A Year of Feminist Classics also had Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter as a January read as well as Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

So Long a Letter is a letter from Ramatoulaye to her expatriate best friend Aissatou, the wife of her husband’s best friend. Both are first wives of men who suddenly took second wives. In the cases of the second marriages, neither of the first wives were consulted. Aissatou divorces her husband, learns a skill, and moves overseas to work in the country’s American embassy. Ramatoulaye remains married but lives separately and raises the couple’s 12 children alone. The start of the letter informs Aissatou that Ramatoulaye’s husband Modou Fall is dead. The rest of the letter relates her reaction to her widowhood and rehashes the history of her marriage to explain how she feels now.

The introduction to the book claims it to be one of the first books that presents African women not as victims. Perhaps that suggestion influenced how I viewed the book, as the practicality of Ramatoulaye shows through, as well as her resilience in the face of adversity. You can almost hear the Gloria Gaynor song fading in during the soundtrack to the movie version.

The two main women come across as flawed but sincere women who have strength and integrity. Both are educated. One second wife is portrayed as a conniving gold-digger, the other as a clueless dupe. Both of the husbands are weak, not able to face down their first wives or families. Not all men get that treatment. One of Ramatoulaye’s suitors is very dashing, intelligent, and thoughtful of Ramatoulaye’s needs without neglecting his own. I’m not sure how I feel about these portrayals. It feels just a tad manipulative, but for all I know, that’s exactly how most men who take second wives in Senegal act.

Ramatoulaye is interested in Senegal’s politics. She reminds her suitor, a member of parliament, that only 4 of the deputies are women, less than one per province. But it’s also clear that with the division of labor, women can’t participate very well. Ramatoulaye has 12 children under her care. Even before her husband abandoned her, she had little help from him in the day to day care of them. It’s not coincidence that women started gaining political power in the U.S. when they started having access to birth control (as ineffective as it was around the turn of the century) and could start reducing their family sizes. Which is one of the reasons why I think some the U.S. most effective aid is that which goes toward family planning.

One thing to note is that the polygamy portrayed here is not the polygamy most in the U.S. are familiar with, that of the fundamentalist Mormons. Although the women are young, they are not coerced or kept powerless. The harms caused are different than the ones we’re used to seeing. Abandonment and an inability to support families is what comes up in the book. Abuse is the problem we see in the states.

No links again this time. Check A Year of Feminist Classics for roundup posts and more discussion.

Title: So Long a Letter (originally Une si longue lettre)
Author: Mariama Bâ
Cover creator: Tony Richardson (designer) / John Montgomer (art)
Series: African Writers Series
Imprint / publisher: Heinemann / Pearson
Format: Paperback
Length: 96 p.
Publication date: September 2008 (originally 1979)
ISBN-13: 978-0-435913-52-6

I read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as part of A Year of Feminist Classics.

Don’t read the book like I did though. That is to say, don’t go to Project Gutenberg, download the text, and read that. It’s tempting because it’s free. I discourage this not because it’s stealing from the author. No, I discourage this method because Mary Wollstonecraft wrote this book around 1790. In other words, because of the language and style of writing back then, I had know idea what she was talking about about 2/3 of the time. Sometimes it’s the archaic words, though those can be looked up. Sometimes it’s the context. Much of the text is a response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom I haven’t read, for instance. And some of it is just obtuse. I counted fifteen clauses in one sentence.

Do yourself a favor and buy an annotated and footnoted edition. You’ll get a lot more out of it than I did out of this.

Originally, I planned to write something more detailed. Instead, I think I am going to just put in some reactions I had as I read through the text, with just a little bit of context for each.

Introduction. The male pursues, the female yields—this is the law of nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. – Wollstonecraft makes lots of scientific pronouncements of fact that just aren’t so. I don’t think it’s unusual for the day and age. The scientific method didn’t become firmly established for another hundred years, was badly implemented often even then, and even intellectuals today get it wrong. Wollstonecraft invokes reason as the basis for modern thought, but reason and science aren’t exactly the same. To me, science should be the basis for knowledge and action, with reason as a supplement. Wollstonecraft’s reason is sometimes imperfect, but especially here it becomes awful because it is based on false premises. What’s more, and what stood out in this and a few other passages was that her false premises work against her ultimate aim, to secure rights for women. I don’t expect perfection from an early work of feminism (or even current ones), but it sure makes me cringe to see her blithely accept some of these things.

from every quarter, I have heard exclamations against masculine women, but where are they to be found? I love this bit. The internet did not spawn concern trolls.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces Is that sarcasm? I sure hope so!

