ 312 ]

mill

EXAM COPY

make the following observation: All moral doctrines contain normative

concepts and principles combined with elements of human psychology and

political sociology, together with other institutional and historical assump-

tions. Mill’s view is no exception. Still, it contains but one main normative

assumption—the principle of utility, with its associated concepts and val-

ues. The essential role of this principle is seen everywhere, and reigns su-

preme as a doctrine of teleology in the chapter on the logic of practice, or

art, at the end of his System of Logic (1843).

The ﬁrst principles of Mill’s psychology play an essential role, and if

they fail or strike us as implausible, then his view fails or seems insecure. In

his answer, I have suggested, much depends on them. Yet all moral doc-

trines depend on their underlying moral psychology. Mill’s doctrine is not

peculiar in this respect either.

I have not been much concerned with the overall success of Mill’s view.

Instead my object has been to explain how, given his apparently Benthamite

beginning, he managed to end up with principles of justice, liberty, and

equality not all that far away from justice as fairness, so that his political

and social doctrine—lifted from his overall moral view—could give us the

principles of a modern and comprehensive liberalism.

[ 313 ]

His Doctrine as a Whole

EXAM COPY

Appendix: Remarks on Mill’s Social Theory [c. 1980]

A. Preliminary Remarks: The Background of Social Theory:

1. It is essential for the understanding of Mill that one understands both

his own conception of his vocation (as an educator of public elite opinion

with the aim of establishing sufﬁcient consensus on ﬁrst principles of the

modern world for the organic age to come) and the background social the-

ory in the light of which he saw historical development. The essays Utilitar-

ianism (1861), On Liberty (1859), On Representative Government (1861), and

Subjection of Women (1869) must all be read in this light.

2. But they are not sufﬁcient by themselves: other writings present

the social theory in more detail, especially Principles of Political Economy (1st

edition, 1848; 3rd edition, 1852) and A System of Logic (1843). In the former,

especially Book II, Chapters 1–2 (on property); Book IV, Chapters 1, 6–7 (on

the Stationary State and the future of the laboring classes); and Book V,

Chapters 1–2, 8–11 (on the role of government); and in the latter Book VI

(on the method of the social sciences), which book is also the culminating

set-piece of his Logic. In addition, see Chapters on Socialism (1879) and

the earlier background of the origins of his views, e.g. Autobiography

(1873), etc.

B. Representative Government: as the ideally best polity and aim of progressive

advance:

1. The ﬁrst three chapters of this work present Mill’s background social

theory and are worthy of careful attention, although other chapters ﬁll out

many details: e.g. Chapters 7–8 give Mill’s arguments for some of his con-

troversial proposals regarding proportional representation of minorities and

plural voting for those more educated (what is instructive is Mill’s reasons

for these proposals and how they ﬁt his overall view). Basic themes are illus-

trated by the discussion of local government, nationalism, federalism, and

government of dependencies in Chapters 15–18.

[ 314 ]

EXAM COPY

2. Chapter I takes up the fundamental issue of how far the form of gov-

ernment is a matter amenable to rational choice. In paragraphs 4–11 Mill

rejects the view (of Bentham) that government is a means to an end (and can

be adopted as such) and (of Coleridge) that it is an organic growth not sub-

ject to human direction. His conclusion is that within certain conditions

(stated in paragraphs 8–9) our institutions are a matter of choice (para-

graph 11).

3. Paragraphs 12–14 discuss a fundamental objection to this conclusion:

namely, that the form of government is ﬁxed already in all essentials by the

distribution of the elements of social power and that the strongest power

holds governmental authority: thus any change must be preceded by a change

in the distribution of social power. In reply Mill says this doctrine is too im-

precise to be assessed; to make it more exact he enumerates six main ele-

ments of social power: (i) physical strength (numbers), (ii) property, (iii) intelli-

gence, (iv) organization, (v) possession of governmental authority, (vi) active

social power as guided by uniﬁed and effective public opinion (and degrees

thereof: e.g. to passive and disunited [opinion]). This is a general equilibrium

view of social power: it depends on the changing conﬁguration of these el-

ements.

4. Observe that in this chapter and the next two, Mill’s argument sup-

ports the realism and practicality of his adopted vocation as public educa-

tor: he contends that given the conﬁguration of social elements of power

in his day (in the age of transition) the sixth element of power may have

considerable weight and those who try to affect it may therefore achieve

something. Now it can possibly be done, later perhaps not. Recall On Liberty,

III: 19. Mill has, then, a theory that explains the rationality of his vocation.

5. This theory is discussed earlier in the important Book VI of Logic, es-

pecially Chapter 10: here Mill contends that the laws which govern the suc-

cession of social states must yield the apparent historical fact that major cul-

tural and social changes have been preceded by intellectual changes that

have issued from previous states of intellectual development. Since intellec-

tual change is in part autonomous, social change cannot be solely in changes

in the other elements of social power.

6. Finally, note that Chapters II–III of On Representative Government help

to give sense to Mill’s idea of utility in the broadest sense, that is, as advanc-

ing “the permanent interests of man as a progressive being” (On Liberty, I: 11):

namely, that the best form of polity for realizing these interests is Represen-

[ 315 ]

Appendix: Mill’s Social Theor y

EXAM COPY

tative Government (cf. Utilitarianism, II: 3–9, 11–18; III, especially 8–11; On

Liberty, III: 2–9), and the tendency historically is towards the conditions that

make such government possible. So the broad test of utility is: how well do

institutions favor this historical trend and how suited are they to representa-

tive government, etc.

