Sabinae raptae lectora

That Faith fear no foeman

& wax e'er more Roman

Quae tu creasti pectora

Sabinae raptae lectora

Envoi- 

 Feretrius! Prince! Maximal bridge-builder to that Original Sin

Which but originates in a Book, Nothing wrote itself in. 

John Stuart Mill's useless Liberty

From the age of 17, for 35 years, John Stuart Mill, like his father before him, was a small cog in the giant machine that was the East India Company. Intellectually, too, his was a life of wearisome servitude to ideas both boring and obsolete. It is no wonder that he complains at the end of one of his most celebrated works- 'The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; 

There were British men who had done worthwhile things in India. But Mill had been stuck in London examining reports they sent back. Equally, in England, worthwhile things were being done- great industries were being erected- but Mill had not done those things. 

and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation to a little more of administrative skill, 

which was what the British Raj did to the clerks who served it

or of that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, 

as Mill had been dwarfed and deformed by his father

in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished;

Thanks to his wife, Mill did accomplish something. But she would have achieved more in proprio persona. 

 and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.'

Mill's readers knew that his job had been abolished along with the Company he served. Then his wife too died. The machinery of his mind continued to turn in accustomed circles, but it was running down. Was there a ghost in that machine which gibbered against its fate? For his contemporaries, perhaps, but, to us, it is clear that Mill's essay on Liberty isn't actually about Liberty. It is about legitimacy. But securing Liberty may entail repudiating what was previously held to be legitimate authority. Indeed, there is bound to be a certain tension between Legitimacy and Liberty. At the margin, any legitimate demand or requirement may be seen as an infringement of Liberty. The opposite is equally true. 

Mill and his father had served the East India Company- a commercial enterprise which had acquired vast territories and whose legitimacy depended on raising general purpose and total factor productivity there. This alone would make the place defensible and purchase the loyalty of the natives. Any other advantages it offered were irrelevant.

Nevertheless, it was obvious that the EIC afforded residents of India more liberty than they would have on British shores. Holyoake would not have been sent to jail for blasphemy if he had made his famous speech in Calcutta rather than Cheltenham. In India, Judges were loath to interfere with customary practices or to enforce the new Penal Code save where great harm had been done to a third party.

 Mill was aware of the scandal for British Liberalism represented by the toleration and meritocratic methods employed on Ind's coral strand which stood in marked contrast to the obscurantism and intolerance on display in the home island . 

Indeed, an argument for leaving India in the hands of John Company was that direct rule might mean the imposition of an intolerant and alien religion and system of morality. A far bloodier Revolt might result. 

I suppose, Mill wanted nothing more to do with India and was seeking to make a space for himself- or perhaps for the ideas of his wife- in mid-Victorian England. Yet, by writing about 'Liberty' while excluding from the sway of its 'general principle', the one realm of which he had expert knowledge, Mill was bound to fail. After all, he and his father had pursued no Liberal Profession nor gained wealth through free enterprise. They were faceless bureaucrats of a type that might be found in Peking or St. Petersburg whose job it was to record the inflow of tribute from widely scattered tribes whose languages and mores were unknown to them. 

 Bertrand Russell has remarked that though Mill frequently quotes Herbert Spenser, Darwinian theory appears to have left little mark upon him. Yet, as we shall see, Mill does draw upon jungle lore in the course of his essay. Perhaps what Russell meant was that whereas we may be tempted to think of Liberty and Legitimacy as 'co-evolved', like predators and their prey, the truth is, they are impredicative. Legitimacy is a type of Liberty and Liberty has a type of Legitimacy. 

For us, perhaps, a better approach would be to think in terms of 'functional information'- i.e. the information necessary to predict or understand the function of a system, sequence, or process. The law of increasing functional information states that a system will evolve in complexity if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions. What is salient here is 'multiple realizability'- i.e. different things may have the same effect. Thus, in Political Systems, we see that Legitimacy can substitute for Liberty and vice versa. Moreover, such evolved complexity is not necessarily Darwinian. However, it is context dependent and statistical. Utilitarianism, of a statistical type, crude though it may have been, faced no great scandal in focusing on selective pressure on multiply realizable functional relations  arising on Social configuration spaces. What it would lack would be a context independent scaffolding or a deontic logic of its own. 

Mill's essay is about

Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.

This is odd. We think of Liberty as a set of immunities possessed by an individual. These immunities are defeasible. To solve a collective action problem, an immunity may be waived, voided or put in abeyance. This may be done by private individuals, voluntary associations, or public authorities. 

Mill, it seems, takes the opposite view.  There is only some minimal or residual Liberty accruing to the individual, though, no doubt, by an enlightened and self-denying ordinance we may forbid Public Reason from encroaching too arbitrarily upon it.

 This is opposite to the common-sense view that people have much more and much better information about their own circumstances.  There can be residuary control rights vested in some public authority which are triggered by exigent circumstances or, over the course of time, where this happens as a matter of convenience. We might say that Public Authority gains salience as a Schelling focal solution to a Coordination Game. But salience is not power. A forum is not a Senate. It may be useful but only if everybody finds it so. 