The Rights and Duties of Mankind Considered. Consequently the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness, must be estimated by the degree of reason, virtue, and knowledge, that distinguish the individual Wollstonecraft wants to base her vindication on first principles, which she considers to be reason, virtue, and knowledge. Certainly it’s a step up from divine revelation, but there’s a lot of fuzzy wiggle room in there, particularly with virtue. What one person considers to be virtuous is a sin to another. And shortly afterward, Wollstonecraft identifies a flaw in reason…

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed Yup. We still do. In our defense, I think this failing is common to humanity. But it’s particularly dangerous to classes of people that do not have power when those in power do this.

the regal power, in a few generations, introduces idiotism into the noble stem Wollstonecraft has a very anti-authoritarian bent. Through the book, she criticizes kings, men, the military, and parents as their mere exercising of authority makes them stupid. I wonder what level of authority she would have found acceptable.

The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed. Many are the causes … that contribute to enslave women by cramping their understandings and sharpening their senses. One, perhaps, that does more mischief than all the rest, is their disregard of order. Wollstonecraft is careful to lay the blame for this one women’s education, but her overall frustration with how much women hurt their own causes comes through. She rails over and over against the predominant view that men think and women feel, and that’s the way things are supposed to be.

Youth is the season for love in both sexes, but in those days of thoughtless enjoyment, provision should be made for the more important years of life, when reflection takes the place of sensation. This is another thread that runs throughout the work, that how women are taught to behave isn’t a good basis for a lasting companionship. Being flirty and pretty is good to attract the attention of a man, but it isn’t good to hold it. Wollstonecraft repeatedly praises the value of friendship and respect in marriage. I don’t exactly cotton to her notion that gallant love has little place after the initial attraction has passed, but she’s quite correct that people really need to have something to talk about to make them effective long term.

however convenient [gentleness] may be found in a companion, that companion will ever be considered as an inferior, and only inspire a vapid tenderness, which easily degenerates into contempt. I don’t have anything to say about this one. It just needs quoting.

Let [women's] faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale. One of Wollstonecraft’s arguments seems to be, paraphrased, What have you got to lose? If I’m wrong, women will still be at the place they are intellectually, and it won’t have been imposed on us by fiat. She makes this argument over and over in various ways.

The Same Subject Continued. That a girl, condemned to sit for hours together listening to the idle chat of weak nurses or to attend at her mother’s toiler, will endeavor to join the conversation is, indeed very natural; and that she will imitate her mother or aunts, and muse herself by adorning her lifeless doll, as they do in dressing her, poor innocent babe! is undoubtedly a most natural consequence. Just pointing out that supposedly differences in the sexes don’t occur in a vacuum, so that even the differences that appear early in life aren’t necessarily innate. It’s passages such as this that make me think that Wollstonecraft sometimes uses the word “education” in a broad context, though sometimes she also uses it to refer only to formal teaching.

Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman is Reduced by Various Causes. I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving trivial attention, which men think it manly to pay attention to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. Again, just needed quoting.

if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps, created, were treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. There are likely underlying emotional differences between women and men due to differences in hormones, but I’m of the firm belief that they are generally minor. I think nearly all of the emotional differences are the result of cultural inculcation.

many girls become the dupes of a sincere affectionate heart, and still more are, as it may emphatically be termed, ruined before they know the difference between virtue and vice: and thus prepared by their education for infamy, they become infamous. Wollstonecraft laments the pernicious effect of what is now commonly called slut-shaming, but being a person of her times, sees the remedy as better education to avoid being a slut, rather than not shaming people. In a later passage, Wollstonecraft seems to be expressing even more dismay at people’s lack of sexual virtue than even those at the time held. There’s a streak of feminism that’s based on a prudish morality. That’s not surprising given that Western society as a whole has been pretty prudish. Feminism, for all it’s radicalness, can’t completely get away from the society from which it comes. The branches that I identify with more will be the ones that celebrate sexuality. Perhaps that’s merely the male gaze in me, but I’ll live with it.

