A utopian radical.

John Stuart Mill On Liberty and Control, by Joseph Hamburger, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1999. xviii + 239 pp.

JOSEPH HAMBURGER, the Pelatiah Perit Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University at the time of his death in 1997, was one of America's most accomplished scholars of nineteenth-century British political thought. He had spent much of his long and productive scholarly life studying the intellectual world of James Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and John Austin. (1) In his final book, John Stuart Mill On Liberty and Control, Hamburger has brought this lifetime of learning to an exploration of the sometimes opaque inner teachings of Mill's On Liberty. Situating Mill's argument in this seminal text among his other writings of the period, many published only after Mill's death, as well as in the context of a veritable treasure trove of letters (both to and from him, and among his intimate circle of friends), Hamburger makes sense of what at times seems to be contradictory impulses in On Liberty.

Rather than ignoring, as almost all other scholars have done, (2) those elements of Mill's message that are troubling to contemporary sensibilities, Hamburger integrates the contrasting features of Mill's thought into a coherent whole. In so doing, what he discovers challenges Mill's status as an icon of contemporary liberalism. Indeed, for Hamburger, Mill's work is not only "far from being compatible with modern liberal thought," but rather "should be regarded as being implicitly critical of it." If Hamburger is right, much of contemporary Mill scholarship will have to be seriously reconsidered.

What is it that Hamburger believes he has uncovered in On Liberty that so many have missed or chosen to ignore? It is that Mill, in planning and writing this essay, wanted to "'point out what things society forbade that it ought not, and what things it left alone that it ought to control.'" As Mill indicates in this 1854 passage written to his friend George Grote, he hoped to make more distinct in On Liberty those areas of social life in which society could intervene, and what was appropriate when doing so.

All readers of On Liberty are familiar with Mill's powerful defense of an almost sacrosanct area of autonomy surrounding a mature individual into which society cannot legitimately enter. Almost equally well recognized is Mill's view that this protection against interference is limited by what might be called a "harm principle," such that when an individual's actions limit the freedom of another or, more particularly, harm others in some way, only at this point does one's freedom end. But far less well understood is that Mill also believed that society, or at least certain sectors of it, should exercise control over others concerning unacceptable, self-regarding behavior. It is this feature of Mill's thought, plainly visible in the beginning pages of Chapter Four and parts of Chapter Five of On Liberty, that most commentators ignore. Hamburger, however, emphasizes these pages. He spends most of this book making sense of them and explaining why they are critical to a correct understanding of Mill's political and social thought.

Mill's far-reaching social theories developed as a result of his reading of Continental thinkers, his relationship with Harriet Taylor, and his disappointment with the pace and effects of political changes in England. Mill concluded that what was needed was cultural rather than political change, and "the magnitude of change which Mill sought was such that it can be said without exaggeration that he wished to bring about a cultural revolution ... [largely] projected into the distant future." Mill came to believe that society was hopelessly corrupt and that what was demanded was a "'reconstruction of the human intellect ab imo.'" Indeed, with his wife Harriet, he had a vision of a future society "characterized by freedom, equality, and justice, in which selfishness would be abolished and altruism would prevail." Accordingly, Mill's political and cultural vision was strikingly ambitious but, in a manner not developed by Hamburger, very much of a piece with theories of other nineteenth-century radical thinkers--most particularly German ones, such as Marx, Strauss, Feuerbach, and Nietzsche. (3)

Like many of them, Mill envisioned a wholly new social structure coming into being in which there would be no alienation, that is, a society where the gulf between self-love and love of others, quite possibly the central tension in the history of Western political and religious thought, would be overcome. What made Mill stand out, however, was his proposed method for achieving his revolution--increased cultural, intellectual, and religious liberty. "By promoting free discussion and criticism of established ideas and customs in On Liberty," Mill set the stage for reconstruction and renovation of his world. As Hamburger demonstrates, Mill "hoped that in the future there would be a new generation of intellectual leaders that would be 'capable of taking up the thread of thought and continuing it.' This hope--or plan--allowed Mill to say, 'Books are a real magic, or rather necromancy--a person speaking from the dead, and speaking his most earnest feelings and gravest and most recondite thoughts.'" Most remarkably, Mill believed that by capturing the world of ideas, even long after his death and only among intellectual elites, he could effect a revolution in social and cultural relations of a dimension heretofore unknown. And it is the confusion of his method with his end that has both elevated Mill into the pantheon of liberal divinities and has freed him from the disapprobation attached by classical liberals to most radicals.

Most important for Mill, in what he viewed as a two-step process, destruction first and reconstruction next, was the eradication of Christianity and its replacement with a new religion of man. Accordingly, Hamburger devotes the middle four chapters of his book to exploring with great care these central planks in Mill's revolutionary strategy.

For Mill, Christianity was simultaneously the teacher of selfishness--for him the most serious character flaw that must be overcome--and of self-abnegation. These two otherwise incompatible criticisms are not in tension for Mill because for him true individuality is expressed through altruism. Thus, Christianity is destructive of both sociability and individuality. Mill, of course, was able to take this position because of his utter lack of acquaintance with human nature--most particularly normally sexed men. (4) Given his view of human nature as being absolutely plastic, Mill could believe that if Christianity were to be eradicated and replaced with a "religion of man," then men could be taught to love themselves in others and, thus, become fully altruistic.

