Given John Stuart Mill’s reputation as a leading liberal thinker, one might expect his unfinished Chapters on Socialism to serve as an efficient apology of capitalism against 19th-century socialist critiques. However, such expectations are soon met with disappointment. His counterarguments, defending the principle of competition and the promises of progress, pale in comparison to the striking images of exploitation and suffering that Mill himself evokes in his extensive quotes of various Saint-Simonists, Fourierists and other so-called Utopian Socialists. Already in the first quote, Louis Blanc’s description of the present state of affairs rings powerfully through the ages:
“Competition is for the people a system of extermination. Is the poor man a member of society, or an enemy to it? We ask for an answer.”
“All around him he finds the soil preoccupied. Can he cultivate the earth for himself? No; for the right of the first occupant has become a right of property. Can he gather the fruits which the hand of God ripens on the path of man? No; for like the soil, the fruits have been appropriated. Can he hunt or fish? No; for that is a right which is dependent upon the government. Can he draw water from a spring enclosed in a field? No; for the proprietor of the field is, in virtue of his right to the field, proprietor of the fountain. Can he, dying of hunger and thirst, stretch out his hands for the charity of his fellow creatures? No; for there are laws against begging. Can he, exhausted by fatigue and without a refuge, lie down to sleep upon the pavement of the streets? No; for there are laws against vagabondage. Can he, flying from the cruel native land where everything is denied him, seek the means of living far from the place where life was given him? No; for it is not permitted to change your country except on certain conditions which the poor man cannot fulfill. What then, can the unhappy man do? He will say, ‘I have hands to work with, I have intelligence, I have youth, I have strength; take all this, and in return give me a morsel of bread.’ This is what the working men do say. But even here the poor man may be answered, ‘I have no work to give you.’ What is he to do then?” (cited in 29-301placeholder)
In the second chapter of the Chapters, Mill allows the socialists to speak without comment: already we can see that this text is not supposed to be a mere apology in the first place. Nevertheless, while he begins the third chapter with an appreciation of the case that the socialists make against the current order of things, he immediately counters: “the strongest case is susceptible of exaggeration; and it will have been evident to many readers, even from the passages I have quoted, that such exaggeration is not wanting in the representations of the ablest and most candid Socialists” (63). He still considered capitalism to be the preferable option.2placeholder Such an argument might not convince those who see in Louis Blanc’s words not a sorriness about material conditions, whose evocation may or may not be exaggerated, but a critique of a general state of things, in which a vast majority of peoples’ means of survival are “appropriated” leading to a general state of dependence. Misery is but a result of this act of appropriation. What makes the Chapters on Socialism interesting is not the case that Mill makes against socialism; his critique of Utopian Socialism feels underdeveloped and superficial, which is certainly due to Mill’s untimely death. As a defense of capitalism, the text falls flat. But what already shines clearly through the unfinished text is Mill’s intention; the way he lets the socialists make their case in the second chapter is telling. It is more plausible to view Chapters on Socialism as an assessment of the political ideas that proliferated in early 19th-century Europe – an endeavor fitting for Mill, who, for better or worse, considered himself a European thinker. While Mill sought to influence this evaluation, he was equally willing to accept an outcome in which the scales tipped the other way, favoring a cooperative society without private property.3placeholder Such an evaluative process of political ideas remains relevant to us today, as any decision it yields benefits from being well-informed.