Animadversions on Some of the Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of Pity, Bordering on Contempt. As the conduct of a woman is subservient to the public opinion, her faith in matters of religion, should for that very reason, be subject to authority. Every daughter ought to be of the same religion as her mother, and every wife to be of the same religion as her husband … As they are not in a capacity to judge for themselves, they ought to abide by the decision of their fathers and husbands as confidently as by that of the church. What is to be the consequence, if the mother’s and husband’s opinion should chance not to agree? … Indeed, the husband may not have any religion to teach her though in such a situation she will be in great want of a support to her virtue, independent of worldly considerations. First, I had never heard the word “animadversion” before, and I love it. This chapter has Wollstonecraft doing what I’m doing here: quoting other writers on the woman’s place, and giving her comments. First up is Rousseau, who Wollstonecraft rightly calls out for his serious WTFery. If you are prone to religious bullshit, Rousseau’s advice is hideously dangerous to your eternal soul. Here you are going to heaven for your belief, and then you get married and your husband immediately consigns your soul to eternal damnation by making you believe sinful things. Of course, Wollstonecraft’s most dreaded fear is that the husband gives the woman no religion, which I should think would be an improvement over giving you one. Which also makes me wonder, was Deism as popular among Europe’s elite as it was among America’s around the same time?

true grace arises from some kind of independence of mind Quoting the section where she rips a Dr. Fordyce.

Modesty Comprehensively Considered and Not as a Sexual Virtue. What can be more disgusting than that impudent dross of gallantry, thought so manly, which makes many men stare insultingly at every female they meet? Is this respect for the sex? This loose behaviour shows such habitual depravity, such weakness of mind, that it is vain to expect much public or private virtue, till both men and women grow more modest — till men, curbing a sensual fondness for the sex, or and affectation of manly assurance, more properly speaking, impudence, treat each other with respect It would be hypocritical of me to rail against the male gaze because I do love to look at pretty women, but the woman does have a point.

On this account also, I object to [women being cloistered]. They were almost on a par with the double meanings, which shake the convivial table when the glass has circulated freely. But it vain to attempt to keep the heart pure, unless it is furnished with ideas. This is the passage I noted above, where it seems like Wollstonecraft is more prudish than those with whom she associates. They seem to have no problem with using double meanings in their dinner conversation, but it does upset our author.

Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the Importance of a Good Reputation. Although I agree with the gist of Wollstonecraft’s criticism that women bear the brunt of bad reputation effects, again her solution is to hold everyone to unreachable standards of sexual morality. Rather, I say, Good Reputation is Undermined by Sexual Notions of Morality. For the most part, people ought not to care about who people are fucking. That’s another time though.

Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise From the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society. But what have women to do in society? I may be asked, but to loiter with easy grace, surely you would not condemn them all to suckle fools, and chronicle small beer! No. Women might study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurse. And midwifery … They might also study politics … Business of various kinds, they might likewise pursue. Another set of things that just needed quoting.

Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship, instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers — in a word, better citiznes. Which reminds me I do need to point out that although some of Wollstonecraft’s complaints about sexual prejudice remain relevant today (we still often assume women aren’t good at math), her prescriptions wouldn’t work today. In fact they didn’t really have the effect she thought they would when they were enacted.. She thought educating women would turn them into paragons of virtue. All she had to do was look at educated men to realized that education does not make people behave righteously. It makes them smarter, and able to stand on their own, which are sufficient reason alone. Don’t expect better government or business when women and minorities finally make it to the head of the table in force. They are as fallible as the rest of us in the patriarchy.

On National Education No quote here. This is the meat of Wollstonecraft’s policy prescription. By and large it’s come to pass in Western society. She proposes a government paid for and run system of school that will educate everyone, rich and poor, male and female. She desires for them to be day schools. That is, not boarding schools. Wollstonecraft felt that the approach of vacations made boarding schools a bad choice for education. They would be co-educational; she felt that was the only way to get teachers to treat the sexes equally. That also would allow the students to cross pollinate and develop grand passions for the arts, or politics, or whatever. Whether public schools have had the effect of reducing inequality I’ll leave for the exercises.

Oddly, I made few marks in the last chapter. The only big one is the portion where Wollstonecraft inveighs against novels. These days, novels and the theater are considered cultural. Some day, perhaps, reality television will be considered in the same manner.

No links to other blogs. I read that A Year of Feminist Classics will do some roundup posts, so follow them to see what other people are saying about the tome. I’m going to move on to January’s second book, So Long a letter, by Mariama Bâ. January is going to be a very feminist month. I’m also going to be reading the recent Carl Brandon Parallax Award winning Distances by Vandana Singh. The back cover blurb appears to make it out to be about math.

Title: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft
Imprint / publisher: Project Gutenberg
Format: Electronic book
Length: approximately 120 p.
Publication date: September 2002

Perhaps that explains a curious thing I noticed about the list. Where are the women? Nine men and Trudi Canavan. That seems awfully few.

I’m not the kind of person that gets outraged by this, though I can see why people would. The selection does make me think the list isn’t really all that useful to me. I just don’t see that a list that under-represents such a large group of writers by such a large margin as being really a list of the best.