C. Principles of Political Economy:

subtitled with some of their applications to social philosophy:

1. The idea that Mill is a defender of what we call laissez-faire capitalism

is, I believe, an utter distortion, as can be seen by reading the parts listed in

A: 2 above in Political Economy: Mill proposes in Book II rules regarding the

holding of property, inheritance, and bequest, etc. that are aimed not, to be

sure, at equality of property, but at preventing large concentrations and

spreading property not too unequally over all classes over time. These rules

are based on utilitarianism as deﬁned in its broadest sense (B: 6 above).

Book V, 1–2 and 8–11, especially discusses when government must be active

and how.

2. In Book IV Mill actually presents a reinterpretation of the Ricardian

notion of a Stationary State, which greatly alters its political and social im-

plications: he sees this state not as a doomsday to be avoided by continual

capital accumulation and innovation, but as a desirable state to be wel-

comed. This shift undercuts the ethos of a modern capitalist society as one

of perpetual growth of capital and wealth: see Chapters 1, 5–6.

3. Mill favored what today is often called worker self-management in in-

dustry on the grounds, congruent with much of his view, that it encour-

aged participation and so active and vigorous people. While rejecting state

command socialism as bureaucratic, he thought self-management [among

workers] in privately owned ﬁrms would win out if markets were competi-

tive. His feminism was an important part of this vision. See Subjection of

Women, especially Ch. 2.

[ 316 ]

mill

EXAM COPY

marx

EXAM COPY

marx i

His View of Capitalism as a Social System

§1. Preliminary Remarks

Karl Marx’s dates, 1818–1883, make him a near contemporary of J. S. Mill,

who was 12 years older (1806–1873). He was born into a century that was

already becoming seriously interested in Socialism, including the work of

the Saint-Simonians, with whom Mill associated in his early years.

One of the most remarkable achievements of Marx is that starting

with an academic background in jurisprudence and philosophy, which he

studied at the University of Berlin in the late 1830s, he turned to economics

to clarify and to deepen his ideas only after he was about 28 years old. It is

testimony to his marvelous gifts that he succeeded in becoming one of the

great 19th-century ﬁgures of that subject, to be ranked along with Ricardo

and Mill, Walras and Marshall. He was a self-taught, isolated scholar. While

Ricardo and Mill knew other economists of the classical school, who

formed a kind of working group, Marx had no such colleagues. Friedrich

Engels, who was a close associate and collaborator after the early 1840s,

and who was in some ways indispensable to Marx, was not an original

thinker of Marx’s caliber, and could not really give him the kind of intellec-

tual help he could have used. Engels himself says, “What I contributed...

Marx could have very well done without me. What Marx accomplished, I

would have not have achieved....Marx was a genius; we others were at

best talented.”

Given the circumstances of Marx’s life, his achievement as

an economic theorist and political sociologist of capitalism is extraordinary,

indeed heroic.

[ 319 ]

1. Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, p. 386.

Tucker (see note 2) gives Engels more credit than he gives himself, saying, “His gifts and

Marx’s were in large measure complementary. Classical Marxism is an amalgam in which

Engel’s work constitutes an inalienable part.” Introduction to the Marx-Engels Reader, §4.

EXAM COPY

1. The works of Marx that we will read can be divided as follows:

First, the early and more philosophical writings of the 1840s: On the Jewish

Question (1843) and The German Ideology (1845–1846).

Important but not

assigned are: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844) and Theses on

Feuerbach (1845).

Second, parts of the economic writings: Capital, Vol. I (1867) (ﬁrst draft,

1861–63); Vol. II (1885) (worked on: 1868–70, 75–78); Vol. III (1894) (ﬁrst

draft, 1864–65). Important but not assigned is Grundrisse (1857–58).

Third: one of Marx’s political writings: Critique of the Gotha Program

(1875).

2. The objectives of our discussion of Marx are extremely modest, even

more so than with our discussion of Mill. I will consider Marx solely as a

critic of liberalism. With that in mind, I focus on his ideas about right and

justice, particularly as they apply to the question of the justice of capitalism

as a social system based on private property in the means of production.

Marx’s thought is enormous in scope, and it presents tremendous dif-

ﬁculties. To understand, much less to master, the ideas of Capital—all three

volumes—is itself a forbidding task. Still, it is much better to discuss Marx,

if only brieﬂy, than not to discuss him at all. I hope you will be encouraged

to come back to his thought and to pursue it more deeply at a later time.

When I say that we focus on Marx’s critique of liberalism, I mean that

we examine his criticisms of capitalism as a social system, criticisms that

might seem offhand to apply as well to property-owning democracy, or

equally to liberal socialism. We try to meet those of his criticisms that most

clearly require an answer. For example:

(a) To Marx’s objection that some of the basic rights and liberties—

those he connects with the rights of man (and which we have labeled the

[ 320 ]

marx

2. All the assigned works are in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed.

(New York: W. W. Norton, 1978). In Tucker these two essays are on pp. 26–52, 147–200.

This latter selection is only the ﬁrst part of the German Ideology, which is in the Collected

Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 5 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1976), and is over 500

pages.

3. From Capital, Vol. I, we will read the following: Ch. 1, Commodities, Secs. 1, 2, 4;

Ch. 4, General Formula for Capital, entire; Ch. 6, The Buying and Selling of Labor Power,

entire; Ch. 7, The Labor Process and the Process of Producing Surplus Value, Sec. 2,

pp. 357–361; Ch. 10, The Working Day, Secs. 1, 2. All these selections are in Tucker, Marx-

Engels Reader. From Capital, Vol. III, the selection in Tucker, pp. 439–441.

4. In this we will read only Sec. 1, in Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 525–534.

EXAM COPY