The valorisation of such processes of evaluation is in fact central to Mill’s political theory. In On Liberty, it is in the third chapter, “Of Individuality, as one of the Elements of Well-Being”, that he elaborates the preparation that is necessary to allow individuals to overcome an automated and conformist relation to social customs, to public opinion. For democracy to overcome its natural, ‘automatic’ tendencies towards mediocrity and general conformism, in which the political sphere is reduced to the endless discussion between subjective and flaky “sentiments”, it needs to provide the conditions for the formation of well-developed individuals, who are all capable of utilising their higher capacities of choice: “The human faculties of perception, judgement, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used” (OL 57-58). Only through cultivation can one become a political subject, as they are needed for a ‘healthy’ democracy; but what is cultivated is precisely this capacity of evaluation, the capacity of choosing deliberately between various options. That way, public opinion will no longer be something that “compresses” the individual into a mediocre being,4placeholder it will rather result from a passionate discourse between autonomous beings that all engage in various “experiments of living”.5placeholder This is why, for Mill, political philosophy is necessarily tied to a moral philosophy, as it is the social world that must provide the individual with the capacities that it needs in order to become a political subject. Political activity presupposes that individuals are capable of choosing autonomously, which in turn presupposes that the faculties that permit such choices are well-developed. What the so-called “harm principle” is supposed to establish, are the terms of this evaluation: an opinion can only be permitted to take effect in social and public life, if it assures an uncrossable “sphere of liberty”.6placeholder The validity of this principle is not of interest to us here; what connects On Liberty to the Chapters on Socialism is the attempt to establish such terms of evaluation. What Mill’s utilitarianism assures is the orientation of such evaluations towards individual well-being, which knows no exceptions:
“His version of utilitarianism promises to accommodate rights – both negative rights to particular liberties and to protection from harms and positive rights to the conditions of basic well-being. These positive and negative conditions are necessary to the realization of dominant goods, namely, the exercise of deliberative capacities” (Brink 1992: 103).
It is therefore not a problem that Mill’s case for capitalism in the Chapters on Socialism is unconvincing; the value of this text lies not in this, but rather in the development of the conditions for evaluating political ideas (and, as before, with the perspective of general well-being in mind). The search for such ‘terms and conditions’ is of vital importance for any society that pretends to be democratic in any way whatsoever. The 19th century was indeed a historical moment, as such a choice between political and economic systems, with the workers’ movement being in full force, was a dominant question in the political discourse of the time. Any political outline for the future that would appeal to the masses – the characteristic phenomenon of modernity, as Mill concurs7placeholder –, that would sound generally convincing, risked being put into action, resulting in fundamentally changed social and political conditions. Nevertheless, the interest in such an evaluation is not merely historical. In our latest but not last crisis of capitalism, caught up in a vortex of perpetual ‘enshittification’, the time might be particularly ripe to return to such questions. When the masses, even when they don’t dare marching in the streets, demand change, as the present conditions, unable to guarantee general well-being, become unbearable, and such change is denied, they will push towards any change whatsoever: hence the ‘foolish’ and often ridiculed decisions of various democratic electorates to fall prey to right populist rhetoric. While a real, economic improvement of general well-being is indeed unlikely to be expected from such shifts towards the (far) right, what is important to grasp is the frustration and desperation that result from an unbearable situation of dependence and humiliation, as the conditions on the labour market deteriorate. The case of the socialists, presented in the second of the Chapters on Socialism, uncommented as Mill left it, still stands. The question of the evaluation of political ideas has therefore lost nothing of its topicality.
If Mill, in his time, could impartially dismiss the descriptions of figures like Louis Blanc as “exaggerations,” if he still hoped capitalism would ultimately prove the preferable system, and if he envisioned a future in which competition and private property could resolve contradictions and alleviate the social ills of an undignified existence, we must also acknowledge that capitalism once carried such a promise. Mill considered it possible that it would be capable of establishing the conditions of general well-being; in this sense, his perspective into the future can be rightfully called utopian. What he thus could find in capitalism was such an utopian promise, which would render the accusation of the socialists mute. In that sense, the failure of capitalism to fulfil the promises that Mill could genuinely project into the future in his defense of the principle of competition8placeholder– foreseeing that competition would itself transform into a superior form of cooperation9placeholder – ought to be measured precisely according to the terms of the evaluation that he proposes to develop in the Chapters. It is important to emphasise this failure of historical proportions, of a historical project, whose future Mill depicted as more desirable than the utopian images of the socialists, in a time where we are confronted with it as undeniable evidence.