In 2009, Amazon U.K. picked 7 men and 3 women (and 2 of the books were reprints of stuff first published in previous years) for their science fiction and fantasy list. In 2008, 9 men and 1 woman. If anyone has stats/links for prior years, leave ‘em in the comments. I wasn’t able to find them.

I never really paid that much attention to the Amazon best lists, but Amazon U.K. has made it so I’ll likely not pay attention to their picks in the future either.

For today’s Sunday Salon, I finished Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.

Last year my friend Amanda pointed me at HumanEvents.com’s Top 10 Most Harmful Books. HumanEvents.com is a rabidly conservative group. I do not criticize them for making a list of books they don’t like; I’ve made my own. In fact, they have links to purchase the entire list from Amazon.com. But to me, this was like waving the red flag in front of the bull. I want to read these books after that.

Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is on that list at number 7. Here’s what they wrote:

In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, born in 1921, disparaged traditional stay-at-home motherhood as life in “a comfortable concentration camp”–a role that degraded women and denied them true fulfillment in life. She later became founding president of the National Organization for Women. Her original vocation, tellingly, was not stay-at-home motherhood but left-wing journalism. As David Horowitz wrote in a review for Salon.com of Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique by Daniel Horowitz (no relation to David): The author documents that “Friedan was from her college days, and until her mid-30s, a Stalinist Marxist, the political intimate of the leaders of America’s Cold War fifth column and for a time even the lover of a young Communist physicist working on atomic bomb projects in Berkeley’s radiation lab with J. Robert Oppenheimer.”

As if the only person to criticize something is a person who partook. Bah!

The bulk of my contact with feminism is with friends who bemoan the stereotypes of women in the media that somehow force women to try to achieve an unrealistic position. That is not Friedan’s complaint. Times have changed. Our culture has changed. There are significant challenges in women’s rights, but they are not necessarily the same challenges that Friedan saw hampering women in the 1940s and 1950s. The point being that I come from a different world, and putting myself back into the world of Leave It To Beaver is not possible. My reactions to this book will inevitably be that of a male child of the 1980s.

Friedan’s main thesis of the book is that the life of a housewife does not entail the kind of sense of purpose and intellectual fulfillment that most women require in order to be happy. After the pioneering strides of the women’s movement in the 1920s, she saw a retreat of women back to the home and role of housewife after World War II. Many felt this was the natural place for a woman.

Friedan saw this as aided and abetted by Freud’s theory of penis envy and functionalist psychology, which gave a scientific imprimatur to this retreat. I’d never heard of functionalism before. I know Freud had much more cachet years ago, but it seems that both had far more indirect influence than Friedan gives them. I’d simply call the retreat something of a backlash. It would have happened with Freud or functionalism. Of more direct influence is what Friedan calls the sex-directed educator: a turn to classes in home economics and women and marriage.

Still, Friedan notes that the first feminist movement that earned women the right to vote as well as changes in many laws faced far more opposition. By and large, according to Friedan, women became housewives of their own volition. They chose the path of their own depression. Perhaps as a reaction to a modern world. Perhaps as a reaction to the atrocities of World War II. But Friedan also identifies and identity crisis among women as well. The traditional role for boys forced them to decide what they wanted to be in life. The role of breadwinner was mostly foreordained, but that leaves a wide choice of professions from which boys had to choose. Women on the other hand didn’t really face that choice in large numbers prior to the war. Faced with risking unhappiness in a career, many women fell back on a traditional role that they believed would provide automatic fulfillment: wife and mother.

If there is any group that Friedan blames in The Feminine Mystique, it’s that of business and advertisers who manipulate women through well-planned campaigns in order to sell more product. In a telling and I think under-explored note toward the end of the chapter, Friedan relates a conversation with an advertising researcher:

That’s what I mean, I said. Why doesn’t the pie-mix ad tell the woman he could use the time saved to be an astronomer?

It wouldn’t be too difficult, he replied. A few images—the astronomer gets her man, the astronomer as the heroine, make it glamorous for a woman to be an astronomer … but no, he shrugged again. The client would be too frightened. He wants to sell pie mix. The woman has to want to stay in the kitchen.

