POS 254 Political Ideologies
Questions & Answers

Mill on the harm principle and private corporations and civic associations

This is a questioned asked by my POS 254 Fall 2005 course. I forwarded the question to Bruce Baum, an expert on the thought of John Stuart Mill.

Hey Bruce,

You're my J.S. Mill expert, so I got a question for you. We're discussing On Liberty in my Political Ideologies class and my students asked a good question that stumped me. What is the relationship between individual liberty and private corporations and/or civic associations for Mill?

They gave two examples: One, would it violate the harm principle for the Boy Scouts to exclude gay men from being scoutmasters or gay kids from joining? On the one hand it does seem to directly harm an individual's interests. On the other hand it seems to be within the rights of the organization to do what it want under Mill's freedom of combination argument. I imagine that the argument from the organization's perspective would go that it hasn't directly harmed the person's interests by excluding him, since he could join another social club.

The second example was about corporations. Would it be okay, under the harm principle, for an airline to prohibit men from wearing dresses on their planes? This seems like moral coercion, but would the airline's likely argument that the guy could just fly on another airline (one with looser morals) work for Mill?

I've never considered the implications of Mill's argument in light of relations between an individual and a private corporation or a civic association before. Does Mill address this? What would his answer be?

Hey Joel,

Those are good questions. I'm not absolutely committed to these answers but here's how I understand his view.

At the beginning of OL Mill includes freedom of association among the liberties that he sees as constructive of a "free" society (end of the Intro). At the same time, he also says in the "Applications" chapter that the principle of liberty is distinct from "the doctrine of Free Trade" (ch. V, par. 4).

That said, I think he was trying to sketch out, among other things, the rightful limits to what freely associating groups and corporations can rightfully do with respect to individuals. As I understand him, what becomes key is his understanding of obligations of justice, which coincide to what ought to be counted as the rights of individuals. What's at stake then, in the terms he uses at the start of chapter IV (par. 3), is whether or not the conduct of the corporations and/or civic associations violate "certain interests, which, either by express provision, or tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights."
Mill doesn't give any formula for what to be considered as rights, and he seems open to the possibility that what are currently counted as rights (e.g., current understandings of property rights) ought not be considered as rights. In my understanding, it comes down, for Mill, to a deliberative democratic debate, mediated by democratic legislatures, about where the interests lie that "ought to be considered as rights." In this regard, it would be open, I think, for people on both sides of the issues you mention why the interests at stake ought to be considered as rights. There could be, for instance, a case made for a corporation, whether a traditional capitalist corporation or a worker self-managed cooperative to insist on certain rules of conduct by their members.

Yet, Mill would generally consider questions of how people dress to be aesthetic matters, protected by his principle of liberty, and not "moral" matters, or "duties to others" (as he says in ch. IV), rightfully subject to some collective regulation. For instance, I generally discuss with my students how they way I dress or they dress to class is what Mill would call an aesthetic matter for which we should be fully free to do as we please (at least within some limits, such as wearing *some* clothing, or otherwise not dressing in a way that would actually disrupt the classroom endeavor -- i.e., Mill would probably say that we have, and would understand each other to have, an obligation to others to dress in ways that do not undermine or detract from teaching and learning).

Still, I don't think that Mill would necessarily think it would be wrong, or an undue limitation of personal freedom, for a corporation to insist on some dress code to carry out its collective goals.

Regarding the Boy Scouts case, I'm not entirely sure what Mill would say. On the one hand, I'm pretty sure that he would not (at least now that it's been politicized) support the prohibition of same sex marriage. The only real reasons for this prohibition are religious one that, for Mill, cannot rightfully use to justify public laws. He describes (in the 2nd to last pa rag of OL, chpt. IV) as a logic of "persecutors" "The notion that it is one man's duty that another should be religious." He might see as a justified expression or exercise of religious freedom, though, certain religiously (or related) informed prohibitive rules, as in the Boy Scouts, when done by "private" associations, particularly, I think, when done by distinctly religious institutions. But he also might see these kinds of prohibitions as violating on the other side "certain interests" that "ought to be considered as rights."
I'm inclined to think that in such cases he doesn't give us a straightforward answer, but instead some guidance for resolving these controversies in collective democratic deliberations.

I do my best to address these kinds of questions via Mill's theory in chapter 5 of my book.

Bruce Baum, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia

Oakeshott and civil rights changes

This is a questioned asked by my POS 254 Fall 2005 course. I forwarded the question to Steven Gerencser, an expert on the thought of Michael Oakeshott.

Hi Steven,

I have a question on Oakeshott I was wondering if you could help me with. We're reading "On Being Conservative" in my political ideologies class and one student asked what Oakeshott's view of the civil rights and other social movements of the 1960s was. I gave an educated-guess answer but I don't know what Oakeshott's actual views on the 60s were. Did he see the social movements of the 60s as forms of "innovation" that he was skeptical of, or did he welcome at least some of the more the cautious, prudent changes it brought? Could you give me and the class a synopsis of Oakeshott's views of the 60s, and tell us if he wrote anything on it?

Hi Joel,

I am aware of no place where Oakeshott commented on the civil rights movement or other social movements of the 60s. I am not surprised as he was notorious for having little to say about contemporary politics, especially those not in England. But, if you were to push I think you are correct that he would have been suspicious of innovation--but not entirely closed to it. I think it is completely reasonable to generate an oakshottian defense of especially the civil rights movement, and yet it can also show his limitations. Not only could one say that the changes were prudent and cautious (if we think of something like what the NAACP or CORE was asking for), but better yet they were presented as in keeping with the political traditions of the United States. When I read something like MLK's "Letter from Birm Jail" I often suggest to my students that while his goal is progressive the argument is interestingly conservative, calling upon traditions and the the need to develop their trajectories so they do not ossify--a danger for Oakes as much as inappropriate change.

To understand what an Oakshottian analysis might provide of the civil rights movement, look at his discussion of the American revolution in the essay "Rationalism in Politics" (pp. 30-33) or the following discussion of women's suffrage in Political Education:
“For example, the legal status of women in our society was for a long time (and perhaps still is) in comparative confusion, because the rights and duties which composed it intimated rights and duties which were nevertheless not recognized. And on the view of things I am suggesting, the only cogent reason to be advanced for the technical ‘enfranchisement’ of women was that in that all or most other important respects they had already been enfranchised. Arguments drawn from abstract natural right, from ‘justice,’ or some general concept of human personality must be regarded as either irrelevant or as unfortunately disguised versions of the one valid argument; namely that there was incoherence in the arrangements of society which pressed convincingly for remedy.” (p. 57)

Thus I could imagine him approving of political that served to articulate an incoherence and then to resolve it. Politics is about adjusting the law to social changes that have already begun to occur, not using the law to develop social change. The civil rights movement could be viewed as attempting to resolve the incoherence between American commitments to ideals of liberty and equality and the practices of Jim Crow. But let me repeat, I know of no place where he makes this argument!!! Clearly this is conservative in a fashion. It is anxious about the pursuit of abstract ideal and radical change. But it is neither is it closed to change, rightfully conceived --and in part the trick of politics is knowing and rhetorically demonstrating which changes ARE appropriate.

Steven Gerencser, Department of Political Science, Indiana University, South Bend