Let us turn towards the ‘terms and conditions’ of the evaluation of political ideas as he presents them at the beginning of the second chapter of the Chapters. There, he presents the grounds on which the socialists will make their case against capitalism. These terms of evaluation, providing the basis of the attack of the socialists, might be the most powerful passages Mill has ever written:
“So in the economy of society; if there be any who suffer physical privation or moral degradation, whose bodily necessities are either not satisfied of satisfied in a manner which only brutish creatures can be content with, this, though not necessarily the crime of society, is pro tanto a failure of the social arrangements. And to assert as a mitigation of the evil that those who thus suffer are the weaker members of the community morally or physically, is to add insult to misfortune. Is weakness a justification of suffering? Is it not, on the contrary, an irresistible claim upon every human being for protection against suffering? If the mind and feelings of the prosperous were in a right state, would they accept their prosperity if for the sake of it even one person near them was, for any other cause than voluntary fault, excluded from obtaining a desirable existence?” (22-23).
The terms of evaluation of a “social arrangement” are thus tied to its capacity of overcoming a state in which human beings “suffer physical privation or moral degradation”; uncapable of assuring the general well-being of individuals, materially, but also by denying them the possibility to develop and exercise their higher faculties, a “social arrangement” is in itself to be considered a failure. This judgement does not only befall Mill’s present, but also our time, as such conditions of general dignity are absent in any capitalist society on the national or international level. Our time of globalised exploitation is, as a whole, to be considered a failure. Mill continues, presenting further indications of failure:
“Even the idle, reckless and ill-conducted poor, those who are said with most justice to have themselves to blame for their condition, often undergo much more and severer labor, not only than those who are born to pecuniary independence, but than almost any of the more highly remunerated of those who earn their subsistence; and even the inadequate self-control exercised by the industrious poor costs them more sacrifice and more effort than is almost ever required from the more favored members of society. The very idea of distributive justice, or of any proportionality between success and merit, or between success and exertion, is in the present state of society so manifestly chimerical as to be relegated to the regions of romance” (23-24).
Again, we can state that such conditions keep inhibititing the general conditions of well-being to these days. In our time, just as it was in Mill’s, it is not the individual itself that, through a cultivation of its higher capacities, determines the conditions of its life, but pre-individual forces that impedes its development:
“The most powerful of all the determining circumstances is birth. The great, majority are what they were born to be. Some are born rich without work, others are born to a position in which they can become rich by work, the great majority are born to hard work and poverty throughout life, numbers to indigence. Next to birth the chief cause of success in life is accident and opportunity. When a person not born to riches succeeds in acquiring them, his own industry and dexterity have generally contributed to the result; but industry and dexterity would not have sufficed unless there had been also a concurrence of occasions and chances which falls to the lot of only a small number. […] These evils, then—great poverty and, that poverty very little connected with desert—are the first grand failure of the existing arrangements of society” (24-25).
When individual action is disconnected from the life it shapes, and when the development of higher capacities—essential for the emergence of a democratic political subject – is denied to the majority, a social arrangement has unequivocally failed. It is not in a crisis, in a temporary state of corruption; it is illegitimate, having lost its perspective towards general well-being. What results is a general state of injustice:
“Under the present system hardly any one can gain except by the loss or disappointment of one or of many others. In a well constituted community everyone would be a gainer by every other person’s successful exertions; while now we gain by each other’s loss and lose by each other’s gain, and our greatest gains come from the worst sources of all, from death, the death of those who are nearest and should be dearest to us. In its purely economical operation the principle of individual competition receives as unqualified condemnation from the social reformers as in its moral” (27).
We can see that contrary to mere apologists of the capitalist system, Mill is willing to evaluate the socialists’ attack on just terms – considering that he indeed admired and appreciated Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, and the likes. If he concludes nevertheless that it is capitalism that will be capable of overcoming these evils, it is on these grounds: that it will establish a “social arrangement” in which material well-being and social status are tied to individual effort, which, as Mill argues in On Liberty, will be different considering the variety of temperaments, of “character.”10placeholder Consequently, in affectively elaborating the terms of evaluation of political ideas in the Chapters, he agrees with the socialists in the condemnation of his own present “social arrangements” as a failure. What he trusted in were the motors of capitalism – competition and private property – to fulfil these conditions at some point in the future. It is important to note that while Mill admits that the earlier stages of capitalism of primitive accumulation have not only perpetuated, but also exacerbated social and economic inequalities, he could still believe genuinely that future developments would undo them, and that the forces of progress, permitting the individuals’ opinions to compete on the ‘market of ideas’, would resolve the contradictions.
