Sep 21, 2007 - In respect of the first claim, see: Britton (1953, 37), Robson (1968, 113, 182), Ryan (1974, 47), Halliday. (1976, 121) ...... Ed. J.M. Robson et al.
Australian Journal of Political Science
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John stuart mill on the tyranny of the majority Struan Jacobs To cite this article: Struan Jacobs (1993) John stuart mill on the tyranny of the majority, Australian Journal of Political Science, 28:2, 306-321, DOI: 10.1080/00323269308402243 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00323269308402243
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Australian Journal of Political Science (1993) Vol.28, pp.306-321
John Stuart Mill on the Tyranny of the Majority STRUAN JACOBS* Deakin University
For an idea so central to the thought of a figure so prominent in the history of political philosophy, John Stuart Mill's 'tyranny of the majority' has been badly neglected. In this paper examination of strategic texts leads to the conclusions that Mill developed different conceptions of majority tyranny focussed on the middle class and the labouring class respectively, and that with regard to such tyranny he contrasted the situations of different societies. The United States had succumbed to it, he believed, while England might yet be spared it.
Perhaps no expression has come to be more closely associated with John Stuart Mill qua social-political thinker than that of 'tyranny of the majority' or 'masses'. It is not difficult to see why. The idea of such tyranny is explicit or implicit in many of Mill's writings from the first review of Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1836) 1 to Considerations on Representative Government (1861) and beyond. Whether as a topic for investigation or as a problem demanding remedial policies, tyranny of the majority represented an abiding concern of Mill. It posed in modern times the main danger to freedom, good government, and social progress. In majority tyranny, Mill (1977c, 200) saw the contemporary manifestation of 'the great problem in government', preventing 'the strongest from becoming the only power'. It was also a part of 'the greatest [revolution] ever recorded in social affairs', the appearance of industrial-commercial society (Mill 1977b, 126). It is noteworthy that, while practically all commentators on Mill's political thought recognise the importance in it of the idea of majority tyranny, by none has it been properly examined.2 There most certainly would be valuable enlargement,
*
1
2
Date Submitted: 17 August 1992. Date Finally Accepted: 4 December 1992. © AusJPS 1993 Much of the research for this paper was undertaken early in 1992 during a visiting fellowship at the Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University. To Professor Geoffrey Brennan, the School's director, and to Professor Eugene Kamenka, head of its History of Ideas Unit, the author expresses his gratitude for their support and hospitality. He wishes also to thank for their helpful comments on earlier versions, Mr Kerry Cardell, and two readers for this Journal. It is common knowledge that the expression, rather than being of his coining, was borrowed by Mill from Alexis de Tocqueville. Yet Mill, perhaps with assistance from John Austin, had earlier recognised as problematic the ignorance and increasing power of the multitude, one upshot of which in 1831 was his groping towards (the 'Spirit of the Age' articles), and properly formulating in 1832, a theory of ('trustee') democracy designed to minimise the electorate's influence over Parliament and to leave unrestricted the discretion of 'instructed' representatives. Pappé (1964, 229) has convincingly argued that 'In the question of democracy, centralization, and individuality, there was a give and take between Mill and Tocqueville, not a relationship of teacher [as Tocqueville in this case is commonly portrayed] and pupil'. In respect of the first claim, see: Britton (1953, 37), Robson (1968, 113, 182), Ryan (1974, 47), Halliday (1976, 121), Ten (1980, 160-1), Berger (1984, 227), and Thomas (1985, 83). Thompson (1979, 69ff) is the part-exception who proves the rule in the second part of the proposition.
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even were there no transformation, of understanding of Mill's views were it known to what social group(s) he applied the phrase 'tyranny of the majority', what relation existed between it and social classes, whether over time he analysed its social composition differently, and whether he regarded the tyranny as factual or probable. This paper is intended to shed light on such matters. There are significant 'moments' in Mill's treatment of the subject of mass tyranny—'Civilization' (1836), the second review article of Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1840), and On Liberty (1859), included—and with these 'moments' this paper principally deals. But Mill's understanding of class structure needs to be taken into account, requiring reference to his Principles of Political Economy (1848); and his Representative Government (1861) also is pertinent. There will in what follows be some cross-referencing of Mill's works, but the approach is more historical than it is synchronic, for the subject is marked by process and conceptual change.
Middle-Class Hegemony: The essays 'Civilization' and 'De Tocqueville On Democracy in America [II]' Modern society, Mill (1977c, 191, 195n., 198) described as 'commercial' or as 'manufacturing and commercial', distinguishing it from 'military' and 'agricultural' societies according to their dominant classes. The class with greatest power seeks its own economic advantage and moulds social culture. As determinants of class power, Mill in 'Civilization' mentioned property and intelligence (learning), and suggested combination or cooperation. In his review (1840) of the second part of Tocqueville's Democracy in America Mill (1977c, 163-6) he regarded power as a function of these elements, of which property is fundamental, buying access to education and providing leisure for reading, the combined product of which—'intelligence'— assists cooperation.3 Aside from political (law making) power, Mill recognised social power by which citizens enforce opinions and conduct through the application of non-legal, as distinct from illegal, pressures of criticism, stigmatisation, and taboo. It is likely Mill believed social and political power are both determined by the same factors, which is not to say these powers in all cases coincide, for upon acquiring preponderant social power some time may elapse before a class wrests political control.4 'Civilization' and 'De Tocqueville ... [II]' provide no intensive investigation of class structure in modern commercial society. In these key early writings in his long preoccupation with the tyranny of the majority, Mill operated with a non-technical division into 'higher' (or 'wealthy'), 'middle,' and 'lower' classes, based on differences of wealth. The higher class comprises major manufacturers and landowners, the middle consists of smaller manufacturers, farmers, and traders, and
3
4
See also Mill (1977a, 122-5). This three-factor analysis Mill retained over many years. In Considerations on Representative Government (1861), intelligence and property are treated as elements of power, but not as 'politically influential' unless 'organized; and the advantage in organization is necessarily with those who are in possession of the government' (Mill 1977g, 381). In his Autobiography, Mill (1981, 169) included this among ideas which, around 1830, he was acquiring from French thinkers: 'That government is always either in the hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power in society'.