The exchange shows the complicity of business perfectly. The pie mix business sole reason for existence is to make money through the selling of pie mix. It isn’t a social betterment agency. While we can change the rules of the game, the purpose of a business will not change. But it also makes me ask, Why isn’t anyone else running these ads? The Army and Marines make all sorts of ads to try to make joining the military sexy and desirable. They are pretty effective. I don’t see the Society for Women Engineers running similar ads. Ads that colleges and universities run, while populated by multi-cultural and gender-balanced students, are uniformly boring. I keep reading in the newspapers about shortages of suitably educated Americans in the sciences. So why aren’t the businesses that depend on a steady supply of new scientists and technicians making recruiting ads that sell the professions needed. Again, the few I see are boring as hell.

In addition to a lack of purpose and fulfillment, Friedan devotes a couple of chapters to ways housewives seek to fill that hole inside that the wind blows through. One method is through ever-expanding housework. She notes that most housework really isn’t a full time job, yet most housewives spend full time on it, and have some left over for the husband when he comes home. She sees this as an unconscious decision from women to create more busywork to fill their time because being a housewife is supposed to fill that need inside. In her view, it doesn’t. The extra housework simply leaves her feeling tired and still empty.

A second method Friedan saw housewives attempt to fill that hole is through sexual adventure. I personally have seen many people, women and men, do exactly this. So it’s no surprise that Friedan saw housewives illicit affairs as manifestations of the same tendency we still see. But it’s at this point that I really started seeing the book go off course. Friedan uses the opportunity to criticize a whole host of sexual practices she sees as harmful. In other words, she was a prude. Particularly galling to me is her description of homosexuals as forever childlike, afraid of age, grasping at youth in their in their continual search for reassurance in some sexual magic. She doesn’t think it a coincidence that homosexuals started coming out in greater numbers at the same time as the feminine mystique took hold. It might not be coincidence, but I doubt it’s causal. Friedan had in mind that smothering moms were creating through a Freudian mechanism greater numbers of gay men. This is where I roll my eyes. And she thought Freud too bound to his cultural prejudices.

After this, Friedan really jumps the rails for one more chapter, in which she blames housewives for a malaise in children during the fifties. Children without purpose or direction getting in more trouble than ever. Friedan’s position is that if women weren’t quite so doting that children would have to find their own way in the world, developing better identities of their own along the way. Instead, she sees them as acting out their mother’s unfulfilled phantasies. (Her spelling of the word weirds me out throughout the book.) Perhaps she’s right. I don’t have the social science background to say otherwise for sure. But my guess is that it’s far more related to a large increase in living standards and attached leisure time after the second World War. In other words, prior to 1940, living standards were much lower, and the United States was far more rural. Kids had extensive chores. They worked. They were kept occupied. Economically, the U.S. experienced a great leap in income for the median American following the war. It was now possible for women to stay at home doing housework, very different from rural homemaking during the 1800s. And it was possible for children to lounge around with little to occupy them.

But she brings it all back together for her final chapter: A New Life Plan for Women. Throughout the book she bemoans the trend for women to cut short their educations, frequently marrying at younger ages than in previous decades. She saw the lack of education as prime cause of the difficulties women had in making any sort of transition away from the house. He first recommendation is for women to imply stop buying in to the feminine mystique and make an effort to find fulfillment away from the role as housewife.

There are, of course, a number of practical problems involved in making a serious professional commitment. But somehow those problems only seem insurmountable a woman is still half-submerged in the false dilemmas and guilts of the feminine mystique—or when her desire for something more is only phantasy, and she is unwilling to make the necessary effort. Over and over, women told me that the crucial first step for them was simply to take the first trip to the alumnae employment agency, or to send for the application for teacher certification, or to make appointments with former job contacts in the city. It is amazing how many obstacles and rationalizations the feminine mystique can throw up to keep a woman from making that trip or writing that letter.

Friedan recommends education. If not earlier, then as soon as is practically possible. She believes that the more education focussed on making women productive members of society as opposed to housewives and as opposed to continuing education the better the chance that women will find fulfillment. She discourages women from dropping out and marrying early. She praises innovative programs at a few universities that allow for part-time and intensive education geared toward older women who still have children to care for as well as impatience with the slow pace of a normal four-year degree.

In order to appease traditionalists, I’ve often heard feminists argue that feminism is really arguing for a choice for women. Friedan really isn’t doing that. She’s does not argue for taking a woman’s choice to stay at home away from her. But she consistently argues throughout the The Feminine Mystique that full-time housewife is the wrong choice. It deprives women of their happiness and society of the contributions the best and the brightest could be making.

Either through the awareness created by Friedan and through economic pressure, the problem of the feminine mystique as Friedan described it is largely in the past. Of course, it’s been replaced by other pressures, perhaps more harmful and insidious. This book, even with warts, is hardly harmful unless one still clings to the idea that a woman’s place is in the home. Which I’m sure the panelists at HumanEvents.com still do.