The realization of such a ‘cure’ for democracy, as Mill had already outlined in On Liberty, depends on liberal capitalism’s ability to cultivate autonomous individuals until emancipation reaches a critical mass. Only then would representative democracy cease to be merely an expression of public opinion that reduces citizens to mediocrity – an opinion easily manipulated by a self-serving elite – and instead become a political community guided and inspired by enlightened reformers.11placeholder In this vision, the majority, through voting, would actively develop their higher capacities for deliberation and free choice, ultimately enhancing general well-being. However, these promises remain unfulfilled to this day. The public media, which Mill saw as a key arena for emancipated political discourse, has long since deteriorated into a mouthpiece for corporate interests. Even more so, it has become more and more difficult to be convinced that we are merely ‘not there yet’, that we need one or two crises more, one last war before the just order will establish itself, where the social evils will finally be eradicated. It might thus be a good moment to remember that in its initial phases, capitalism did promise a utopia, something that was more desirable, better, more exciting than a society based on cooperation and mutual help.
The evidence of such preference for capitalism when it comes to choosing political ideas and making them a reality ought to be called into question; if there is any hope in democracy for the future, it is in its capacity to publicly return to a genuine evaluation of “experiments of living”, and in this sense to reassert collectively the terms of such an evaluation. It is clear that we can place no hope in either the institutions or corporate media. The mere act of voting is not sufficient; as Mill insists, it’s not enough that people choose, they need to be capable of choosing deliberately and freely. Still, the perpetual tendency towards precarity, the constant diminution of ‘purchasing power’, as it has has solidified in the last few decades of capitalist hegemony over the globe, together with a generalised sense of hopelessness for the future, can not keep us in a state of crushing anxiety.
Indeed, Mill was far from naïve in the belief that democracy would resolve such problems automatically. While he insists in On Liberty that the emergence of democracy was indeed a step forward from the despotic conditions, its initial form was that of a stillbirth.12placeholder The rule of the masses that it brought forth resulted in a rule of custom, of the mediocrity of taste and opinion, as the new social formation came along with new forms of oppression. Naturally, he asserts, democracy tends towards a state where individuals become more and more alike, as society nurtures a temperance of temperament, which dampens individual initiative.13placeholder As individuals make fewer and fewer choices, guided by the general opinion, their higher capacities become atrophied. Individuality expresses itself through choice, which is a training of the faculties. But choice is a break of habit, an “eccentricity”.14placeholder In that sense, the ‘healing’ of democracy needs to pass through a transformation of reflexive sentiments into rational choices, which implies a different relation to customs and our social being. In that sense, On Liberty can well be understood as a symptomatology of democracy and of modern life.
