The Poverty of Liberalism

1. Liberty

I.

The confusion of contemporary American political thought shows itself nicely in the paradoxical fact that while liberals invoke the authority of John Stuart Mill’s great libertarian tract, On Liberty, conservatives echo the rhetoric and deploy the arguments of Mill’s other great contribution to social philosophy, The Principles of Political Economy. What is more paradoxical still, Mill’s strongest arguments for what is today known as conservatism are set forth in On Liberty, a fact which liberals seem congenitally unable to notice; while in the pages of the Principles, we can find the germs of a justification of that welfare-state philosophy which modern conservatives abhor. As a radical, I view this conceptual chaos with a certain quiet satisfaction, but as a philosopher, I find myself irresistibly tempted to try some analysis and clarification, much as a doctor might feel his professional interest aroused by a particularly complicated case of cancer in his sworn enemy. I propose therefore to take a careful look at Mill’s argument with particular attention to the fundamental assumptions on which it is based. I trust that my analysis will not merely strengthen the convictions of liberals and conservatives.

Mill sets for himself a quite precisely defined problem in On Liberty. What, he asks, are the nature and limits of the power which can legitimately be exercised by society over the individual? The question is moral, not political or historical, for it is the limits of legitimate constraint that Mill seeks. His answer, for which the entire essay is a defence, appears clearly and forcefully in the following lengthy paragraph:

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

All of On Liberty, running to well over one hundred pages, is devoted to sustaining this thesis. The actual argument is quite simple, and could have been stated by Mill in fewer than a dozen pages. The length and complexity of the essay are due entirely to the wealth of example with which he surrounds his proof. Nevertheless, as we shall see, the bare argument itself requires a good deal of analysis and criticism, for it is very far from establishing the proposition that Mill intended it to demonstrate.

Mill begins by distinguishing two spheres of activity and experience in each individual’s life. The internal sphere includes the thoughts, feelings, and other experiences of private consciousness, together with those actions which affect – in the first instance – the individual alone. The external sphere is the arena of the individual’s interactions with other persons, the social world in which we impinge upon others and influence their lives.

On this distinction Mill builds his argument. Society, he claims, has no right whatsoever to interfere in any matter falling within the inner sphere of any individual’s life, and it has only a conditional right to interfere in social affairs involving interactions between several persons. In the latter case, society’s guiding rule must be the principle of utility or greatest happiness principle. Society is to take action only in order to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Where intervention will not serve that utilitarian purpose, society has no right to impose itself upon individuals.

In establishing this pair of principles governing society’s relation to the inner and outer spheres of individual life, Mill proposes to rely solely upon the so-called Greatest Happiness Principle which he and Jeremy Bentham before him had made the cornerstone of the doctrine of Utilitarianism. Mill tells us that he will forgo any advantage which could be derived... from the idea of abstract right. Other defenders of personal liberty had sought to buttress their position by appeals to natural law, or inalienable rights, or the pure light of reason. They separated off certain rights of person and property as absolute, inviolable even by a justly constituted government. In this way they hoped to defend personal liberty against the powerful and ever-insistent claims of the state and its interests.

But Mill deliberately and with a touch of bravado rejects all such modes of argument. He will let his case stand or fall on the single principle of Utilitarianism. In the well- known essay of that name, Mill states his principle in the following manner:

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals utility, or the greatest happiness principle holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure, and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded – namely, that pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for pleasure inherent in themselves or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

In short, whenever we face a choice among alternative courses of action – whether we be private persons or the authors of public laws – we should weigh as best we can the probable happiness and unhappiness to flow from each alternative, and then choose that course which promises the greatest happiness for the greatest number. For example, if we are laying down the penalties to be attached to crimes (a subject close to Bentham s heart), we must weigh the pain of the penalty against the happy prevention of future crimes which its infliction accomplishes. Somewhere between draconian severity and licentious levity will lie an appropriate schedule of punishments which achieves the greatest possible total happiness throughout the society as a whole. If the question be one of restraints upon business activity or the distribution of welfare supplements to indigent citizens, here too we must weigh the pains and pleasures and strive for a maximum of the latter.