By contrast, mainstream Liberal/Libertarian thought assumes, for a Hayekian reason, that there can be speedier evolution to more robust and complex functional performance under laissez faire. No doubt, Governments may be better placed to aggregate certain types of information. But it would be coarse grained and 'after the fact'. Moreover, private enterprise could provide actuarial services and support risk pooling mechanisms. Alternatively, if undertaken by the State, an autonomous Corporation could be put in charge and relevant benchmarks could be instituted to monitor its performance.

 For Mill- perhaps because he was not a lawyer- the scope of the law- which is what gives rise to legitimacy- appears to have no limits even though laws and Governments only exist for limited purposes- viz. to solve certain collective action problems relating to existential threats- even though such threats- e.g. invasion or insurrection may seldom materialize. Of course, under exigent circumstances, it would not make sense to cling to immunities which would be lost more completely if they were not temporarily curtailed. But, the very fact that the curtailment will be temporary increases the willingness to accept it. Here 'functional information' must focus on willingness and ability to pay because what can be squeezed out of a population may fall as incentives disappear and productivity plummets. 

A question seldom stated,

it is frequently posed in Courts of Law and in Legislatures. Am I at liberty to walk across your land? Yes, if there is a 'right of way'. Are you at liberty to sit naked in your back-garden? No- if your neighbours can see you and they object to the sight.  

and hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to make itself recognised as the vital question of the future.

The vital question of the future was how to solve collective action problems such that general purpose and total factor productivity could rise. This increased Liberty as a set of Hohfeldian immunities and entitlements. Mill was barking up the wrong tree. The future would belong to those systems which selected for rising 'functionality'. Gassing on about Liberty and Tyranny and the need for perpetual vigilance just in case Gladstone turns into a Vampire or Disraeli turns into a Werewolf contributed to paranoia and dysfunction. 

It is so far from being new, that, in a certain sense, it has divided mankind, almost from the remotest ages;

No. People aint stupid. They get that there are collective action problems and exigent circumstances such that there is less liberty in some places and some spheres than in other places or other spheres of activity. This is an unthought known. Reading a lot of Economics books rots the brain.  

but in the stage of progress into which the more civilised portions of the species have now entered, it presents itself under new conditions, and requires a different and more fundamental treatment.

Mill had been given no liberty by his father. The Utilitarianism in which he had been indoctrinated was stupid and useless because it separated production from distribution. It did not take raising general purpose and total factor productivity as its aim. Thus it wasn't useful at all. 

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England.

Fuck off! Historical struggles relate to who conquers which patch of land and who gets enslaved by who.  Legitimacy does not matter. Killing people does. 

But in old times this contest was between subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the Government.

Killing the guys doing the governing and taking over their mansions is how you establish the legitimacy of your own authority. Sadly, the previous rulers often preferred to run away or to surrender. In England, James II had run away. At a later point, Kings were happy enough to reign not rule provided Parliament provided them with plenty of cash. Electoral politics had a lot to do with money. As factory workers got paid more, they could pool funds through Trade Unions (once they became legal) and gain increasing political power and influence. 

By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the political rulers.

Not to mention protection from tyrannical rulers who are also Vampires. Why the fuck was Mill writing about a thing wholly absent from England's green and pleasant land?  

The rulers were conceived (except in some of the popular governments of Greece) as in a necessarily antagonistic position to the people whom they ruled.

No they weren't. If you didn't like the guys running your town, you fucked off elsewhere. Mill was as stupid as Marx. Having had to read a bit of ancient Athenian or Roman history had fucked up their brains. There is a general antagonism to paying taxes. But in countries which have never been ruled by tyrants, there is little need to worry that Tyranny or Vampirism will suddenly arise. Where tyrants do exist, chances are the alternative is anarchy. Still, it might be a good idea to get out while the going is good. 

They consisted of a governing One, or a governing tribe or caste, who derived their authority from inheritance or conquest,

or religion or popularity or money or superior organizational skills.  

who, at all events, did not hold it at the pleasure of the governed, and whose supremacy men did not venture, perhaps did not desire, to contest, whatever precautions might be taken against its oppressive exercise.

Oppression costs money and takes up a lot of time. Why do it if you don't have to? The answer, obviously, is that those who have power face an irresistible temptation to turn into Vampires, Tyrants, Werewolves, Jack the Ripper, etc. Indeed, Mill- as chief examiner at the India Office- often had to reprove Viceroys and Governors for their habit of entering the hovels of coolies and tyrannizing over them in between sucking their blood or draining them of their jizz.  

Their power was regarded as necessary, but also as highly dangerous; as a weapon which they would attempt to use against their subjects, no less than against external enemies.

The East India Company- which Mill, like his father, served, was a commercial enterprise. Indeed, most Government is. Depending on how much people are willing to pay in tax, various public services of variable quality are supplied.  

To prevent the weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down.

Mill thought that Lions went around arresting foxes who might otherwise prey upon chickens.  

But as the king of the vultures

Vultures eat carrion. Was Mill utterly stupid? Yes. His Daddy made him read Economics books. That rotted his brain.  

would be no less bent upon preying on the flock than any of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of defence against his beak and claws.

Come to think of it, Count Dracula turns into a bat and flits about the place. King Charles is descended from him through Mary of Teck. 