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perhaps the best paid labourers, while the 'lower' class comprises the majority of labourers. Characteristic of commercial society is 'expansion' of the 'middle rank', otherwise described as 'a tendency to equalization' and as an increase in the proportion of society possessing 'capital' (Mill 1977c, 192). A good deal of such capital is invested in, not small personally-owned businesses but, shares of companies. 'To how enormous an extent is business now carried on by ... many small capitals thrown together to form one great one' (Mill 1977b, 125). The middle class 'is now the power in society, the arbiter of fortune and success', having supplanted the aristocracy (Mill 1977c, 194). In politics, as distinct from society, England in particular 'is progressively changing from the government of a few, to the government, not indeed of the many, but of many;—from an aristocracy with a popular infusion, to the regime of the middle class' (Mill 1977c, 167). Again, "The ascendancy of the commercial class in modern society and politics is inevitable ... That class is the most powerful' (Mill 1977c, 200).5 His two lengthy reviews of Democracy in America show that Mill highly estimated Tocqueville's analysis, although he specifically demurred in the second to Tocqueville's theory of the source of social change. Patterns of behaviour and attitudes detected in America by Tocqueville (social mobility, ostentation, suspicion of authority, and the like) were evident to Mill in England also. But, Mill reasoned, as English society has inherited privilege, it cannot be in Tocqueville's sense 'democratic', so the mores and opinions of modern commercial society cannot be results of Tocquevillean 'democracy'. They are concomitant with 'the growth of the middle class, not [as in Tocqueville] with the annihilation of the extremes' (Mill 1977c, 196). The increase in the middle class, Mill principally traced to a conjunction of industrial expansion, increasing capital and diffusion of wealth. The foregoing analysis suggests that by the time he came to write 'Civilization' (1836), Mill judged the middle class (or 'middle rank') as socially dominant in England. On the face of it, this opinion of Mill, evident as well in the 1840 review of Democracy in America, may appear to conflict with his idea of the 'tyranny of the majority'. There would be a contradiction were the denotations of 'middle class' and 'majority' unrelated. Reading Mill carefully one sees this is not so. In 'Civilization' and 'De Tocqueville ... [II]' the terms 'majority' ('masses') and 'middle class' are sometimes used with reference to the same people, at others to a large group (mass) with specific reference to its main element (middle class). "The American Many are not essentially a different class from our ten-pound householders; and if the middle class are left to the mere habits and instincts of a commercial community, we shall have a "tyranny of the majority", not the less irksome because most of the tyrants may not be manual labourers' (Mill 1977c, 200; 196). How easily he moved from 'Many' to 'middle class'; and it is the same in 'Civilization', between the cognates 'masses,' 'mass,' and 'majority' on the one side and 'middle class', 'middle classes', and 'industrious classes' on the other. In 5
The distinction between social and political power is implied in this and the last two quotations. The aristocracy (with other plutocrats) remains politically ascendant but its power is a matter more of form than of social substance. The political dispensation will sooner rather than later have to adjust This view Mill anticipated in The Spirit of the Age (Mill 1942, 32ff, 50-2, 56-9), and reflected in his Autobiography (1981, 177, 179).