Mill’s symptomatology of modern life is tied to the phenomenon of the masses, the experience of mass society. In classic liberal fashion, Mill denies the individuality of the masses. The masses are amorphous and thus mediocre; it’s their primary characteristic.15placeholder The mass individual does not choose; that was also the conclusion of Gustave le Bon. In that sense, while Mill is a convinced democrat on sensible grounds – his is an affective utilitarianism oriented towards general well-being – he cautiously asserts that it is an aristocracy of “strong characters” that will lead the way without coercing anyone to follow,16placeholder even though, in the desolate present condition, it might well be necessary to put this process into operation by force.17placeholder Membership in this new elite would not be assigned by birth privileges – which, as we have seen, he denies – but result from individual initiative, and which therefore is open to everyone who decides to be a reformer or an “eccentric”. As Mill asserts in On Liberty, democracy can heal only if it ceases to be a mass society, which has automated its choices, delegated them to others. Mill ties superior individuality to initiative, a strong temperament, an affective nature, eager to tackle current injustices. That capitalism has not given birth to such an elite is more than obvious; the meritocracy defended by Mill is far from the one that has imposed itself in our present. Democracy as meritocracy was supposed to surpass its ‘sick’ state, in which it is reduced to a state of mediocrity. One may find Mill’s hope for an enlightened elite to break through the moulds of habit and educate the masses to use their higher capacities more or less convincing; but what is important to us here is his faith in capitalism’s capacities (and willingness) to initiate such an orientation towards general well-being and thus overcome the “failure” of the current “social arrangements”. What he reminds us of is that the value of the representatives of democracy are to be judged on these grounds, their efforts to rid society of its evils; reducing poverty, improving general living standards, permitting humans to live a dignified life. If the leaders don’t promise a general improvement for everyone, they have simply failed. Democratic activity, which Mill didn’t reduce to the mere occasional vote, which effectuates itself in public discussion, needs grounds of evaluations, as Mill presents them in his powerful passages in the Chapters on Socialism cited above. If capitalism has proven incapable of fulfilling such promises, of giving us a better world than one built on cooperation and mutual help, then we ought at least be able to discuss the situation and democratically choose other ways of handling things.
If we understand and accept that Mill wrote the terms of evaluation in the Chapters on Socialism as a defender of capitalism, and if we understand equally that Mill was genuine in his belief that the future of capitalism promises such an utopian order where poverty and injustice are eradicated, we see ourselves confronted with the fact that there once was a promise in capitalism that could be genuinely appealing to genuine social reformers at some point. The mechanisms Mill regarded as instruments of general improvement have revealed their true nature to us today, as we stumble headlong into a global climate catastrophe amid rising global rearmament. Capitalism has not fulfilled Mill’s promises – and it seems increasingly unlikely that it ever will. Mill’s strongest words, defining the criteria for evaluating political ideas, now strike us as utopian – in the nowadays conventional sense of the term, as mere wishful thinking. Yet, once the ruling class’s utopia is exposed as empty ideology – its promises of a dignified life left unfulfilled – the need becomes urgent to open our eyes and ears to other utopias and new promises, however improbable they may currently seem. Is a better life possible? Really? Could we actually do better? We should be all ears.
Works Cited
Brink, David O. “Mill’s Deliberative Utilitarianism”, in Philosophy & Public Affairs, Winter, 1992, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp.
67-103.
Harris, Abram L. “John Stuart Mill’s Theory of Progress” in Ethics, Vol. 66, No. 3 (April 1956), pp. 157-175.
Levin, Michael. “John Stuart Mill: A Liberal Looks at Utopian Socialism in the Years of Revolution 1848-9”, in Utopian Studies, 2003, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2003), pp. 68-82.
Mill, John Stuart. Chapters on Socialism (The Floating Press, 2009).
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty, Utilitarianism, and Other Essays (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2015) [= OL].
Verburg, Rudi. “John Stuart Mill’s Political Economy: Educational Means to Moral Progress”, in Review of Social Economy, Vol. 64, No. 2 (June 2006), pp. 225-246.
In the following, quotes without further indications are from John Stuart Mill. Chapters on Socialism (The Floating Press: 2009).
“Mill hovered on the brink of utopian socialism but, ultimately, drew back and remained confined to what might be called the inner radicalism of liberalism and utilitarianism rather than cross over to the more fringe and extreme positions of the utopian socialists. Yet it is to his credit that he gave them a fair hearing, a task that became more topical as the revolutions of 1848-9 brought their ideas into greater prominence” (Levin 2003: 78).
“From one perspective Mill as a liberal would presumably be opposed to any kind of socialism; but from the standpoint adopted here, it was precisely Mill’s liberalism which made him genuinely, and admirably, open-minded concerning any freely undertaken experiments on how life might be improved and advanced” (Levin 2003: 68).
“In these days […] much has actually been effected in the way of increased regularity of conduct, and discouragement of excesses; and there is a philanthropic spirit abroad, for the exercise of which there is no more inviting field than the moral and prudential improvement of our fellow creatures. These tendencies of the times 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. And that standard, express or tacit, is to desire nothing strongly. Its ideal of character is to be without any marked character; to maim by compression, like a Chinese lady’s foot, every part of human nature which stands out prominently, and tends to make the person markedly dissimilar in outline to commonplace humanity” (OL 68).