Title: The feminine mystique
Author: Betty Friedan
Imprint / publisher: Dell
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 384 p. (includes notes and index)
Publication date: 1963 (9th printing Mar 1966)
Subject: Feminism — United States
Subject: Women — United States — Social conditions
Subject: Women — Psychology
Subject: United States — Social conditions — 1945-
LC classification: HQ1420 .F7

I read the Cambridge University Press book, which actually contains three of John Stuart Mill’s works: On Liberty, The Subjection of Women, and Chapters on Socialism. For brevity’s sake, the title of this review only lists the first.

John Stuart Mill is one of the leading thinkers of the utilitarian movement in philosophy. The central tenet of that movement is that morality of actions is determined by their overall utility. Utility being the goodness of the consequences. What constituted goodness can be multiple things, but generally includes things like happiness and well-being. A well-known formulation of that is the greatest good for the greatest number of people, though the wording doesn’t exactly fit the originator’s (Bentham) intent.

On Liberty

John Stuart Mill lived in Victorian England, a environment that could be culturally stifling to those who don’t fit it’s fairly rigid strictures. On Liberty is partially pushback against that culture as well as an argument for individual liberty against the legislation of the state.

In the Introduction, Mill begins with a review of the history of liberty with respect to government. From when kings ruled by divine right to later years when government was at the sufferance of the governed. He notes that the reason for moving toward the latter is that the interests of the state are not necessarily those of its citizens. While congruent in places, they were not exact. Tyranny results when the interests of the governing do not align with the governed, and it was thought that there would be no need to protect against tyranny when democratic government was instituted. Mill disagrees with this, and argues that democracy is the government by the most numerous, and in a phrase I find particularly prescient, the most active part of the people. In other words, the interests of the people are not monolithic. One group may wish to put down another group. Mill reflects that the tyranny of the majority has come to be generally recognized as a danger in democracy.

But then Mills jumps the shark, so to speak. He goes off script. He expands his reprobation of the majority for not only legislating conformance, but also for using public opinion to fetter individuals. He believes that moral mandates from society also subjugate the individual, and that individuality needs additional protection.

Mill bases his arguments, not surprisingly, on utility rather than on any abstract rights. His argument rests on the idea that liberty is best for human well-being in a broad general sense and he intends his arguments to demonstrate this. Jumping ahead a bit, I think his arguments fall somewhat short. They end up being self-referential and subjective rather than objective measurements. Happiness and goodness aren’t particularly measurable, and particularly not in those days. So he paints himself into a corner with assertions that countries and times respecting liberty have a better well-being, because they are generally accepted as being better off. Which to me, circles back to his approbation of public opinion. How is the public determining that one particular society is better off any different than it’s determination that Victorian values are better. On the other hand, it’s not like Mills has a lot of hard data to go on here. But it would be nice had he recognized the circle in the argument and made an attempt to address it.

Mills thinks that there is but one legitimate reason for government or society intervening against the liberty of an individual: self-protection, individually or collectively. He proposes three areas of liberty that should be preserved from interference. First, that the freedom of thought (and being inseparable from it, the freedom to publish and express thoughts) should be inviolate. Second, that individuals should have the liberty of tastes and pursuits to do what they like, so long as the liberty does not harm others, even if it is foolish. And third, that individuals should have the freedom to unite for any purpose not involving harm to others.

In his second section, Mill justifies the requirement for absolute freedom of thought and expression not by an assertion that morality is relative. Instead, he believes that there are some things that are morally correct. But, being infallible beings, we will never be 100% certain what those truths are.

Thus the interests of utility are served by absolute freedom of thought and expression. If we have a marketplace of competing ideas, the constant battle for survival between the ideas will continually test correct ideas and make them stronger. In other words, if an idea is not the truth, the presence of competing thoughts which may contain better information will expose the lie. And society is enriched by learning better and better truths.

Mills also spends considerable ink on the counter-argument that some truths are so time-tested as to be certain. He thinks they cannot be protected for several reasons. One reason is that what seems to be correct for one age or society may not be correct for others. Another reason is that ideas that are not continually test are not deeply held. He gives by example certain older churches whose teachings are not held so much by converts as by the descendants of the originators. Having simply been taught the tenets of the church rather than coming to believe them through testing them, the ideas become muddled convenience. Adherents will ignore portions that aren’t convenient, or which do not match the tradition of the community. Over time, the differences become larger until the ideas to which the churchmen adhere hardly resemble their professed creed. Mills argues that being forced to defend time-tested ideas against challenges, whether thought of as frivolous or not, will bring about more deeply held knowledge of the truth.