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regard to America the terms mass and middle class as used by Mill have a common denotation. 'America is all middle class; the whole people being in a condition, both as to education and pecuniary means, corresponding to the middle class here' (Mill 1977c, 167).6 English class structure is more complex, with a class of ultra-wealthy besides the middle class, and a sizeable labouring class as well. In the two essays presently under examination Mill may have appeared to, but did not, say the middle class alone is constitutive of the English masses or majority; and at no time in these essays did he set apart from the English masses either the middle or labouring classes. Rather these classes in England together form the majority or masses.7 What prompts them to ally Mill failed to explain. But one factor of likely relevance is that a sizeable section of the English labouring population he saw as improving its condition, close to that of the middle class. Thus, 'the working classes themselves contain a middle as well as a lowest class'. Ever more 'manual labourers are rising above ... (the lowest) class, and acquiring at once decent wages and decent habits of conduct. A rapidly increasing multitude of our working people are becoming, in point of condition and habits, what the American working people are' (Mill 1977c, 166). Mill no doubt saw this section of the labouring class acquiring tastes similar to and forming interests in common with the middle class. That he went on to include in the majority the lower stratum of the labouring class may indicate a belief on his part that the culture of that stratum has elements in common with middle-class culture; or with his father, James Mill, he may have believed the lower class to be deferential to the middle. At any rate it is obvious that within the English masses the middle class has the upper hand. 'Hardly anything now depends upon individuals, but all upon classes, and among classes mainly upon the middle class. That class is now the power in society, the arbiter of fortune and success' (Mill 1977c, 194; 166-7,200). His belief that the middle class had become dominant explains why even in writing of England Mill slid between the concepts of mass or majority and middle class. As an instance, in the second article on Democracy in America Mill (1977c, 194) wrote of the English mass having 'grown to ... (an) immense ... size', such that the 'daily actions of every peer and peeress ... (fall) more and more under the yoke of bourgeois opinion'. As noted, in distinguishing types of society as 'agricultural', 'feudal', and 'commercial' Mill's criterion is the dominant class, which in modern society is the 'commercial' or middle class. Each dominant class he went on to say has its mores and attitudes, a peculiar form of 'human nature'.8 Specifically, the middle class he found imbued with the 'commercial spirit' and the 'rage of money-getting'; a group 'devoured by ambition', its nature self-centred, narrow, and soft. 'The private money-getting occupation of almost every one is more or less a mechanical routine; it brings but few of his faculties into action, while its exclusive pursuit tends to 6 7
8
Italics added. The sentence quoted sounds hyperbolic, but there are resonances elsewhere (Mill 1977b, 72, 179-80). Broadbent (1968, 274) appreciated that Mill commonly used 'masses' toencompass 'both the middle and working classes', but of Mill's assertionof the supremacy of the first class Broadbent seemed unaware. Broadbent is the rule-proving exception, most commentators (eg Duncan 1973, 229) having assumed that 'masses' and 'majority as used by Mill refer exclusively to the labouring class. Singular in form, this term can mislead. Actually, Mill regarded human nature as most malleable, and in A System of Logic he sketched a science—'ethology'—for the systematic study of relations between varieties of human character and circumstances. That which Mill termed 'human nature' is the acquisition by individuals of social culture.
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fasten his attention and interest exclusively upon himself... making him indifferent to the public, to the more generous objects and the nobler interests, and, in his inordinate regard for his personal comforts, selfish and cowardly' (Mill 1977c, 169).9 The social ascendancy of one type of 'human nature,' the 'commercial,' is the core of Mill's idea of the tyranny of the majority. Exercised more over minds than bodies, the tyranny asserts itself in the almost irresistible spread of the standards, tastes, and opinions of the middle class. Mill (1977c, 198) warned that the 'most serious danger to the future prospects of mankind is in the unbalanced influence of the commercial spirit'. Among the evidence of this process that Tocqueville's study furnished to Mill (1977c, 186) was the passion—radiating out through society—of the American middle class for 'physical comforts': 'with those (middle) classes it grows and spreads, and along with them it becomes preponderant. From them it mounts into the higher orders of society, and descends into the mass of the people'. The same in America, it seemed to Mill, was true of virtually the entire middle class culture. What makes possible this unprecedented dissemination of one culture across the length and breadth of a country is modern technology. Arguably the most 'powerful ... instrument of combination' (Mill 1977b, 125) is the newspaper. For the first time the masses are achieving literacy, gaining access to knowledge, and communicating nationally. Through newspapers 'opinions and feelings spread to the multitude ... (and) every individual who holds them knows that they are held by the multitude' (Mill 1977a, 50; 1977b, 125). Again, 'The real Political Unions of England are the Newspapers. It is these which tell every person what all other persons are feeling, and in what manner they are ready to act' (Mill 1977c, 165). Together with newspapers, railways are, in England, effacing regional cultures and producing a uniform climate of opinion. Social-Economic Classes: The View in Principles
of
Political
Economy It was in Principles of Political Economy (1848) that Mill entered into a fully detailed analysis of English economic class structure, following closely in this respect David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817). Mill's definition of classes in Political Economy was with reference to production, of which there are three 'requisites' or 'agents': labour, capital, and natural phenomena (principally land and raw materials). Capital Mill defined as that part of a person's possessions—the product of past labour (money, machinery, 9
Mill's hostility to the middle class contrasted his father's (1986, 32) admiration of the 'middle rank': 'There can be no doubt that the middle rank ... gives to science, to art, and to legislation itself, their most distinguished ornaments [and is] the chief source of all that has exalted and refined human nature'. John Mill himself expressed a similar view early in the 1820s but had turned against the middle class before the decade was out. By 1829 he was describing industrialists as among 'the most remarkable for a narrow & bigotted understanding, & sordid & contracted disposition as respects all things wider than their business or families' (Mill 1963, 37; 31-2). It is one thing to realise that in the essays presently under consideration Mill was hostile to the middle class, and something else to appreciate that in these writings be regarded the middle class as the principal element of the tyranny of the majority. The first fact is common knowledge among Mill scholars whereas none, so far as I am aware, has noticed the second fact I said earlier that Mill may have believed the working class was deferential to the middle class. James Mill (1986, 32) certainly believed it: 'the opinions of that class of the people, who are below the middle rank, are formed, and their minds are directed by that intelligent and virtuous rank, who come the most immediately in contact with them'.