The aim, therefore, of patriots was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty.

 Tyranny meant demanding the payment of taxes. Liberty meant killing or chasing away tax-collectors. As an Economist, Mill should have understood this. On the other hand, people might get rid of a King of whose religion they didn't approve. Liberty tended to mean that everybody should worship in the way we think is right while those who worship in a different way should fuck the fuck off. 

It was attempted in two ways.

No. There was only one way. 

First, by obtaining a recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights, which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe,

all immunities are defeasible because everything that pertains to the law is defeasible. But this is also the case with customs or norms or novel combinations or groups of people giving themselves rules or claiming prerogatives. Should Trade Unions, which claimed the right to bargain collectively, have an immunity or should they be considered a combination in restraint of trade? The answer was that they had it if they didn't need it. Legal rights and immunities often have that quality. If you can do a thing with impunity, it does not matter whether what you do is legal and therefore legitimate. 

and which if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion, was held to be justifiable.

It was justifiable if it would prevail and those who rebelled or resisted gained by it. As Sir John Harington put it- "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason." However, refusal to obey a law- e.g. one banning Trade Unions- did not necessarily involve treason or rebellion. A lawyer might sagely observe that the statute in question had fallen into desuetude or else that the circumstances under which it had been salutary no longer obtained. 

A second, and generally a later expedient, was the establishment of constitutional checks, by which the consent of the community, or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the more important acts of the governing power.

But there were checks on those checks such that there was always more than one way to kill the cat.  

To the first of these modes of limitation, the ruling power, in most European countries, was compelled, more or less, to submit.

If the Church had countervailing power, Liberty might be greater though Enterprise might be less. The opposite may have been the case for 'Liberties' created by the Crown for the purpose of boosting revenue. Emigration was another factor. The greater the possibility of 'Exit', the less could be squeezed out of the people.  

It was not so with the second;

i.e. Constitutional checks and balances which were either wholly notional or reflected actual power configurations- in which case they were otiose.  

and, to attain this,

you needed a couple of scribes and a bit of parchment

or when already in some degree possessed, to attain it more completely, became everywhere the principal object of the lovers of liberty.

Fuck off! Their principal object was to make love to themselves while talking bollocks.  

And so long as mankind were content to combat one enemy by another, and to be ruled by a master, on condition of being guaranteed more or less efficaciously against his tyranny, they did not carry their aspirations beyond this point.

What they aspired to was wealth and social status- preferably wholly unearned.  

A time, however, came, in the progress of human affairs, when men ceased to think it a necessity of nature that their governors should be an independent power, opposed in interest to themselves.

Nobody ever had any such idea. The Governor should have the same interest as the governed- viz. keeping the place safe from invasion or economic collapse. Mill's paranoid theory that Governors are bound to turn into Tyrannical Vampires or Werewolves may have arisen by some, specifically Victorian, 'imposthume of much wealth and peace". The fact is, even the best nightwatchman State can't keep the wealthy safe from nightmares. 

It appeared to them much better that the various magistrates of the State should be their tenants or delegates, revocable at their pleasure.

This was not the case in France or Germany. In America, there was the spoils system. But, in England, since 1701, Judges held office on condition of good behaviour rather than at the pleasure of the Crown or Parliament.  

In that way alone, it seemed, could they have complete security that the powers of government would never be abused to their disadvantage.

Because your tenants or delegates never fuck you over- right? 

By degrees this new demand for elective and temporary rulers

as opposed to temporary administrations chosen by the Crown with a view to having a scapegoat ready to hand should things turn pear shaped. But, in formal terms, this was still the function of the Cabinet. Mill was already 28 years old when the King lost the power to appoint the Prime Minister.  

became the prominent object of the exertions of the popular party, wherever any such party existed; and superseded, to a considerable extent, the previous efforts to limit the power of rulers.

It was part and parcel of the same thing. In England, the King lost a power which, speaking generally, was retained on the Continent.  

As the struggle proceeded for making the ruling power emanate from the periodical choice of the ruled, some persons began to think that too much importance had been attached to the limitation of the power itself. That (it might seem) was a resource against rulers whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the people. What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified with the people; that their interest and will should be the interest and will of the nation.

That was always the case. Mill lived in a fantasy world where the English hadn't always wanted to be ruled by an Englishman who loved England. Even the Indians preferred the East India Company to pretend to hold Nizamat from the Grand Moghul. Within a decade of the establishment of direct rule, there were Indians who wanted India to be ruled by Indians. The problem was that, unlike the Settler colonies, India couldn't become self-garrisoning and self- administering because Indians could not agree to form a Federation. Also, they didn't give a fuck about raising productivity. 

The nation did not need to be protected against its own will.

That was not what England decided after experiencing the rule of the Lord Protector.  

There was no fear of its tyrannising over itself.

Yes there is. The problem is 'preference falsification'. As a true blue Brit, I genuinely hate all furriners and immigrants and peeps wot eat Sushi instead of fish and chips. But the last thing I want is to be ruled by people who would actually implement policies based on these chauvinistic views. 

Let the rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it, and it could afford to trust them with power of which it could itself dictate the use to be made.