Thus Mill sets himself the task of proving that the greatest happiness for the greatest number will flow from a policy of absolute non-intervention in the private sphere of human affairs, together with a policy of qualified interference in other-regarding or public actions, the qualifications to be the self-same principle of Utility.

Now, if we begin with the assumption that every action by anyone whatsoever should aim at the greatest happiness for the greatest number, then of course it follows trivially that society’s acts of constraints upon the individual, which are after all merely a sub-category of actions in general, should obey that principle. Hence the second half of the thesis requires no very great demonstration in terms of the assumptions of the essay. But the first half of the thesis, that society has no right at all ever to intervene in the private sphere of human experience, is obviously going to need something more in the way of argument. It is not surprising, therefore, that all but a small portion of On Liberty is devoted to this first proposition, which I shall for purposes of our discussion call Mill’s Doctrine of the Liberty of the Inner Life.

According to Mill, it follows from the greatest happiness principle that society must never interfere with an individual’s private life or self-regarding actions even for the purpose of making him happier! On the face of it, this is a very paradoxical claim. The total happiness of the society, we may suppose, is nothing other than the sum of the happiness of all the individuals in the society. Certainly Mill never gives us any reason to think differently. One would expect, therefore, that the very best way in the world to increase this social sum of happiness would be to interfere quite extensively in people’s lives, prodding them to do the things that will bring them happiness, stopping them from imprudent or self-defeating actions which threaten to make them unhappy. Mill might, for example, succeed in persuading us that the forcible rehabilitation of drug addicts violates the civil liberties, natural rights, or dignity of the individual drug addict; on such grounds as those he might maintain that society has no right to interfere even in so hideously self-destructive a case. But can he really show us that it will reduce the sum of human happiness to cure addicts, even against their will? Clearly, some very powerful arguments indeed will be needed to establish so unlikely a claim.

II.

Instead of making a direct defence of the Doctrine of the Liberty of the Inner Life, Mill begins by discussing one important instance of that doctrine, namely the liberty of thought and discussion. In a section fully one-third the length of the entire essay, he develops the famous argument for unconditional liberty of thought, speech, and writing. Most readers of On Liberty, indeed, are under the mistaken impression that freedom of thought and expression is the sole topic of the essay, and when modern liberals invoke Mill’s name, it is usually in support of the right of a dissenter to speak his mind, or against the censorship of the written word.

Mill is uncompromising in his articulation of the principle to be defended. If all mankind minus one, he asserts, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be in silencing mankind. Indeed, this absolute prohibition would remain valid even if we could be sure that the opinion were false. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion, he reminds us; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

This is bracing talk, and the breast swells at the sound of it. But before assenting in an access of libertarian sentiment, let us consider Mill’s arguments. The entire case, it will be remembered, is to rest on the estimation of future consequences and their tendency to promote the happiness or unhappiness of the members of society.

The proof depends upon the premise, unmentioned by Mill but clearly essential for the argument, that knowledge makes men happy. This Baconian presupposition must underlie any utilitarian defence of free speech which does not content itself with pointing to the pleasure derived merely from speaking one’s mind. If knowledge does not tend to increase human happiness, then of course there is no possible utilitarian ground for protecting the institutions which conduce to the discovery of new truths. Inasmuch as there is an old Christian tradition according to which man’s unhappiness in this world stems from his defiant tasting of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, one might expect Mill to make some effort to prove that knowledge brings happiness. Unfortunately, he makes no such attempt. Indeed, had he done so, he would have encountered a curious paradox which lies at the core of the utilitarian defence of free speech. The dilemma is this: Either an increase in knowledge tends toward an increase in human happiness, or it does not. If it does, then we ought to promote the growth of knowledge; if it does not, then we should stifle knowledge and strive to maintain a condition of happy ignorance. Now, the relation of knowledge to happiness is a matter of fact, not of principle, and cannot definitively be settled at any point in time. Hence, when we leave off speculating and make a social decision whether to allow free inquiry, we must perforce base our decision on provisional information. If the preponderance of evidence suggests that knowledge causes more unhappiness than it alleviates, then on utilitarian principles we ought to close down the research laboratories and universities, and content ourselves with repeating the old truths. To go against the evidence, to insist on the pursuit of knowledge even in the face of negative experiences in the past, would be to flout the dictates of utilitarianism, in the name perhaps of the sanctity of the truth or the inviolability of man’s natural right to know. Now the paradox is clear. In order to decide whether we should permit the growth of empirical knowledge, we must settle a question which is itself empirical, and hence a very part of that knowledge whose value we are attempting to estimate. If we allow the question to remain open until it has been decisively settled, then by that very postponement of decision we have come down on the side of the advance of knowledge. On the other hand, if we close off investigation and opt for a static society, we deny ourselves additional data with which to improve our judgment on the issue. In short, so long as we restrict ourselves to the principle of utility, we cannot deal consistently with the question of the relation between knowledge and happiness. Hence, Mill’s entire argument rests on an article of faith for which he advances no argument, and for which no utilitarian argument could suffice.