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plant, finished goods)—which is consumed by others who, engaging in production, create new capital. Capital provides wages, 'shelter, protection, tools and materials which ... work requires' (Mill 1965, 55). Essential to capital as Mill conceived it was the subjective element of purpose. 'The distinction... between Capital and Notcapital, does not lie in the kind of commodities, but in the mind of the capitalist' (Mill 1965,57), in whether s/he proposed to employ or to spend them (consuming, educating children, paying taxes). In Principles of Political Economy Mill went on to explain that a modern economic community, with property privately owned, is a collection of social classes or 'divisions' in the sense that members of classes must permit use of their resources if production is to proceed, obtaining a portion of the produce in return. The classes are capitalists, notably manufacturers, most of whose capital goes in wages, enabling labourers to feed and maintain themselves in the course of production, and farmers, whose capital mostly goes in rent; owners of land (landlords being principally of the aristocracy and gentry); and labourers (including peasants and artisans). Their productive shares are respectively profits, rent, and wages. In English agriculture (exceptional in this regard) all three classes exist, with farmers as capitalists paying rent to landlords; whereas in manufacturing there are in contrast never 'more than two classes, the labourers and the capitalists' (Mill 1965, 238). 10 It is interesting that in Political Economy Mill's class terminology of 'capitalists', 'landlords', and 'labourers', referring to people's functions in the productive process, differs from the class terminology—'higher', 'middle', and 'lower'—chiefly employed in the essays 'Civilization' and 'De Tocqueville ... [II].' 'Middle class' and 'masses', common expressions in these essays, are almost entirely absent from Political Economy.11 There is also this significant substantive difference. Mill earlier presented the middle and working classes on terms sufficiently amicable as to coalesce in one majority.or mass, whereas in Political Economy the labouring class, referred to on at least one occasion as 'the majority', is described as embroiled with capitalists in a 'standing feud' on economic issues, particularly the distribution of wealth (Mill 1965,792; 762, 767). 12 On Liberty:
Middle Class Hegemony Reaffirmed
On Liberty (1859) contains Mill's most famous discussion of majority tyranny. Exposing, criticising, and advising on how to control such tyranny is the main negative object of the work. Its argument turns on a division of society into 'masses', characterised by uniformity of thought and conduct, and 'individuals', whose opinions and conduct are expressions of personal preferences. As in the essay 'Civilization' and in the review of the second part of Democracy in America several terms—'majority', 'public opinion', 'mass', and 'masses'—are interchanged in Liberty, having the same denotation: members of the labouring and middle classes. Mill's belief that the middle class predominates in majority tyranny, 10 11 12
The urban capitalist class includes, besides manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. In one of the few exceptions, Mill's sentiments were disparaging: 'To get out of one rank in society into the next above it is the great aim of English middle class life, and the acquisition of wealth the means' (Mill 1965, 171, 205, 755). On 'the majority' in Political Economy (1965, 766).
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a belief unnoted by commentators, is in evidence in On Liberty. Mill wrote of individuals as 'lost in the crowd', of society as ruled by 'public opinion', and of masses having supreme power. He (1977d, 268) proceeded to observe pertinently that "Those whose opinions go by the name of public opinion, are not always the same sort of public: in America they are the whole white population; in England, chiefly the middle class. But they are always a mass, that is to say, collective mediocrity'. The 'middle class' is 'the ascendant power in the present social and political condition' of England, the tendency being for 'ascendant' classes to shape according to their interests society's morality and rules (Mill 1977d, 221; 1977g, 650-1). 13 In the vicinity of this assertion of middle class predominance Mill noted how religion has conditioned the culture of the masses. Religion generally is 'the most powerful of the elements which have entered into the formation of moral feeling' (Mill 1977d, 226). Calvinism is the religion of immediate concern. Following a description of conformity among the masses—'peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow'—Mill remarked on the affinity between conformity and Calvinism, for Calvinism teaches that 'man needs no capacity, but that of surrendering himself to the will of God' (Mill 1977d, 265) and it enjoins that faculties be used solely for this purpose. Whereupon he noted how the same view 'is held, in a mitigated form, by many (in the masses) who do not consider themselves Calvinists; the mitigation consisting in giving a less ascetic interpretation to the alleged will of God; asserting it to be his will that mankind should gratify some of their inclinations ... not in the manner they themselves prefer, but in ... a way prescribed to them by authority; and, therefore, by the necessary conditions of the case, the same for all' (Mill 1977d, 265; 255-7, 278, 286). Absent from On Liberty is the thesis of middle-class money grubbing. Whether he still subscribed to that thesis Mill did not say. But he did in Liberty again remind his readers that majority tyranny is social in character, its operation depending on, not laws nor arbitrary fiats of government but (Mill 1977d, 219-24, 226-7, 241), 14 informal customs and mores imposed by opinion, and on the sanction of general disapprobation—being illthought of and illspoken of.15 13