Rulers are people, not vampires or robots. Either we trust them or we don't. It isn't the case that we hire certain robots or vampires, on the basis of their trustworthiness, to rule us because none of our own people have the necessary intelligence or skill.

Their power was but the nation’s own power, concentrated, and in a form convenient for exercise. This mode of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, was common among the last generation of European liberalism, in the Continental section of which it still apparently predominates. 

It was less apparent where there were National Churches and indigenous dynasties.  On the other hand, on the Continent, there was greater scope for 'catch up', Listian, growth- i.e. collective action problems could be better solved by a 'Sonderweg' or special path.

Those who admit any limit to what a government may do, except in the case of such governments as they think ought not to exist, stand out as brilliant exceptions among the political thinkers of the Continent.

Political thinkers don't stand out. They may stand up but only so as to soil themselves the publicly.  

A similar tone of sentiment might by this time have been prevalent in our own country, if the circumstances which for a time encouraged it, had continued unaltered.

In England, industrialization meant that Reform could ignore Agricultural interests though, no doubt, some paid lip service to 'three acres and a cow' which was silly because even African Americans were being promised 40 acres and a mule. The other big problem was dissatisfaction with the Established Church. Anti-Clericalism could have little purchase when Protestant Churches, however boringly evangelical, were fractally schismatic. 

But, in political and philosophical theories, as well as in persons, success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have concealed from observation.

But success is only relative to failure. The theory or person who succeeded only did so because some great fault or infirmity was imputed to theories or persons who failed or didn't even bother to show up.  

The notion, that the people have no need to limit their power over themselves, might seem axiomatic,

It is an 'intensional fallacy'. It is obvious that the people don't exercise power or authority. Rather some bunch of dudes may do so in their name.  

when popular government was a thing only dreamed about, or read of as having existed at some distant period of the past. Neither was that notion necessarily disturbed by such temporary aberrations as those of the French Revolution, the worst of which were the work of a usurping few, and which, in any case, belonged, not to the permanent working of popular institutions, but to a sudden and convulsive outbreak against monarchical and aristocratic despotism. In time, however, a democratic republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth’s surface,

the USA? It was based on killing the natives and bringing in slaves.  

and made itself felt as one of the most powerful members of the community of nations; and elective and responsible government became subject to the observations and criticisms which wait upon a great existing fact. It was now perceived that such phrases as “self-government,” and “the power of the people over themselves,” do not express the true state of the case. The “people” who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the “self-government” spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power.

This is fucked in the head. Loyalists were thrown out after the Revolution. Religious or other dissenters of various types were constantly heading West to kill off the indigenous people and create States where they could oppress those they didn't like. In 'the Simpsons', Shelbyville broke away from Springfield so as to indulge in cousin-marriage.  

The limitation, therefore, of the power of government over individuals loses none of its importance when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest party therein.

America had the 'spoils system' till 1883. Elections mattered because if your candidate won, he could get you a Government job. In the UK, at least in formal terms, it wasn't till 1870 that Gladstone implemented the Northcote-Trevelyan report- i.e. purchase and patronage ceased to be factors in appointments to the Civil Service. The purchase of commissions in the Army ended three years later.  

This view of things, recommending itself equally to the intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of those important classes in European society to whose real or supposed interests democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself; and in political speculations “the tyranny of the majority” is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard.

The majority may sodomize you and drink your blood if it gets power. Why? Having power turns you into a homosexual vampire. Ceaseless vigilance is the precondition for our not being buggered and bled by Count Dracula (aka Sir Keir Starmer) .  

Wherever there is an ascendant class,

e.g. the Irish Ascendancy 

a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority.

Catholicism had disappeared in Ireland because the Ascendancy was Protestant.  

The morality between Spartans and Helots, between planters and negroes, between princes and subjects, between nobles and roturiers, between men and women, has been for the most part the creation of these class interests and feelings: and the sentiments thus generated react in turn upon the moral feelings of the members of the ascendant class, in their relations among themselves.

This is nonsense. There was 'Tardean mimetics'- i.e. imitation of the superior- but, more often than not, this meant imitation of the highly productive, not imitation of swinish parasites. An Aristocracy- like that of Poland- may sink into poverty while upholding its 'Golden Liberties' and supposed superior 'Sarmatian' racial descent- but this is to invite conquest and foreign domination. 

The fact is brutish conquerors soon morphed into cultivated 'Beauclercs'- i.e. they submitted to the Church and their language and mores became polished and refined. Morality is something the middle order imposes on its masters.  

Where, on the other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendancy, or where its ascendancy is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority.

Superior people come to dislike displays of superiority when they discover that they themselves are mortal. If there is a God, their condition in the after-life may be very inferior indeed. Even otherwise, a chap who gives himself airs may find nobody comes to his rescue when he receives a thrashing in the street. 

Another grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both in act and forbearance, which have been enforced by law or opinion, has been the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or aversions of their temporal masters or of their gods. This servility, though essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and heretics.

Nonsense! England burned its last heretic in 1612. The last witch was hanged about a hundred years later. The plain fact is, the English were losing their faith in priestcraft and magic.  Sadly, other types of ignorance and bigotry retained currency even into my own life-time.

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.

