Property and education: Rationality and autonomy in John Stuart Mill's social theory of co-operation

The dissertation explores the limits of the democratically radical potential of John Stuart Mill's liberalism. The approach is social theoretical rather than ethical in that I explore the theoretical grounds that support Mill's notion of politics as one arena of individual development. The assumption is that Mill sees co-operative production and common property rather than participatory democratic structures as a solution to the crisis of rational individual development in modern society.; Chapter One sets out the basic social theoretical problems in contemporary and classical justifications of democracy and probes the meaning of contemporary calls for "industrial" or "work-place" democracy.; Chapter Two outlines the social pedagogics that is reflected in Mill's utilitarianism. On the level of social theory Mill outlines a universal scheme of human development in three stages from hedonism through eudaimonism to secular altruism. This developmental scheme is confirmed in all other aspects of his social theory and forms the basic syllogism of Millian developmentalism.; Chapter Three argues that Mill's thought is fundamentally sociological. The development of the individual takes place within a social field that is described in such a way that individuality and sociality are balanced despite the irrational effects of modernity on the development of individual rational autonomy.; Chapter Four shows that Mill does not think that the education to political capacity takes place within the activity of political participation; rationality is brought to political activity after it has been developed in civil society. This is also where Mill's "possessive individualist" assumptions begin to influence his social theory.; Chapter Five argues that Mill's chief theoretical difficulty occurs in his explanation of the activity of work. There is a fundamental break in the dialectic of rationalising social activity that actually makes it near impossible to transfer the syllogism of individual development to concrete social activity in a way that would explain the education and rational development of the general population.; Finally, Chapter Six explores Mill's notion of property only to find that the break in the theory of labour reappears in the theory of property. But though the social theoretical grounds for Mill's radical support for co-operation is seriously disjointed, it is possible to outline a political and ethical argument for alternative forms of property to exclusive ownership. These alternative structures can be presented as rationalising in a way that private property often is not. And it is possible to begin work towards a liberal defense of common property.