“As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them” (OL 56).
“And men range themselves on one or the other side in any particular case, according to this general direction of their sentiments; or according to the degree of interest which they feel in the particular thing which it is proposed that the government should do, or according to the belief they entertain that the government would, or would not, do it in the manner they prefer; but very rarely on account of any opinion to which they consistently adhere, as to what things are fit to be done by a government. And it seems to me that in consequence of this absence of rule or principle, one side is at present as often wrong as the other; the interference of government is, with about equal frequency, improperly invoked and improperly condemned” (OL 12).
“At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world. The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses” (OL 65).
“Socialists, as we said in our quotation from M. Louis Blanc, are reduced to affirm that the low prices of commodities produced by competition are delusive, and lead in the end to higher prices than before, because when the richest competitor has got rid of all his rivals, he commands the market and can demand any price he pleases. Now, the commonest experience shows that this state of things, under really free competition, is wholly imaginary. The richest competitor neither does nor can get rid of all his rivals, and establish himself in exclusive possession of the market; and it is not the fact that any important branch of industry or commerce formerly divided among many has become, or shows any tendency to become, the monopoly of a few” (69).
Mill’s sympathy for cooperatives needs to be emphasised at this point, as he believed that they would become more common in the future: “But there is a far more complete remedy than piece-work for the disadvantages of hired labor, viz: what is now called industrial partnership—the admission of the whole body of laborers to a participation in the profits, by distributing among all who share in the work, in the form of a percentage on their earnings, the whole or a fixed portion of the gains after a certain remuneration has been allowed to the capitalist. This plan has been found of admirable efficacy, both in this country and abroad. It has enlisted the sentiments of the workmen employed on the side of the most careful regard by all of them to the general interest of the concern; and by its joint effect in promoting zealous exertion, and checking waste, it has very materially increased the remuneration of every description of labor ill the concerns in which it has been adopted. It is evident that this system admits of indefinite extension and of an indefinite increase in the share of profits assigned to the laborers, short of that which would leave to the managers less than the needful degree of personal interest in the success of the concern. It is even likely that when such arrangements become common, many of these concerns would at some period or another, on the death or retirement of the chiefs, pass by arrangement into the state of purely coöperative associations” (97-98). Important in that regard is that Mill considered himself in his later life to be a “’qualified’ socialist”, sympathising with such arrangements: “This ideal of co-operative production, derived from Owen, the St. Simonians, and Fourier, was to be brought about not by acts of congresses and parliaments but by voluntary arrangements, probably, at first, between the employer-owners and the workers and, eventually, among the workers themselves” (Harris 1956: 158). It is still nevertheless clear that for Mill, the generalisation of cooperative associations would result from a reform of capitalism on the grounds of the principle of competition.
“Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable” (OL 67).
“The first service which originality has to render then, is that of opening their eyes: which being once fully done, they would have a chance of being themselves original“ (OL 64).
“In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid, to real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind” (OL 64) – “No government by a democracy or a numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts or in the opinions, qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters, ever did or could rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the sovereign” (ibid. 65).
“The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they consequently do not understand those who have, and class all such with the wild and intemperate whom they are accustomed to look down upon“ (OL 68).
“In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time“ (OL 66).
“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” (OL 65).
“I am not countenancing the sort of ‘hero-worship’ which applauds the strong man of genius for forcibly seizing on the government of the world and making it do his bidding in spite of itself. All he can claim is, freedom to point out the way. The power of compelling others into it, is not only inconsistent with the freedom and development of all the rest, but corrupting to the strong man himself” (OL 65).
“Education, rules of other-regarding conduct and the cultivation of sentiments by way of social pressures and institutional arrangements aiming at calculated self-interest should set off this process of moralization, encouraging the growth of beneficial habits in individuals up to the level at which the individual takes control of this process of development” (Verburg 2006: 235).