We have an immunity, under certain circumstances, for killing in self-defence. But we are very seldom in any such danger. It is foolish to invoke so rare an occurrence as the basis of a general principle or categorical imperative. I may mention that we have an immunity for farting in a very loud and smelly manner while using the w.c. Would it be reasonable to say 'the sole end for which mankind is warranted in causing a nuisance to others is for the purpose of defecation'? 

Just as we have an immunity for farting or killing homicidal maniacs, we also have an immunity with respect other people doing things we don't like with our property or when they are employed by us. Every 'vinculum juris' or bond of law involves some sacrifice of liberty of action. If it is for consideration, then it is a contract. The Social Contract may be seen as a contract of adhesion. If you don't like the rules here, fuck off. 

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

Thus, if I entered Mills house with the intention of shitting on his carpet, he would not be entitled to chuck me out by main force. He may say 'I would receive harm by having shit on my carpet' but I may feel that he would benefit by it. What clinches the matter is that a court of law would say that Mill gains a benefit by refusing admission to his own house to those he does not like. If he prefers a carpet lacking my invaluable shit, that is a matter for him alone.

Mill's principle is either foolish or anything goes. 

His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

Lunatics must be allowed to wander around the place eating their own shit. They must not be restrained for their own safety.  

He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.

The law already made provision for lunatics or people with diminished capacity. No general principle was needed where a sensible enough 'economia' already obtained. What would change would be instances where individuals were forced to save or forced to make certain sorts of investment decisions or were forced to undergo particular types of education, training or employment because, speaking generally, they would themselves admit that they were better off as a result. 

These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise.

Morley had opposed the eight hour day as an infringement of the liberty of the worker. Later he would resign when the UK entered the Great War. Yet, if Conscription had to be accepted, why should limitations on 'sweating labour' not be accepted? Mill and Morley were clearly wrong in their beliefs. Why? They lived in a make-believe world and were vigilant only against an imaginary enemy. 

To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else.

This is easily done. My neighbour does not want to see me wandering around nude in my back-garden. That's a good enough reason to prevent me from doing so.  

The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others.

In which case, 'amenability' is a function not of ipseity's self-interest but an alterity's 'concerns'. 

In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute.

No. It is a matter of fact. Is this man wholly independent in deciding on matters that concern only himself? If we notice that he is swayed by his father or his wife or his confessor, then we say he is not independent. Thus, in a case involving 'undue influence', a Judge may set aside a Will. 

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

Only in the sense that he is also a vampire or leprechaun. In other words, this is merely a rhetorical flourish or ipse dixit assertion. 

Scientific and technological progress, over the course of Mill's life, made it clear that Victorian England would appear very backward indeed to Englishmen of the next century. Yet Mill says

we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage. The early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable.

This was, certainly, an argument for granting more power to the new urban, industrial and mercantile, bourgeoisie. The question was whether the gains they had made from the Great Reform Bill could safely be extended to the upper working class and, perhaps, even women. 

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.

Was Mill saying the East India Company was 'despotic' rather than commercial and pragmatic? No. He was talking nonsense. Barbarians can't have despots because absolute power is curbed by assassination. What can happen is that a War-Lord creates an  administration of an 'incentive-compatible' type with a view to turning it into an Imperial system on an already familiar model. But this was easier said than done precisely because barbarian rule may so destroy the productivity of sedentary populations that Absolutism or Autocracy are deprived of the sinews of war- id est, their own sustenance. In other words, the descendants of the Great Khan either return to banditry or adopt the customs of settled people- which is what the Moghuls did in India.   

Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion.

Mill was not improved by such discussion. Some of his contemporaries made inventions or discoveries of a mathematical or scientific kind. Bertrand Russell makes much of the fact that his famous grandfather was the pupil of Edmund Cartwright whose inventions were, perhaps unfairly, considered of great value in the late eighteenth century. 

Liberty as a set of Hohfeldian immunities is worth investigating with a view to improving functional efficiency and thus more robust and rapid evolution of the underlying configuration space. I suppose Mill's mathematical thinking was confined to notions of 'tangency' rather than transversality. But this could also be said of the type of Rational Choice theory I was supposed to study at Uni. 

Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one.

Mill was impartial in his ignorance. The fact is, both Akbar and Charlemagne conciliated important sections of society with the result that economic activity increased.  

But as soon as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves),

but not the nation with which Mill and his father had been concerned with- viz. India 

compulsion, either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their own good, and justifiable only for the security of others.

By the time this was written there were Indian and 'Anglo-Indian' intellectuals pointing to ways to improve the efficiency of the Raj. This was because if productivity there didn't rise, the place would become too poor to defend or to save from a Malthusian disaster. 

 William Digby, the journalist who had written most about Indian famines, became the secretary of the National Liberal Club about 10 years after Mill died at the age of 66. I suppose, there is some truth to the notion that the last disciples of Mill & Morley were to be found in Bengal not Britain. This is because Bengalis think 'productivity' is a dirty word. The only thing which matters is distribution- or rather scolding the rich for not redistributing their wealth to the very very poor. 