14
15
In economics the situation is similar. In Political Economy (1965, 200), after contending that universal descriptive laws govern production of wealth, Mill departed from Ricardo to claim that distribution of wealth is according to rules that reflect 'the opinions and feelings of the ruling portion of the community' (italics added). Mill cannot be said to have altogether ruled out the possibility of democracy sliding into political tyranny. In the Autobiography (1981, 201) is a comment, somewhat out of character, about democracy 'degenerating into the only despotism of which in the modern world there is real danger—the absolute rule of the head of the executive over a congregation of isolated individuals, all equals but all slaves'. Straightaway, however, he added 'There was, indeed, no immediate peril from this source on the British side of the channel, where nine tenths of the internal business which elsewhere devolves on the government, was transacted by agencies independent of it'. It would be remiss not to note some of the relations between Marx and Engels' ideas of class and class tyranny and those of Mill. The dominant class in capitalist society Marx designated the 'bourgeoisie.'as distinct from the 'middle class'. The latter, for Man, was formed of petty bourgeoisie, strata between the principal classes of bourgeoisie and proletariat. Engels on the other hand interchanged the terms 'bourgeoisie' (in Marx's sense) and 'middle class'. The bourgeoisie was understood both by Engels and Marx to control the state and the formulation of culture, which powers it possesses by owning property. Bourgeoisie and proletariat are locked in struggle, and Marx and Engels (1974, 80) wrote in the Communist Manifesto of 'Society as a whole ... more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat'. According to Mill's concept of majority tyranny, as above, the middle class puts its impress on culture, dominates manufacture and commerce, and increasingly is prominent in government, suggesting similarities between his analysis and
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Representative Government: Working Class Tyranny Implied Considerations on Representative Government (1861) differs appreciably in its content from the foregoing works, examining political institutions much more extensively. Although in this book the expressions 'tyranny' or 'despotism' of the majority (masses) seldom appear, the concept of such tyranny is not difficult to discern.16 To reveal in Representative Government the substance of Mill's view of majority tyranny it is desirable to begin with his delineation of classes in modern society, particularly England. An economic-social distinction was drawn by Mill (1977g, 447; 405,442,479) between manual labourers (including 'petty tradesmen') and 'employers of labour' (including 'retired capitalists', inheritors of wealth, 'highly paid ... labourers (such as the professions) whose education and way of life assimilate them with the rich'). Mill (1977g, 448-9, 455ff, 487, 515, 519, 536) in this work also, and more obviously, defined social relations with reference to culture and educational attainment, employing the categories 'majority' or 'numerical majority' and 'minority' or 'minorities'. 'Minority' signified the 'instructed', and when Mill (1977g, 457) spoke of the pronounced tendency in modern society 'towards collective mediocrity' it was with reference to the majority. The majority/minority distinction in Representative Government stands out most prominently in chapter 7, devoted to the description and support of Thomas Hare's system of proportional representation for minorities and for placing in the legislature more representatives of superior sensibility and intellect. It would appear from these points that Representative Government orders society in two ways. The question is whether this work's employer/labourer ordering coincides with the majority/minority(s) one. Mill surely intended this. He (1977g, 448) wrote of 'the numerical majority ... being all composed of the same class', having (the previous page) drawn a line between the classes of manual 'labourers' and 'employers of labour'. He (1977g, 467-8,473) said or suggested that the first of these classes (labourers) would when enfranchised form the majority of the electorate, as it presently forms the social majority. He further suggested that the level of education among labourers is low. Writing of 'the numerical weight of the least educated class' Mill (1977g, 477 [italics added]; 468-9) meant 'manual labourers', a short while after mentioned by name. It is reasonable to infer that in Representative Government the instructed minority and the class of employers in the main comprise the same people. Further evidence for this is Mill's (1977g, 447) thought that the 'education and way of life' of professionals 'assimilate them with the rich', and his (1977g, 475) having defended plural voting thus: 'An employer of labour is on the average more
16
Marx and Engels'. The difference is that Mill in the present case regarded the labouring class as culturally allied with the middle class in opposition to individuals or minorities. Mill's second rendering of mass tyranny (to be considered), in which the labouring class is becoming the centre of gravity in social and political life, reflected his awareness of growing conflict between the middle and working classes on economic (and other) questions. Marx and Engels would have disputed Mill's centre-of-gravity claim but agreed with his polarisation claim. The idea is explicit (460 and 558) and implicit (458-9, 473, 515-6) in Representative Government.
