John Stuart Mill and the agrarian question

Abstract

This article focuses on John Stuart Mill’s treatment of the agrarian question. It proves that, after having accepted the scientific validity of a coherent system in his youth, Mill could not set a demarcation line to maintain this coherence through theoretical and practical tensions. In principle, Mill was based on individualistic theories; finally, not only he adopted socialism, but a version of socialism open to the same objections on which he had so insisted along his work. The whole Mill’s theory was designed to transform institutions so as to achieve a Utopian end in the stationary state, but, to achieve that state, Mill realized that it was necessary to modify people “habits”… and State can only modify habits through authoritarianism.