Mill does not appear to have made money playing the markets. He did not understand that an abstract right is an option. If it is traded, it has a money value and therefore an expression as 'transferable utility'. This is independent of utility but reduces risk and uncertainty and thus may contribute to more economic activity. To be clear, things which raise general purpose or total factor productivity may yield no hedonic value in themselves. Yet they permit the law of increasing functional information to operate. 

It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of utility.

In which case, it would also be proper to state that this is not an essay on Liberty. It is an essay on what constitutes legitimate deprivation of liberty.  This is like writing an essay on Beauty and speaking only of when it is right and proper to scratch out the eyes of the Mona Lisa. 

I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions;

in which case, focus on why it is useful to gas on about such questions. Mill may reply 'It is useful to do so because Rulers may turn into Count Dracula. We must maintain an unsleeping vigilance to ensure Gladstone doesn't go around biting people on the neck.'  

but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being.

Men are interested in progress. How is it achieved? The answer is by raising general purpose and total factor productivity. Did Mill contribute anything to that? No. He was useless.  

Those interests, I contend, authorise the subjection of individual spontaneity to external control, only in respect to those actions of each, which concern the interest of other people.

e.g. Gladstone spontaneously deciding to bite the necks of virgins. This might cause him to become Count Dracula.  

If any one does an act hurtful to others, there is a prima facie case for punishing him, by law, or, where legal penalties are not safely applicable, by general disapprobation.

No. There is either a prima facie crime or a tort. If neither arises there may be cause for approbation- if the result of that harm being done had a salutary effect (e.g. lazy people were sacked with the result that they started working hard) then approbation may be called for.  

There are also many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he may rightfully be compelled to perform; such as to give evidence in a court of justice;

that is a justiciable matter. There is a strong right not to self-incriminate and various types of privilege may apply. Moreover, the right to cross examine a witness may nullify the probative value of testimony.  

to bear his fair share in the common defence,

again this is a fraught question.  

or in any other joint work necessary to the interest of the society of which he enjoys the protection; and to perform certain acts of individual beneficence, such as saving a low creature’s life, or interposing to protect the defenceless against ill usage, things which whenever it is obviously a man’s duty to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to society for not doing.

Here, something like the tort of 'culpa levis in abstracto' applies. Again this is a justiciable matter. 

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

He may have immunities or privileges of various sorts. This is a justiciable matter.  

The latter case, it is true, requires a much more cautious exercise of compulsion than the former. To make any one answerable for doing evil to others is the rule; to make him answerable for not preventing evil is, comparatively speaking, the exception.

Unless the reverse is the case. Don't trust Mill. Consult a lawyer. You may, with complete impunity, close down your factory and thus cause great suffering to ten thousand workers. But you may also be liable for a large sum in damages if a tile fell off your factor roof and injured a passer-by. 

Yet there are many cases clear enough and grave enough to justify that exception. In all things which regard the external relations of the individual, he is de jure amenable to those whose interests are concerned, and, if need be, to society as their protector. There are often good reasons for not holding him to the responsibility; but these reasons must arise from the special expediencies of the case: either because it is a kind of case in which he is on the whole likely to act better, when left to his own discretion, than when controlled in any way in which society have it in their power to control him; or because the attempt to exercise control would produce other evils, greater than those which it would prevent.

If special expediencies have salience, no general principle does. This is a matter of custom and precedent. The law may be changed such that 'innocent' torts cease to be so while previously legal actions- e.g. closing down a loss making factory- attract substantial penalties.  

When such reasons as these preclude the enforcement of responsibility, the conscience of the agent himself should step into the vacant judgment seat, and protect those interests of others which have no external protection; judging himself all the more rigidly, because the case does not admit of his being made accountable to the judgment of his fellow creatures.

In other words, Utilitarianism has admitted defeat and gone home. Synderesis- i.e. the still small voice of conscience- possesses the field.  

Appadurai & Pollock on Columbia University

 Arjun Appadurai &  Sheldon Pollock ask, in the pages of the Guardian- 

Who actually runs Columbia University?

The answer is, it is run by its President- currently Claire Shipman a former TV journalist.  As established by Columbia University's governing statutes, it is the duty of the president to exercise jurisdiction over all affairs of the university; to call special meetings of the University Senate, faculties, and administration; to report to the Trustees of Columbia on the state and needs of the university annually; and to administer discipline. According to the university charter and statutes, the consent of the president is necessary for any act made by a faculty or administrative board, unless their veto is overridden by two-thirds vote. Additionally, the president is able to grant leaves of absences, give faculty permission to use university laboratories for experiments, and confer academic and honorary degrees on behalf of the board of trustees.

Trustees aren’t academics – and they’re often political wolves in sheep’s clothing.

So are academics. Moreover, academics who teach worthless shit- as Pollock & Appadurai do- are very stupid, senile, or psychotic.  

We need reform to save the American university as we know it

American universities- like all institutions of higher education- must change and adapt to the times. If they are being used for an improper purpose- e.g. in order to attack a friendly country- the nuisance must be curbed. They must ignore elderly, ignorant, cunts who teach worthless shite.  

Late on Friday evening, the trustees of Columbia University announced that its interim president, Katrina Armstrong, was leaving her post.