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intelligent than a labourer; for he must labour with his head, and not solely with his hands'. Against this understanding of social categories in Representative Government (minority and employers essentially are the same group differently described) it may be said that employers without high education can hardly belong to the 'instructed' minority. Plausibility notwithstanding, the objection is inconsistent with the tenor of Representative Government, there being no recognition of the possibility of an 'uninstructed' middle class; which in truth is most surprising seeing this class had for years been a bete noire of Mill. His attitude to the middle class was now less unfavourable, his apprehension having moved to the labouring class. Representative Government reconstituted the idea of the social majority and in so doing it altered the concept of the tyranny of the majority. The majority in society and, it would appear, imminently in the electorate, Mill no longer saw as the middle class but as the labouring or working class. It was as defensive measures against the possible tyranny of this class that Mill supported such institutions as plural voting and proportional representation. This interpretation is best confirmed by examining the development of Mill's thinking on the subject. Over the years he depicted the labouring class as gaining independence and as becoming more combative. Indeed, at least as early as 1838, in the essay 'Bentham', Mill (1969, 107) wrote that 'the numerical majority of any society* consists of 'unskilled manual labourers'. But there is nothing to suggest he meant at this time that unskilled labourers form the socially tyrannical majority. Certainly 'De Tocqueville ... [II]' affirms that labourers are under the thumb of the middle class. The 'middle class in this country' Mill (1977c, 166) representatively wrote 'is as little in danger of being outstripped by the democracy below, as of being kept down by the aristocracy above; and ... there can be no difficulty for that class, aided as it would be by the rich ... in excluding the mass of mere manual labourers from any share in political rights'. Five years on, however, Mill's "The Claims of Labour' (1845) was a reflection of changed circumstances. The Chartist movement represented a watershed in the history of the working class, the 'first open' rupture in 'interest, feeling, and opinion' between it and 'the ruling classes'. Chartism demonstrated to Mill (1975, 369-70) the strides being made in working-class organisation, the conversion through technology (newspapers and railways) of 'physical' into 'moral and social' power. Gradually and tentatively there was taking shape in Mill's mind the idea of the labouring class forming in its own right the social majority, as he conceptually severed the relation between the labouring and the middle classes. Late in the decade (1848), in Principles of Political Economy, antagonism between these classes was recorded. Moving on to 'Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform' (1859), Mill (1977e, 327ff, 333) is found addressing the rising power of the working class, fearful that universal manhood suffrage would make this class the majority of the electorate. The upshot would be domination of Parliament by the uneducated, spelling danger to minorities. 'None are so unscrupulous, none so eager to clutch at whatever they have not and others have, as the uneducated in possession of power' (Mill 1977e, 327). Let the suffrage become more inclusive Mill (1977e, 328) proposed, with the proviso it be
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based on an educational qualification calculated to 'admit the best and exclude the worst of the working classes'. In another of Mill's articles from this time, 'Recent Writers on Reform' (1859), the educated were said to oppose universal suffrage on the grounds it would make the working class, not merely 'the strongest power' but, 'the sole power' and would be likely to produce 'a Legislature reflecting exclusively the opinions and preferences of the most ignorant class' (Mill 1977f, 363). It is seen that in the second half of the 1840s and through the 1850s Mill's labouring and middle classes if sometime allies, as suggested in On Liberty, were also (and increasingly) mutually hostile. Certain values and opinions they may share, but as employers and employed they are at loggerheads over the relative size of wages and profits (Mill 1977e, 333-4). Economic conflict is touched on in Representative Government. Rich and poor exist in all societies, minority and majority, with the division in modern societies taking the form of 'employers of labour' and 'labourers' (Mill 1977g, 447). 'Between these two classes, on many questions, there is complete opposition of apparent interest' (Mill 1977g, 442). Should the poor gain political power, the affluent would face the prospect of being bled dry by taxation. The drift of all this is that over some two decades of sporadic and rather discursive reflection on the social position of the labouring class, Mill noted it becoming more independent and powerful. The trend is summarised in Representative Government; his reinterpretation of the majority and, by implication, of the tyranny of the majority is more clearly identifiable there than in any of the other writings being discussed. The alliance between middle and working classes is over, the social majority is the working class itself. By what factors is this change in Mill's beliefs to be explained? Chartism's relevance has been noted, the 'first open' rupture between the working and 'ruling classes'. One also finds that Mill altered his conception of the middle class in a way that separated it educationally and culturally from the working class. No longer was the middle class only commercial as it appeared in, say, 'Civilization' in which after using 'masses' to designate middle and working classes Mill (1977b, 136; 125) proceeded by implication to exclude from that composite group 'intellectual classes and professions'. In contrast, the 'middle class' in Representative Government includes these well educated professionals. The middle class was thus altered in content and character from the commercial class simpliciter to the commercialeducated class. (In this regard Representative Government differs greatly from On Liberty.) Schumpeter (1986,552) remarked that classical economists never properly settled to their own satisfaction the location of professional workers in the class structure. Mill's difficulties on this score are apparent above, and also in Political Economy. Therein the 'professional' class was described as a 'saving' one (he may have had bankers in mind), which made it part of the capitalist class, supplying capital (Mill 1965, 170). But his explicit definition of the three main classes implied that professionals are labourers. The criterion of membership of the labouring class is mental or physical exertion which directly or indirectly is productive of 'utilities embodied in material objects' (Mill 1965, 49). Occupations cited by Mill as indirectly serving the production process include government officials, teachers, and medical practitioners. The labouring class (mental labourers
