Race, Liberalism, and Economics

John Stuart Mill on Race, Liberty, and Markets

John Stuart Mill on Race, Liberty, and Markets Falguni A. Sheth In the second chapter in this volume, David Levy and Sandra Peart consider classical economics and its revival by the Chicago school and suggest that the racism and proslavery positions promulgated by such writers as Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin are closely linked to their anti-free-market -or as Levy and Peart call it, paternalist-attitudes. In opposition to Carlyle and Ruskin stands classical political economist John Stuart Mill, whose antiracism and antislavery positions, suggest Levy and Peart, lie in his free-market economics. They imply that the distinction between Mill and Carlyle applies to comparisons of their modem-day inheritors. They see Chicago economists as the descendants of Mill, modem-day liberals as the successors of Carlyle and Ruskin. In this chapter, I suggest that John Stuart Mill's noted attitudes regarding blacks and political emancipation lie in a different, perhaps more fundamental set of philosophical conceptions than those that Peart and Levy ascribe to free-market advocates generally. These conceptions have to do with his views on human nature and on the value of tradition, hierarchy, and customs. To the extent that there is a consistency between Mill's advocacy offree markets, his antiracism (at least on the issue of slavery), and his antisexism (at least with regard to English women), it emerges from certain key a priori philosophical positions that he has articulated in his writings, not from his economic views alone. Specifically, I suggest that Mill's ability to argue in favor of the emanci100 John Stuart Mill on Race, Liberty, and Markets 101 pation of politically oppressed groups, such as blacks and women, stems from four philosophical positions: first, his anti-innatist views of human nature {which he appears to borrow from his father, James Mill, and from Jeremy Bentham}; second, his avowedly steadfast resistance to the authority of nature, law, tradition, or custom in the sphere of politics and in society generally as a way of restraining or directing the actions of human beings; third, the telos of happiness and moral perfectibility-on the levels of both individual and societal development-toward which both his utilitarian philosophy and his writings on freedom strive;I and fourth, his cautious advocacy of the role of free markets as vehicles for human liberation and the emancipation of human potential, which is linked closely to the careful management of those markets to maximize the ability of human beings to develop themselves and to advance in society. It is only to the degree that economists accept these four propositions that they can see themselves as descendants of Mill. The Context of the Carlyle-Mill Debate on the "Negro Question" Let me set the context for the origins of this specific philosophical conflict between Carlyle and Mill. Thomas Carlyle's "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question," first printed in Fraser's Magazine in December 1849, addresses the stark lack of labor supply in the British colony of Demerara in harvesting spices, sugarcane, and other local island crops. Carlyle suggests that the recently emancipated blacks on the island had been shirking their God-mandated duty by refusing to attend to the necessary task of harvesting. The framework that Carlyle constructs, which I shall address shortly, leads him to the conclusion that if these emancipated blacks would not engage in their duty voluntarily, they should be coerced into working. They must, insists Carlyle, be forced to submit to a master, either as servant or as slave. The philosophical tenets, if we may call them that, from which Carlyle is led to his conclusion are as follows: Wise men understand that they must submit to a Law ofNature, which has been handed down to them by their Master. This law of nature compels them to work. It is their duty as wise men to engage in the business of accomplishing the tasks ofharvesting the crops of the colonies. Only wise men can grasp the complex relationship of 102 RACE. LIBERALISM. AND ECONOMICS supply and demand, according to which plantation owners who need their crops to be harvested will find a supply of labor to accommodate that demand. Carlyle (1849, 101) insists that only truly rational-wise-human beings are capable of responding properly to the laws of supply and demand, because they have several needs that constrain their actions into conformity with those laws. The laws of supply and...