A utopian radical

Modern Age, Wntr-Spring, 2004 by Barry Alan Shain

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

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

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