Updating and balancing the classical story of the market

In this chapter, an account is given of John Stuart Mill’s efforts to provide a synthesis of the conflicting views of (1) the utilitarian political economists and their mechanical system directing the maximisation of happiness of self-centred individuals and (2) the romantic call to include the needs of humans as social and moral beings. Mill presented a synthesis in which both perspectives were taken as stages in a process of growth and development, starting with self-interest, competition and mechanics and moving towards sympathy, cooperation and moral imagination. It failed to convince all. Engels and Marx constructed a counternarrative that held the system of competition responsible for producing misery, inequality and exploitation rather than growth of benefits for all. Such strains of conflicting views were also visible in Victorian society, coupling material progress with poverty, a social philosophy based on the values of work, thrift and self-help while charity thrived, and collectivist schemes like the cooperatives combined with economic individualism.