John Stuart Mill, the great liberal thinker of 19th century Britain, is best known for his influential discourses on liberty and utilitarianism. But how relevant is he to our own age? David Marquand opines in the New Statesman.
There is no doubt that Mill was on the right (in other words, left) side in most of the great political battles of his time ... Social democrats of our day have much to learn from some of his less familiar writings. His long review of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, in which he insisted that strong local democracy was a precondition for democracy at the national level and emphasised the need for a diverse civil society, rich in what would now be called "social capital", resonates as powerfully today as it did when he wrote it. His insight that democratic citizenship is a practice, which has to be learned through strenuous activity in small groups, not a chocolate bar to be handed down from on high by a benevolent state, was widely shared in the early labour movement ...
But this, too, is irrelevant to Mill's claim to iconic status. "On Liberty" is the foundation stone of that claim; and despite its captivating panache and emotional force, I can't suppress nagging doubts about its value for the 21st century.
More here.
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