Lest this dispute appear a quibble, we might reflect that only twenty-five years ago, a number of the world’s leading nuclear physicists seriously debated whether it was possible and desirable to forestall the development of nuclear weapons by banding together in a league of silence. Leo Szilard sought to persuade his fellow-scientists in the interests of humanity deliberately to refrain from pursuing the lines of investigation which, they had every reason to suspect, would shortly lead to the discovery of a practicable means for triggering a nuclear fission reaction. Szilard may have been too optimistic about his colleagues’ ability to halt a major movement in physics, but it is a matter of historical fact that they made their recommendations to proceed to President Roosevelt only because of their belief that key German physicists had already begun the race for the uranium bomb. When we consider the history of the past quarter-century, can we so readily echo Mill’s confidence that the advance of knowledge serves the enlightened interests or humanity?

If, for the sake of argument, we grant that knowledge contributes to happiness, we must still ask whether complete freedom of speech and expression is a necessary or even a particularly useful means to the advance of learning. Mill’s arguments are familiar, and need not be rehearsed in detail: Competition among ideas strengthens the truth and roots out error; the repeated effort to defend one’s convictions serves to keep their justification alive in our minds and guards against the twin dangers of falsehood and fanaticism; to stifle a voice is to deprive mankind of its message, which, we must acknowledge, might possibly be more true than our own deeply held convictions. The root metaphor in all these arguments is of course that of the free market of ideas. Just as an unfettered competition among commodities guarantees that the good products sell while the bad gather dust on the shelf, so in the intellectual marketplace the several competing ideas will be tested by us, the consumers, and the best of them will be purchased. The American slang expression, I’ll buy that! as applied to a theory or idea exactly captures, albeit in a somewhat vulgar manner, the spirit of Mill’s vision.

Mill’s arguments, like all utilitarian calculations of effects, are estimates of probable future consequences. Since such estimates rest upon past experience, it may be that we are, one hundred years later, in a somewhat better position than Mill to judge the usefulness of unconstrained discussion as a spur to the advance of knowledge. Needless to say, even now our conclusions can only be tentative, for as Mill himself repeatedly reminds us in his Logic, empirical judgments are never certain. Indeed, we may wonder how Mill hoped to ground an absolute prohibition against the limitation of speech on merely conditional and probabilistic arguments. But putting aside these methodological doubts, let us look directly at the relation between freedom of speech and the growth of knowledge.

Immediately it becomes apparent that we must make some distinctions among different kinds of knowledge if we are to throw any light on this question. Among the species of actual or supposed knowledge which can be distinguished, Mill pays particular attention to at least three, namely religious knowledge, scientific knowledge, and what might be called moral or normative knowledge. I think a closer look will reveal that the usefulness of free discussion to the advance of each of these species is quite different.

Consider first religious knowledge. I speak of knowledge rather than of faith or belief because Mill is concerned with the search for truth and the benefits it brings to humanity. We may ask two questions: first, will genuine religious knowledge bring human happiness? Clearly the answer is yes. Christianity – which we may, with Mill, identify as