Study On Mill's Socialism From Liberal Perspective

Mill's liberalism thought has been well known, but few scholars study on his socialist ideology. When confronting the serious social problems, the traditional liberal laissez-faire principle gradually demonstrated its unsuitability, Mill acutely aware of the problem, he thought the approach to revitalizing the traditional liberalism is to inject a new idea into it, that's the utopian socialism which rising from the 20,30's of 19 th century, and Fourier, Saint-Simon and Owen's socialist ideology have significant impact on Mill's thought, after the careful study of their socialist ideology, Mill absorbs the useful element of utopian socialist ideas, and explain his own socialist ideology, including upholds individual freedom, focuses on mutual assistance, and fair distribution of products and so on.Mill's socialist ideology still takes individual freedom as its basic principle, emphasizing that individual freedom couldn't be interfered unless it do harm to other's interest. He tried to draw a line between individual freedom and society to draw a line to make the scope clear respectively, to given full play to individual freedom and to avoid harming others and social interests duo to the excessively exaggerated individual freedom at the same time. Mill's socialist ideology stressed the mutual assistance and cooperation between the people, he considered that cooperation can not only improve efficiency but ultimately may change the society, to solve existing problems by non-violent way. In the allocation problem, Mill take fair distribution of products as the basic principle, although he retained the allocation of products according to capital to some extent, which illustrating the limitations of his distribution, but comparing with the capitalism distribution mode, is no doubt that the distribution mode which mainly take labor as criterion, has progressive significance.Mill's socialist ideology is still based on the principle of liberalism, which doesn't conflict with his free thought that he constantly defend, on the contrary, his liberalism thought become better duo to the merging of his socialism thought.