In his third section, Mills write a paean to individuality and against custom. He thinks a strong, vibrant society is one in which eccentrics abound. Rather than bemoan wildness and going out of bounds, he celebrates it. Genius is only a product of more individuality. According to Mills, genius and progress can never come from completely following customs. Doing something new and great by definition is something that is not customary. Someone has to do something not ordinarily done. As an example, Mills proffers China, explaining how it has become stationary because of an extreme adherence to custom, that other countries have passed the once pre-eminent lands of the Far East.

Mills spends most of the fourth section delineating when it is appropriate for society to intervene. He writes about various things that may seem to be harming someone else, but which do not, for the purposes of society’s ability to punish. He argues that specific or risk of damage must occur, not merely a contingent injury. If no perceptible hurt is created, then there is no damage. For something that is merely inconvenience for the public at large, society should be able to bear the burden rather than the individual. On this argument, I have little difficulty.

But where Mills has the most difficulty in drawing up a cogent argument on the limits of the actions a society has over the individual. Remember, Mills is not arguing merely against state power, but also against social limits as well. A telling line is this, speaking of actions of another with which we disagree: We have a right to avoid it (though not to parade our avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. A person cannot express moral reprobation or do anything to make the other uncomfortable.

I have no problem with Mills general argument that societal pressure can be just as harmful as government action, it becomes much more difficult to draw a line in the sand. How shall an individual know when he is expressing his individual choices and when he has crossed the line to inappropriate pressure? Would he then be conforming to just another custom? Isn’t his stricture just another form of restricting individuality? With respect to non-state interference, I think Mills has not made a clear philosophy.

But then, philosophy is rarely clear.

Mills’ fifth section concerns some practical applications of his theories on liberty. He adds a few principles and applications here that are worth repeating, though I won’t go do so here. In some cases, I don’t think his view of the practical implications fits with his theoretical underpinnings. As is often the case with people, Mills finds ways to tweak situations to fit the theory as he would like, rather than apply the theory. I doubt he realized he was doing so. I don’t think this is a great failing of the theory.

I enjoyed the work for the most part. What I didn’t like wasn’t so much Mills’ positions as his writing style. One of these days, I’ll need to learn to read older writings without grimacing. I am addicted to modern, easy to read styles.

The Subjection Of Women

Mill attempts to do a very valiant thing in The Subjection Of Women, to argue that the customs and laws of England and Europe with regard to women were depriving them of greater well-being. By them Mill meant not just women, but also men. At the time, I’m sure his treatise was considered very learned, but in retrospect it doesn’t seem to accomplish his goal in my view.

In the style of the day, everything he attempts to make his point through logic. As in, state an assumption, then attempt to build that into a strong case through logic. But his assumptions are often very false. There’s a page or two he writes on how freeing women would result in less immoral sexual ways, for instance. In other words, since men are holding women down, the women are responding by being extra flirtatious and licentious because they have no outlet for their desire for freedom.

He also spends a number of pages writing an apologia for why women haven’t achieved as much as men in the fields where they are allowed. But rather than prove that women are the equal of men, it simply reverts the real known state to we don’t know.

On the other hand, he make one very cogent argument. That is that the utility of the women is greatly increased, to the point that it outweighs any minor inconvenience with regard to the men losing their prerogatives. Women’s lot improves far more than men’s lot could possibly decrease.

And I think he does a pretty good job of showing that there really isn’t any realistic reason why women should be held back. That logically speaking, that would only need be done if women really were better than men. If their skills are worse, there would be no point in restraining their opportunity, for they couldn’t take advantage of the opportunity.

Chapters On Socialism

Of the three works by Mill in this collection, I enjoyed reading this one the most. I think his ideas in On Liberty are of more importance and are more original, but Chapters On Socialism was concise and clear.

Chapters On Socialism was published after Mill’s death. Helen Taylor, Mill’s step-daughter, allowed them to be published despite lacking Mill’s normal editing procedure. Mill took great care in the phrasing he used. Since the manuscript was among his papers at his death, it’s assumed that he hadn’t yet written his second or third or further drafts. I wonder if that’s partially what makes it so readable compared to the other two works.