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in this case) also took in 'inventors of industrial processes' and scientific thinkers for, as regards the latter, many inventions are applications of 'theoretic discoveries' (Mill 1965, 42; 183-4). Unproductive professional labourers, on the other hand, including teachers of philosophy and actors, contribute nothing to the increase of material products, and incumbents of such roles work outside the 'industrial community'.17 A further factor in explaining Mill's redefinition of the majority was his belief, discernible in the political essays of 1859 and in Representative Government, that universal suffrage is imminent, whereas in the second half of the 1830s it appeared to him as lying in the far distant future. Chartism was likely to have contributed to this change also (Burns 1969, 292, 301-302, 314-7). As the largest social class, the labouring class with universal suffrage would form the majority in the electorate, providing the spectre of a new ruling class. My interpretation may appear vulnerable in two respects. If the labouring class had considerable social power, and was likely soon to become politically supreme, that conflicts with Mill's conditions of power (wealth, education, and the like). Quite so; but unless one were to say (falsely) that Mill denied the power of the labouring class was on the rise then the present difficulty lies in, not what I have been saying but, Mill's account of the acquisition of power. Next, it may appear to tell against my argument that On Liberty presents the middle class as playing a decisive part in the tyranny of the majority, whereas works contemporaneous with Liberty attest on my understanding to rising labouring class power. But this would be a problem only were I insisting that Mill produced his two renderings of the majority and of its tyranny in successive order. It is not my view, nor is it necessary to my argument, that Mill's understanding underwent a sudden shift or exhibited a clean break. To the contrary, the texts show the second interpretation formed in his mind gradually and fitfully, unsettling and eventually dislodging the other. Effective or Prospective? Did Mill take majority tyranny to be an accomplished fact?18 His theory of it was, I believe, at least so far as England is concerned, more predictive than descriptive. Reviewing the first part of Democracy in America Mill was non-committal on the accuracy of Tocqueville's assertion of a 'tyranny over opinion' in America. But even were Tocqueville correct about America, according to Mill (1977a, 83), the situation in Europe was so different the alleged tyranny's 'evils' would 'exist in a far inferior degree'. European societies have 'instructed' classes of learned individuals who, highly regarded and widely respected, prevent public opinion from becoming uniform and overbearing. Mill (1977a, 86) 'cannot' envisage a time in England 'when this grand security for the progressiveness of the human species will not exist'. 17
18
Mill in Political Economy, as in a number of his other works, employed the expression 'learned' class in distinction from the mass. The function of this class he described as 'cultivation of speculative knowledge', and it seems in this instance principally to consist of scientific researchers. But it is not, Mill went on to explain, a class in the strict sense. For many of its members are likely to be 'in a routine employment', research being unable to provide them with 'a subsistence'. So that the public might have full benefit of 'the services of scientific discoverers, and perhaps some other classes of savants' Mill (1965, 968-9) recommended awarding professorships, combining duties of research and teaching. Most commentators assume Mill was dealing with a problem existing and well developed. An exception is Thomas (198S, 104) who was unsure 'Whether' Mill's theory of mass tyranny was 'meant as prophecy or description'.
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The following year (1836), in 'Civilization', Mill was sure that the mass, crucially the middle class, had been gaining power at the expense of individuals. It had 'real [social] power' and before long was likely to take 'constitutional power' from the enervated 'higher classes' (Mill 1977b, 127-8). But these points notwithstanding, one finds no statement in 'Civilization' that tyranny of the majority exists in England nor any suggestion that it must. Mill's mood was of guarded optimism not despair. Were the higher classes revived in time tyranny would be averted. Those classes might achieve cultural authority over, and provide a counterpoise to, the masses. Approximately only one tenth of 'Democracy in America [II]' was given over by Mill (1977c, 175-9) to explicit coverage of the tyranny or 'despotism' of the majority. Initially neither asserting nor denying its existence, he (1977c, 175) described it as 'among the dangers of Democracy'. Paraphrasing Tocqueville, Mill noted that in principle the two main instruments of tyranny available to a majority are law and opinion. 'But in America, tyranny will seldom use the instrument of law, because there is in general no permanent class to be tyrannized over', to which he (1977c, 177-8) added a thought that seems to jar: if minorities are assertive 'majorities will be shy of provoking them'. He proceeded then to point up the real issue: 'The despotism, therefore, of the majority within the limits of civil life, though a real evil, does not appear to us to be a formidable one. The tyranny which we fear, and which M. de Tocqueville principally dreads, is of another kind*—a tyranny not over the body, but over the mind' (Mill 1977c, 178). Focused specifically on America, Mill noted that on every subject other than religion, on which by an accident of history the majority is relatively tolerant, when the majority has its mind made up hardly anyone has the courage to openly disagree. The evidence accumulated by Tocqueville left Mill in no doubt that the tyranny existed in America. But the European situation appeared differently to him. When the American public has formed an opinion on some matter, 'nobody dares (what everybody may venture upon in Europe ) to say anything disrespectful to the public, or derogatory to its opinions' (Mill 1977c, 178 [italics added]). Further on in the same essay, however, Mill gave conflicting assessments of the situation in England. Without exactly referring to the tyranny of the majority, it could not have been far from Mill's mind when he wrote that individuals in England 'are powerless in the face of the mass. 'The House of Lords ... [with] the richest and most powerful collection of persons in Europe,' increasingly comes 'under the yoke of bourgeois opinion ... Hardly anything now depends upon individuals, but all upon classes, and among classes mainly upon the middle class' (Mill 1977c, 194). But the situation was not beyond saving and Mill offered advice on how the commercial spirit, the root of the problem, might be arrested. He (1977c, 198) urged formation of 'a great social support for opinions and sentiments different from those of the mass', combining the classes of leisure, learning and agriculture. A couple of pages on, however, Mill's discussion of the tyranny became more measured, suggesting the problem was at worst incipient. The following hypothetical is illustrative: 'if the middle class are left to the mere habits and instincts of a commercial community, we shall have a "tyranny of the majority", not the less irksome because most of the tyrants may not be manual labourers' (Mill 1977c,