Unlike most Victorians who were unbelievers but who believed that Christianity was a salutary myth, for Mill it was above all Christianity that stood in the way of human progress. Its eradication, then, was essential, and this could best be accomplished by attacking its dogmas in a world of free thought and discussion. "Mill expected that 'real freedom of speculation' would have the effect of 'making [all persons] unbelievers.'" In short, his goal was to embarrass and discredit Christianity into oblivion through open discussion and debate; thus, the necessary defense of the freedom of thought and discussion--as an instrumental rather than an intrinsic good.

Less convincing is Hamburger's unwillingness to concede that, in a certain sense, Mill himself can be described as some kind of Christian along the lines of, say, contemporary Unitarians. Mill, in his life, resembles a Christian monk whom God has abandoned. Yet his ascetic life was still devoted to service, in this case, to mankind. Was not Mill, in truth, prescient in his teachings? Has not Christianity become ever more human-centered since Mill? Today, is it not the case that most elite Christians view the Second Tablet of the Ten Commandments as the only one worthy of attention? Do they not love God primarily in light of their love of man? Quite possibly, then, in spite of his evident hatred of organized Christianity, Hamburger might have taken more seriously Mill's embrace of Jesus the man--and the possibility that Mill, somewhat like Locke in his "Letter on Toleration," was marking out the boundaries of Christianity's future--one in which the love of man replaces the love of God. How ironic it would be if Mill has accomplished his goal of destroying theocentric Christianity, but only by working from within Christianity (and Judaism as well) rather than from without.

What does demand further explanation, in a work exalting candor, is Mill's belief that he needed to keep his views on Christianity concealed. Here again, Hamburger's remarkable scholarship convincingly demonstrates that Mill believed that he must not reveal in his published works his true thoughts, so amply displayed in letters and essays read by a close circle of friends. Mill feared social ostracism and possibly criminal prosecution, to be sure, but more importantly he wanted to retain his readership. If books were capable of instigating revolutionary action, to do so they must be read. Mill realized that if he were to write openly about his utopianism and his hatred of Christianity, he might well be relegated to the trash heap of history, upon which most written works eventually land. He wanted to be read because he wanted to guide future intellectuals in their efforts to replace the culture of stunted and dwarfed human beings dedicated to "miserable individuality" with that of true individuality and fellow-feeling. In the words of Harriet, she and Mill wanted their words to serve as pemmican to the cultural warriors of the future. To do so required circumspection concerning Christianity.

With such care, Mill believed that he could, rather like Nietzsche, become the teacher of a new morality of the future. But unlike Nietzsche, his teaching was to be of men loving men. As Hamburger characterizes the religion of humanity, "it held up duty as an ideal and sought to fundamentally change motives and habits to generate widespread altruism ... the goal was to discourage selfishness by making private motives coincide with the public good." Mill, writing in his Diary, describes the basic outline of this religion as

  universal moral education making the happiness and dignity of this
  collective body the central point to which all things are to trend and
  by which all are to be estimated, instead of the pleasure of an unseen
  and merely imaginary Power; the imagination at the same time being fed
  from youth with representations of all noble things felt and acted
  greater to come: there is no worthy office of a religion which this
  system of cultivation does not seem adequate to fulfill.... Now this
  is merely supposing that the religion of humanity obtained as firm a
  hold on mankind, and as great a power of shaping their usages, their
  institutions, and their education, as other religions have in many
  cases possessed.

Mill thus saw himself as something of a mid-wife helping give birth to a world beyond the transitional one in which he lived, a new "organic" world in which love of self and love of other would form almost an identity. All that was demanded, without gulag or executions, was the extermination of institutionalized Christianity and its replacement by the religion of man. This new religion, however, was one that Mill understood to "'be a development of [Chris]tianity, properly understood.'"

How was this change to be brought about? Here, somewhat like Marx, Mill gives little guidance. Thus, different interpreters can fill in the blanks consistent with their hopes. But according to Hamburger, Mill did give some indication of his plans in the enigmatic fourth chapter of On Liberty. Although Mill celebrated individuality, Hamburger finds that, like liberty, it was less an intrinsic value and more an instrumental one. Remembering that Mill's conception of individuality was anything but individualistic--for "it emphasized responsibility to others and it rejected isolation and selfishness"--true individuals were to be a vanguard with advanced opinions running ahead of their age. They would help introduce the new age through criticizing and penalizing the less advanced majority of men who engaged "in objectionable self-regarding behavior."

