Author: Haroon Khalil

James Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill supported the utilitarian doctrine. James Mill, carrying on the tradition of Bentham, argued that representative democracy is the only legitimate form of government, as it alone conforms to the principles of utility. He also supported ‘property as the chief source of pleasure. Linking the right to property…

While Smith, Malthus and Ricardo were the advocates of economic and laissez-faire individualism; Bentham of philosophical and political individualism; Herbert Spencer provided sociological ground for laissez-faire individualism. Will Durant in his The Story of Philosophy, writes, ‘his (Spencer’s) interest is predominantly in the problems of economics and government; he begins and ends, like Plato, with discourses on moral and political justice’.25 And…

Bentham is a utilitarian thinker and is considered as one the leading theorists of liberalism. He is also known as a philosophic radical. The utilitarian doctrine has its beginning, like all doctrines falling within the framework of liberalism, the individual psychology. Bentham’s utilitarian doctrine conceives two impulses, ‘two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure’, which are…

After Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus in An Essay on the Principles of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society (1798) and David Ricardo in Principles of Political Economy (1917) advocated non-interference of the State in the individual liberty. Malthus cited the reason of population and Ricardo, rent to further the cause of laissez-faire. Malthus put forward a dreadful…

Adam Smith, though deeply influenced by the physiocrats, however, could not accept that labour can only produce on land and in nature. Labour being the source of ‘value’ could produce wherever it performed.10 Commerce, industry and agriculture, all became source of wealth for Smith. And how to maximize this wealth became the main objective of Smith’s…

Physiocrats In the eighteenth century, physiocrats and economists, namely, Smith, Ricardo and Malthus advocated the principle of laissez-faire, non-interference of government in economic life of individuals. Physiocrats were a school of economic thought in France led by Francois Quesnay and Mirabeau. Quesnay, a physician in the court of Louis XV, devised a chart of the economy called tableau…

cThe social contractualist doctrine of Hobbes and Locke can be treated as advocacy of early liberalism. Hobbes’s man is competitive, egoist, self-interested and is rational insofar as his safety and well-being is concerned. Further, the basis of the State is consent of the individuals through their social contract. If liberalism is about individualism, freedom and…

Philosophical and political roots of negative liberalism can be traced in the social contract theory of Hobbes and Locke. Subsequently, it was developed, revised and amplified by Bentham and J. S. Mill’s utilitarianism, Spencer’s ‘survival of the fittest’ doctrine, Paine’s doctrine of State as a ‘necessary evil’ and others. On the economic front, the Physiocrats,…

Let us treat liberalism as ‘an ideology based on a commitment to individualism, freedom, toleration and consent.1 The liberal theory of the role, its functions and the nature of state power would invariably focus on: Within this broad focus, however, along with the changing notion of individual liberty and freedom, the liberal tradition has journeyed…

We propose to deal with the roles and functions of the State, and the nature of state power. This also involves examining the relationship of the State with the society on one hand and the individual on the other. We will also discuss the relationship between the core principles of right, liberty, freedom, justice and…