The Multifaceted Politics of John Stuart Mill

Abstract

This review essay challenges interpretations of John Stuart Mill’s political philosophy expressed by Frederick Rosen in Mill, going beyond works Rosen examines to take into account Mill’s early works and nineteenth-century political discussions with which Mill was familiar and engaged. Five concepts that Rosen discusses are challenged: Mill’s attitude toward the possibility of tyranny by the majority (a notion Rosen misrepresents); his stance toward democracy (which must be considered in light of Mill’s own definition and understanding of the term, not later notions); the accusation that Mill was a socialist (which, in his own day, was often synonymous with being in favor of democracy); Mill’s fear of a dictatorship by the proletariat (for which, despite Rosen’s claims, no evidence exists in Mill’s writings); and his views on monoculturalism (which are difficult to discern because the notion is a contemporary issue of which Mill would have been ignorant). Despite Rosen’s shortcomings, however, his book is considered a reasoned and balanced contribution to Mill scholarship.