Columbia should have stuck with Baroness Shafik who had taken tough action against pro-Palestine agitators on campus. I suppose Trump's people are glad to see the back of her because, as an Economist, she would scarcely be likely to say anything nice about Trump's tariffs. Nutters like Appadurai and Pollock don't understand this.  

Six days earlier, she had convened an emergency meeting with 75 faculty members after the university had cravenly surrendered to the demands of the Trump administration in the hopes of recovering $400m in federal grants and contracts. The president

who was utterly useless 

and her staff called their predicament “heartbreaking” and

herself 'naive' and her communication's advisers useless 

sought to reassure faculty that academic freedom and departmental autonomy remained intact.

She was clearly out of her depth. She had to go.  

A transcript of the meeting was leaked. Two days later, the president was “returning to lead” the university’s medical center. She was replaced by a trustee.

A TV journalist. Sadly, Elise Stepanik has her knife into her for some remark she made a couple of years ago. Thus, she may not last long. 

For a member of the board of trustees to assume leadership of the university, without even the fig leaf of faculty consultation, has never occurred in the 271-year history of Columbia.

But it is perfectly legal. The Trustees select the President. They are welcome to choose one of their own members.  

Unprecedented in its own right, the episode also exposes a deeply worrisome problem of governance in American higher education.

Presidents of Columbia get paid a lot. Are they worth it? Probably not.  

This has been building for years, but now the stakes are higher than ever: the very survival of the university as we know it.

The Middle East Department should be scrapped. If you want to praise Hamas, go do it in the streets or an ICE detention center.  

American universities, in their recent dealings with the federal government – and with their own trustees – have repeatedly shown themselves incapable of preserving the core values of academic freedom and shared governance.

In the opinion to two elderly cretins. What happened was that University Presidents should have cracked down hard on anti-Semitism and crazy Hamas loving agitators. Still, so long as they damaged Kamala and helped Trump, why should he complain?  

This failure has been widely noted, but unasked is who bears responsibility.

Trustees. They can't defy public opinion just to curry favor with senile nutters and Hamas-lovers.  

The ultimate decision-maker at colleges and universities is the board of trustees.

Who were asleep at the wheel with the result that Trump gained by the appearance of elite support for crazy terrorist nutjobs.  

And these boards, as the explosive events of the past year demonstrate, have serious problems, both in how they are constituted and how they lead.

They brought in a tough British economist who had run the LSE. But they didn't stand by her when the nutters started baying for her blood. 

Those committed to the distinctive strengths of the university as a maker, teacher and custodian of knowledge, both old and new, must at long last try to grasp why these boards are failing and figure out how to fix them.

Columbia has no distinctive strength in South Asian or Middle Eastern studies. Scrap those Departments.  

Trustees (sometimes called governors, regents, visitors or “members of the corporation”) have a lofty function: to ensure the financial health and stability of the institution, partly through their own donations. This fiduciary responsibility has extended to the recruitment, appointment and retention of the school president, and sometimes of other senior administrators, usually (as at Columbia) with little substantive faculty consultation required by the norms of shared governance.

Columbia has professional administrators. The problem is that they are chickenshit.  

Trustees play an increasingly active role in academic decisions through the levers of cost, donor power and financial austerity.

Not in the case of Columbia. The Trustees are light-weights who show up occasionally. They should have stood behind Baroness Shafik. She could have served as long as her predecessor and ensured the financial health of the Institution.  

In our fraught times, these levers are in increasing use, especially by the Trump-driven Republican party, to target disciplines, departments and individual professors. Many boards have become political wolves in the guise of fiduciary sheep.

The plain fact is that Middle East or South Asian studies have to be scrapped. America is in no mood to indulge crazy nutters running amok on campuses.  

Boards of trustees are essentially private clubs,

No. Private clubs charge a membership fee.  

which follow their own, always confidential, norms to determine who is asked to join, who controls key committees, and who is gently persuaded to resign when they do not meet the criteria of the most influential trustees. (In some private institutions, presidents may have a say in who gets selected as trustees, but presidents themselves are appointed by trustees.)

So what? The fact is the Trustees were chickenshit and so Columbia has been humiliated. It will go along with what Trump wants because, secretly, that's what it too wants. People merely pretend to care about Hamas and Gaza and so forth. But they don't really.  

At public universities, these boards are directly tied to the powers of state legislatures and administrators and thus are at the mercy of state politics in key matters. At private universities, the club is dominated by heavy hitters in business, law and technology;

or not so heavy hitters. That was the problem with the current Board.  

the number of alumni, academics and students is vanishingly small. These business-oriented trustees (a majority being white and male)

unlike the last three Presidents 

treat their board meetings as golf parties; they schmooze, network and discuss deals while going through the motions of discussing university policies and priorities.

They dropped the ball by not backing Baroness Shafik.  

Who becomes a trustee? At Columbia there are 21, all of them from business, law and technology, with the exception of a former journalist. Although they are in charge of an academic institution, none of them is an academic.

Academics are stupid. That's why they get paid to teach rather than find themselves in a position where they can pay smart young people to come work for them so as to discover cool new stuff.  

None has ever led a classroom or a lab meeting or medical rounds with interns.

These two nutters haven't led 'medical rounds'. As for classrooms, a ten year old class monitor can lead one well enough.  