The chapters on socialism are: Introductory, Socialist objections to the present order of society, The socialist objections to the present order of society examined, The difficulties of Socialism, and The idea of private property not fixed but variable. In the second chapter, Mill started with some general socialist objections to problems with the then-current form of capitalism. But then he wrote something that scared me:

As I shall have ample opportunity in future chapters to state my own opinion on these topics, and on may others connected with and subordinate to them, I shall now, without further preamble, exhibit the opinions of distinguished Socialists on the present arrangements of society, in a selection of passages from their published writings. For the present I desire to be considered as a mere reporter of the opinions of others.

What follows are selections from Louis Blanc’s Organisation du Travail, Victor-Prosper Considérant’s La Destinée sociale, and Robert Owen’s The Book of the New Moral World. These passages are full of just plain flat out wrong assertions about capitalism. For instance, this objection by Considérant:

It robs society by the adulteration of products, pushed at the present day beyond all bounds. And in fact, if a hundred grocers establish themselves in a town where before there were only twenty, it is plain that people will not begin to consume five times as many groceries. Hereupon the hundred virtuous grocers have to dispute between them the profits which before were honestly made by the twenty; competition obliges them to make it up at the expense of the consumer, either by raising the prices as sometimes happens, or by adulterating the goods as always happens.

But as anyone familiar with microeconomics can tell you, this is not what would happen. Over and again, the objections assume monopoly control and an inability to substitute. In other words, they assume that behavior is inelastic. But people are remarkably adaptable and changeable in the face of changing prices. This is not just on the consumer side, but also on the supplier side. In this example, 100 grocers would not establish themselves. If they were plopped down all at once, fairly soon a number of them would quit being grocers and instead turn to other professions, or move to other cities where there isn’t such a glut of grocers. The situation of adulteration described in the example would occur whether there existed 100 grocers or 20. The incentive to cheat is the same. In fact, it’s greater when there are only twenty, as a larger number of participants in the market is likely to reduce the prices, meaning there’s less room for saving costs with adulterated products as the number of items sold is fewer per grocer. What prevents this adulteration in either case the the ability of the consumer to switch to the honest consumer. And again, with more grocers, the chances of finding an honest grocer through competition go up, not down.

But, Mill did state that he wanted to be considered merely a reporter. I was dearly afraid that because these objections were so far-fetched that Mill had been taken in with them. Luckily, in The socialist objections to the present order of society examined, it becomes clear that he did not. He recognized the assumption of a monopoly and points out the simplest truth that monopolies are hard to establish and maintain. Consistent monopoly power by those selling is wholly imaginary. Mill similarly ripped to shreds most of the other arguments against capitalism.

There are a couple of objections in which he found merit. One being that capitalism doesn’t have a complete solution for poverty. He recognized that capitalism wasn’t, in fact, a zero-sum enterprise. Capitalism doesn’t require the poor to spiral lower and lower in order for the rich to circle higher and higher. But neither is there any guarantee that through hard work and honest living a man can support himself and his family. In addition, many of those who are successful do so through accident of birth or luck. Mill agreed that this was morally objectionable, though to what extent I am unsure. It didn’t seem to me that his objection was particularly vehement.

Mill also examined a couple of socialist proposals as well, to see if they solved the objections to the then-present societal ills. He thought they might. But he also went further and examined the incentives inherent in socialist systems and concluded that few would step forward to volunteer to manage a socialist cooperative, since there is little incentive to do so and considerable risk and disincentive. In addition, he thought that socialist would require considerable moral and intellectual education to substitute for the lack of incentive. Education that simply didn’t exist at the time. He also gave an example of communal running of education being problematic. Since individuals would have no means of choosing a different education for their children, the ability to get the education they desired for them would be dependent on their influence with the collective. Mill concluded his examination by writing that he thought a socialist experiment worthwhile on a small scale, but that it would be impractical for a long time because the kind of education necessary wouldn’t be available.

The very last chapter I loved. In kind of a coda, he rejects the tendency of capitalists to paint property as inviolate. History was replete with things that had previously been considered property having been changed. Ranks in the military were no longer considered the property of the holder, to be bought, sold, or passed on. In previous times, property did not always come with a right of inheritance. New forms of property can be created and other forms can be destroyed, depending on the needs of the present society. Sometimes I wish this principle were better recognized by folks both for and against the idea of intellectual property.

Title: On liberty: with the subjection of women and chapters on socialism
Author: John Stuart Mill
Editor: Stefan Collini
Alternate Title: On liberty and other writings
Series: Cambridge texts in the history of political thought
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 1989 (1995 reprint edition)
Length: xxxv, 289 p. (includes editorial material and index)
ISBN-10: 0-521-37917-2
Subject: Liberty
Subject: Women’s rights
Subject: Equality
Subject: Socialism
LC classification: JC585.M74 1989