{"id":345979,"date":"2018-01-30T05:32:31","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T04:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-trouble-with-john-stuart-mill\/"},"modified":"2018-01-30T05:32:31","modified_gmt":"2018-01-30T04:32:31","slug":"the-trouble-with-john-stuart-mill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-trouble-with-john-stuart-mill\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trouble With John Stuart Mill"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t                            \t<!-- S3 Cache --><!-- S3:S3:Non-Original -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Much of the confusion prevailing in the historical study of liberalism can be traced to John Stuart Mill, who occupies a vastly inflated position in the conception of liberalism entertained by English-speaking peoples.\u00a0This \u201csaint of rationalism\u201d is responsible for key distortions in the liberal doctrine on a number of fronts.\u00a0In economics, Mill\u2019s opinion that \u201cthe principle of individual liberty is not involved in the doctrine of free trade,\u201d provided ammunition for the protectionist arsenal, and accepted and even elaborated socialist arguments (Mill 1977: p. 293; Mises 1978a: p. 195; Raeder 2002: p. 357 n. 76 and p. 374 n. 23; and especially Rothbard 1995 2: pp. 277\u201385).<\/p>\n<p>Mill rejected the liberal notion of the long-run harmony of the interests of all social classes, including entrepreneurs and workers, on the grounds that \u201cto say that they have same interest \u2026 is to say that it is the same thing to a person\u2019s interest whether a sum of money belongs to him or to someone else\u201d (Ashcraft 1989: p. 114). Following that odd and shortsighted reasoning would reveal a very large number of hitherto unsuspected conflicts of interest in society (e.g., between any two people who passed each other in the street). Indeed, in arguing that\u00a0<em>anti<\/em>capitalism is one of the hallmarks of liberalism, Alan Ryan (1993: p. 302) invokes none other than John Stuart Mill, who wrote (1965: p. 209), \u201cThe generality of laborers in this and most other countries have as little choice of occupation and freedom of locomotion \u2026 as they could \u2026 on any system short of actual slavery\u201d \u2014 this at a time when English and other \u201cserfs\u201d were migrating in the millions to the towns and cities and even to foreign lands.<\/p>\n<p>In international affairs, Mill&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2018\/01\/ralph-raico\/john-stuart-mill-and-the-new-liberalism\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Much of the confusion prevailing in the historical study of liberalism can be traced to John Stuart Mill, who occupies a vastly inflated position in the conception of liberalism entertained by English-speaking peoples.\u00a0This \u201csaint of rationalism\u201d is responsible for key distortions in the liberal doctrine on a number of fronts.\u00a0In economics, Mill\u2019s opinion that \u201cthe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-345979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}