None has gone through the process of tenure, where their teaching, publication record and service are rigorously assessed by colleagues in the field both from within the institution and outside it.

But their colleagues are shit. Pollock and Appadurai aren't smart. Scrap the useless Departments where they flourished.  

None has ever had their work peer-reviewed by anonymous readers or panels of experts.

Experts in stupid shit.  

None has ever published in academic or scientific journals or presses and had their ideas debated in the public sphere.

These nutters are incapable of debate.  

None has ever framed a hypothesis and tested it on the basis of evidence they have collected. None, in short, has sought truth and had their search confirmed by objective scholars and scientists.

They made money. Academics didn't. Money matters. Being a glorified child-minder- not so much. 

How, we ask, can people be entrusted with running a university when they have no lived experience with or understanding of its core functions and aims?

They aren't entrusted with running a university. There are paid professionals who do that. The President is well paid but the last one was shit.  

What qualifications do such trustees bring to their office beside the capacity and expectation to donate?

A Trustee is not, speaking generally, an office holder.  

And what do those qualifications, which pertain to private profit, have to do with the concerns of scholars and scientists and doctors, which pertain to the public good?

Sadly, they pertain to the public bad. That is why some Departments should be axed and some faculty members should be sacked.  

Is it any wonder, then, that Columbia’s trustees are prepared to ignore the foundational values that constitute a university – academic freedom and shared governance – in order to reach an accommodation with the federal government?

Why are they not strapping suicide bombs to their vests and attacking synagogues?  

The Columbia board is by no means unique. The same situation prevails, with few exceptions, across the Ivy League and its peer institutions (exemplary is the University of Chicago). As far as public universities are concerned, though there are some variations among several of the flagships, such as the regents of the universities of California, Michigan and Wisconsin, they are typically composed of lawyers, politicians and businessmen, and generally appointed by governors of individual states. Their accountability is hard to locate in their charter documents, and their near-autonomous powers are wide-ranging. In these regards, they are very much like their private counterparts.

Such has been the case for centuries. Why are these two elderly nutters getting so agitated about it now? I suppose the answer is that particular University Departments may be axed. But those Departments have already become adversely selective of imbecility.  

These facts would be sobering enough as evidence of the longstanding privilege and exclusivity of boards of trustees and their role in bringing bigger political and economic agendas into the heart of academic governance. But there is an even more worrisome issue.

America may be becoming a Capitalist country. Did you know that Mount Rushmore no longer sports the effigy of Vladimir Lenin? Also, Trump has cancelled compulsory gender reassignment surgery for all heterosexual males. What's next? Will the hammer and sickle be removed from the American flag? This is nothing less than Fascism!  

Boards are accountable to no one – only to themselves, and to some vague set of norms, often unwritten, about their obligations. Accountability is for faculty, administrators and students.

Unless it isn't. That's the problem. Academics had power without responsibility- the ultimate perquisite of the harlot- though, to be fair, they are in the position of giving beejays at Truck stops to wannabe terrorists.  

Given the remarkable absence of any mechanism for assessing, monitoring or auditing their performance, should we be surprised if trustees bring the most intense political agendas into the heart of the institutions they oversee?

Trustees want a quiet life. That's why they failed to back Baroness Shafik and ended up in this mess.  

With their powerful connections to local, state, and federal agendas and networks, trustees become conduits for politicians and finance-driven values that affect the core life of academic institutions rather than buffers against these forces. (A Penn trustee was accused by the faculty last year of attempting a “hostile takeover” of the university.)

The rot is spreading. The hostile takeover of universities is the first step in a diabolical plan to turn America into a Capitalist country. There is even talk of changing the name of the Nation's Capital from Leningrad to Washing-machine.  

The most urgent need today, as the Columbia case shows, is to

join Hamas 

create a new social contract on boards of trustees, who have become too craven to be watchdogs and too self-interested to be trusted. This change will require hard community-based activism that balances lawyers, hedge fund managers and tech bros with professors, schoolteachers, researchers, scientists and students.

What about hobos- especially transgender hobos of colour?  

For public institutions, this may require legal support, as well as a powerful alliance between communities and state governors.

Also we need to build tunnels under ground so as to carry out hit and run attacks on synagogues.  

Without such changes in boards of trustees, the current capture of colleges and universities by an unholy alliance of wealthy alumni, rightwing billionaires and bureaucrats is likely to become entrenched.

Which is why we need to make a holy alliance with transgender hobos of colour.  

Creating this new social contract will require two crucial steps. The first is to bring the full force of public scrutiny to bear on boards, their membership, their accountability and the checks on their powers.

This will deter the wishy-washy. You could get activist boards who take an axe to wokeism on Campus.  

The second is to demand that all academic governing boards both reflect and defend the fundamental values of universities in a liberal democracy: freedom of academic speech, opinion and inquiry; procedural transparency; and demographic diversity.

These are not fundamental values. They are woke slogans. American Universities must compete with Chinese Universities. There is little point turning their campuses into creches for infantile narcissists.  

There are many universities left on the government’s hit lists, and before they lose their souls, their boards of trustees must be held to account.

The wishy-washy must step aside so that true believers purge the Universities of woke nutters.