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200). The relevant argument in Mill's second review of Tocqueville is that in America a tyranny of opinion, as distinct from one of law, exists; whereas in England, middle class opinion is powerful but not as yet tyrannical. Several pages of On Liberty on which, directly addressing the subject, Mill might have been expected to assert the existence of majority tyranny if he believed it, there was no such affirmation (Mill 1977d, 220). On other pages, on which the expression 'tyranny of the majority' was not used but whose text plainly relates to the subject, Mill appeared both to predict and describe it, implying (plausibly enough) that the tyranny might emerge progressively. Tyranny, he suggested, is forming in England and may fully develop. The inclination of rulers and subjects to force their opinions on individuals is presently frustrated by insufficient power, but that power they will acquire and exercise 'unless a strong barrier of moral conviction can be raised' (Mill 1977d, 227). The extremes of 'legal persecution' may have ceased a generation ago yet England cannot be said to enjoy mental freedom, is perhaps less free than many societies with repressive governmental censorship. For the obloquy on those professing opinions of which society disapproves is heaped more heavily in England. Such 'tendencies of the times' as intolerance of public opinion to any display of individuality, and a movement for improving people's morality, 'cause the public to be more disposed than at most former periods to prescribe general rules of conduct, and endeavour to make every one conform to the approved standard' (Mill 1977d, 271). Mill made no explicit mention in this instance of the tyranny of the majority, but he (1977d, 275 [italics added]) went on to suggest it is embryonic in England: 'If the claims of Individuality are ever to be asserted, the time is now, while much is still wanting to complete the enforced assimilation. It is only in the earlier stages that any stand can be successfully made against the encroachment'. Representative Government presents the rich in England as politically ascendant over the social majority, which is to say the labouring class. Will this continue? Mill was doubtful. Already the United States was under the 'collective despotism' of the 'numerical majority' (Mill 1977g, 460). Mill suggested it need not, and policies in this work as in several of his other works were conceived in the hope that it would not, be the fate of England, whose 'democracy' (the labouring class majority) 'would as yet be content with protection against the class legislation of others, without claiming the power to exercise it in their turn' (Mill 1977g, 460). This restated the difference, to which Mill (1977g, 460, 471; 1977c, 167,172) had over many years characteristically pointed, between American politics in thrall to the social majority, and English politics which, while potentially vulnerable, has not succumbed. The modes of suffrage, representation, legislation, etc in Representative Government are so many instruments for preventing class despotism.19 It was working class domination, by the little (or un) educated, 20 that Mill in
19
Grouping of constituencies, for example, Mill (1977g, 477; 460) proffered to prevent 'the labouring class from becoming preponderant in Parliament'. Mill in Representative Government (477-80) interchanged the expressions majority and working class, and he viewed these people as poorly educated. In the same work the threat of its class legislation is often suggested (446-8, 459, 473, 478, 515-6). Fear of working-class domination seems to lie behind Mill's remark in the Autobiography (239) that he and Harriet 'were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and
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Representative Government feared. While he supported suffrage for all adults other than paupers, bankrupts, illiterates and the insane, Mill also promoted plural voting as a way of assigning 'to education, as such, the degree of superior influence due to it, and sufficient as a counterpoise to the numerical weight of the least educated [labouring] class' (Mill 1977g, 477 [italics added]). Additional to, even more important than, plurality of votes was Hare's machinery for 'the proportional representation of all minorities' (Mill 1977g, 477). Broadly speaking, the works above suggest Mill saw majority tyranny in England as at most in infancy, but with conditions conducive to its growth. He diagnosed the condition and prescribed strong palliatives.
Epilogue As Mill believed the achievements and the progress of modern society were threatened by mass tyranny, appreciation of his political thought requires conversance with what he had to say about this tyranny. The topic, as shown, contains complexities to which scholars have been oblivious. Mill did not operate with a single conception of the tyranny, but saw it in two very different lights. Such studies as 'Civilization', 'De Tocqueville ... [II]', and On Liberty depict a tyranny at the centre of which stands the middle class, its 'commercial spirit' ubiquitous. Given the historical association between liberalism and the middle class, Mill's assertion of a tyranny of this class is unexpected. That Mill's notion of middle class tyranny has gone unnoted may also owe to its surface implausibility: the middle class is not the majority of society. But the problem dissolves once it is recognised that to this class Mill saw the labouring classes as allied and subordinate. Considerations on Representative Government expresses Mill's second concept of social tyranny, focused on the labouring classes. The concept's roots extend back to his writings of the late 1840s, to Chartism and the class conflict it dramatically represented. In the process of conveying new content to the idea of class tyranny, Mill redefined the middle class from commercial class simpliciter to a composite of the commercial and the educated. A further source of difficulty is whether Mill was calling for overthrow of existing tyranny(s) or aiming at prevention. It has been found he distinguished the situation in England from that in the United States. Almost homogeneously middle class, the United States had succumbed to majority tyranny, while in England its development had been greatly impeded. Reviewing the first part of Democracy in America, Mill put this down to the existence in England of an 'instructed class'. 'Civilization' suggested mass tyranny could be forestalled by a revival of the 'higher classes,' while the second 'De Tocqueville' review made prevention conditional upon a grand alliance of the classes of leisure, learning, and agriculture. Liberty presented measures for protection of individuality, and Representative Government offered proportional representation and plural voting to protect minorities against labouringclass domination. Common to all these works was the concern of Mill to stem the development of mass tyranny in England. especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass'. On the same page he referred to the 'labouring masses' as 'the uncultivated herd'.
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