This advanced vanguard of intellectuals, apparently guided by the teaching of Mill and his wife, were to subject others to stinging criticism for their base selfishness. Through their censoriousness and shunning, Mill apparently believed that shame, properly employed, could change aggregate behavior. In his "Utility of Religion," a posthumously published essay of central importance to Hamburger's argument, Mill described "the deterring power of shame, which caused 'fear of shame,' 'dread ... of being disliked or hated,' and 'painfulness' of knowing that one is regarded in this way" (emphasis added). Mill found such claims credible, because he believed that human beings were extremely sensitive to social censure and that their natures were infinitely malleable. Both claims are highly contestable. Still, Mill "claimed that 'there is not one natural inclination which [education] is not strong enough to coerce, and, if needful, to destroy by disuse.'" Even sex, this chaste married man wrote, "'will become with men, as it is already with a large number of women, completely under the control of reason.'" As is so often the case with philosophers, they extrapolate from their own natures to all men and, in the case of Mill, he did so from a most unusual man free of the pull of powerful biological drives.

But with the advent of Mill's brave new world, it is unclear what role his social vanguard would play. Indeed, Hamburger thinks that it is anything but certain that in this new world there would be a need for the high levels of liberty and individuality defended in the early chapters of On Liberty. He notes that Mill had claimed that "'as mankind improve, the number of doctrines which are no longer disputed or doubted will be constantly on the increase'" and that "'the cessation, on one question after another, of serious controversy, is one of the necessary incidents of the consolidation of opinion; a consolidation as salutary in the case of true opinions, as it is dangerous and noxious when the opinions are erroneous.'" Hamburger finds that "during organic periods liberty would not disappear, but it would be modified sufficiently to allow moral authority, cohesion, duty, and altruism to coexist with it. In such a society there would be an accommodation between liberty and consolidated opinion and there would be an increasingly wide array of moral obligations." Maybe Hamburger is right about liberty and individuality in the world that Mill would have us live in, but here, even a scholar with Hamburger's impressive grasp of the material may be reaching beyond what he can prove.

Finally, after powerfully making his case for a Mill at least as illiberal as liberal, Hamburger in a short Epilogue considers how best to view Mill against the background of contemporary political theory. Here, Hamburger announces that this work has effectively cast "doubt on the suitability of linking Mill so closely to liberalism." More particularly, with the dominant variety of contemporary liberalism in mind, Hamburger writes that "promoting a religion of humanity, which would socialize all persons to believe that altruism provided both utility and happiness ... is perfectly compatible with a culture in which duty and altruism dominate. It is, however, incompatible with the individualism, the emphasis on self-determination, and the moral pluralism often attributed to Millian liberalism." Drawing on his familiarity with Mill's correspondence, Hamburger is even able to show Mill describing the central outlines of what has become contemporary liberalism, writing that "'it is difficult to conceive a more thorough ignorance of man's nature, and what is necessary for his happiness or what degree of happiness and virtue he is capable of attaining than this system implies.'"

Hamburger concludes that Mill, instead of being best described as a classical or progressive liberal, might be most closely identified with communitarianism, for "Mill clearly shared with liberals of this kind a strong belief in the importance of liberty tempered by a morality which infiltrates law and custom and public opinion and which is perpetuated by a system of education broadly understood as the socialization process." But here, too, Hamburger perhaps goes too far, for where does Mill explain how it is that his followers would gain control of systems of education and culture-wide socialization? Is it simply by means of elite propaganda? Are societies changed so easily? Is it likely that the recalcitrant forces of the petit bourgeois and evangelical Christianity could be overcome without a fight? Apparently, Mill does not tell us, for if he had, Hamburger would know that he had. But without such knowledge, it is difficult to identify with clarity just what kind of forces Mill, who we must remember did retain a classical liberal's deep distrust of the state, would be willing to use in transforming the world and maintaining it once it was up and running.

We do know, however, thanks to this path-breaking book, that John Stuart Mill was not any sort of simple liberal, classical or otherwise. We do know that Mill defended freedom of thought and discussion, and of individuality of expression, in part, to fend off attacks on himself and his circle of friends, as well as to stimulate doubts concerning the credibility of Christianity so that a new religion of man could be put in its place. In short, we know that Mill was in important ways a nineteenth-century utopian radical with rather typical aspirations for social transformation. It is time, then, to recognize the truth concerning what he taught. Anyone taking the time to read this book with care will understand that Mill was concerned with both liberty and control--in the service of a most ambitious program of moral transformation. Marx could hardly have asked for more.

1. See his James Mill and the Art of Rhetoric (1963), Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals (1965), and Macaulay and the Whig Tradition (1976). 2. The sole exception is Maurice Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (1963). 3. Of course, both Mill and Hamburger make much of the influence on Mill of Saint-Simone, Comte, Coleridge, and von Humboldt. But almost no attention is paid to the great similarities uncovered by Hamburger between Mill's utopianism and that of a broad slice of contemporary and somewhat later nineteenth-century German thinkers, most importantly Marx and Nietzsche. The theme of "being too early" and serving as a mid-wife to those who will follow are particularly stunning in their common resonance in Mill and Nietzsche. 4. As Henry Reeve noted in his Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, 121, Mill "knew nothing of the world, and very little of the play and elasticity of human nature. It would have been of incalculable value to his philosophy if he had condescended to touch the earth, and to live with men and women as they are; but that was a lesson he had never learned, a book he had never opened."

BARRY ALAN SHAIN is Professor of Political Science at Colgate University.