How can we draw on J.S. Mill’s philosophy when trying to understand politics and Brexit today?

Although J. S. Mill was born over 200 years ago, his philosophical approach to political and social analysis is as relevant and informative as ever. This year, his birthday (20/5/19) is just a few days before the European Elections in the UK (23/5/19) so I shall discuss his politics.

The upcoming European Elections started me thinking about which party J.S. Mill may have belonged to today, given that he was elected MP for Westminster representing the Liberal Party (1865-8). The Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs, Radicals, free trade Peelites and the Independent Irish Party uniting together into this one party 160 years ago next month. In 1988, the Liberal Party transformed into the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) party we know today. So I imagine that, if J.S. Mill were a politician now, he would stand as a Lib Dem candidate and wish to be an MEP (Member of the European Parliament). As I mentioned in my previous post, Mill as a Francophile (as many 18^th and 19^th century philosophers were eg David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, Karl and Eleanor Marx) and traveller around Europe and beyond, would, I think, have supported Remain, which is a central campaign of the Lib Dems. I wonder, how might J.S. Mill have argued for Remain? How might he have tried to prevent a chaotic Brexit?

We shall never know, but it may be informative to analyse what we can learn from his unique brand of political philosophy so we can avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future. Fitzpatrick published his interpretation of J.S. Mill’s political philosophy in 2006 yet, I suggest, a decade later in 2016 voters fell into the same logical errors Fitzpatrick describes as problematic at the beginning of the 21^st century[i]. Thus, it seems to me that perhaps, Brexit and Trump are seen as being the result of a more recent change in how voters and politicians argue and present their views in debates than is actually the case. Politicians attracting voters through fallacious reasoning and misrepresenting the facts and problems to give apparent solutions is not a new phenomenon yet voters seem to fall into the same logical traps. Although learning from history is important, I suggest it needs to be supplemented with learning from philosophy by analysing past argumentative strategies which aim to convince and change behaviour, including voting patterns and world views. This, I claim, is just as vital to breaking the cycle of history repeating itself, be it repeating the poor political judgement of a government, preventing WW3 or preventing voter manipulation and political rhetoric which encourages hate crime and discrimination.

How can we draw on J.S. Mill’s philosophy when trying to understand politics and Brexit today?

While demonstrating how J.S. Mill can successfully answer Rawls’s criticisms of theories similar to Mill’s, Fitzpatrick outlines some key principles which show how J.S. Mill’s brand of utilitarianism helps to combat modern problems in politics[ii]. Although Fitzpatrick uses American examples of the Bush administration and his book was published in 2006[iii], I couldn’t help but see striking resembles with observations made in the UK about Brexit since the 2016 referendum. I think Fitzpatrick[iv] provides us with excellent vocabulary and descriptions which I think can be cross-applied to understanding the Brexit process and shed light on thoughts and feelings many Remainers are struggling to express in words. So I want to share my favourite quotes and explore how to relate three of Fitzpatrick’s five reasons[v] why, contra Rawls, J.S. Mill has a solid theory/concept of justice which can be applied to Brexit.

1: Fitzpatrick’s “reality-based community”[vi]

Although consequentialist theories are often heavily criticised, I think Fitzpatrick points out two vital advantages of good consequentialist thinking[vii] used by utilitarians which I think would have made a huge improvement to Brexit. By having to reason from actions to predicting various possible outcomes (consequences of your actions), it encourages two important mind sets:

a)      being “reality-based”[viii]: in order to accurately calculate what might happen as a consequence of your actions, you need to begin with and track true facts, not a fictional notion, to find solutions[ix]. So it inherently rejects the recent phenomenon of what a White House aide described as the mind set of “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.” “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality” which is considered more powerful because it makes them “history’s actors”[x]. Meanwhile, those who base their thought (in the spirit of the enlightenment and empiricism) on reality, truth and fact, “will be left to just study what we do.”[xi] Indeed, much of the anti-EU Leave campaign seems to me to have taken the reality-creating approach rather than the reality-based approach. This is evidenced by the many false statements and promises made, embodied by the Brexit Bus which misled voters into thinking the EU was draining money away from the NHS, making it suffer under the strain. Even recently, it became apparent that some stats cited were invented by the wishful thinking of a Leave supporter, as opposed to grounded in statistical fact. When it comes to Brexit, I think, this reality-creating approach feeds into the second aspect of Fitzpatrick’s first reason reasons[xii].

b)      “path dependence”[xiii]: Fitzpatrick quotes Diamond as writing that: “The particular course of action that a leader, or a country, pursues initiates a chain reaction of events that prevents a return to the starting point and the implementation of an alternative course.”[xiv] This seems to me to be very similar to the uphill struggle the people’s vote campaign for a second referendum and the push to revoke Article 50 are experiencing. Triggering Article 50 on the basis of the referendum result (despite the referendum only being advisory not legally binding so there was no obligation to act on it) set off a chain of causal events which have gathered so much momentum that no matter how disastrous Brexit could be, MPs march on regardless with a mantra of delivering the undeliverable (a good Brexit). It seems inconceivable to many MPs that they could simply return to the beginning by revoking Article 50 and take a less damaging course of action. However, the Lib Dems and Change UK do see this as a possible course of action. As with the Iraq war, Brexit has also been compounded by “poor planning and outright blundering” which led to “chaos”[xv]. All in all, this path dependence analogy I think fits the political dilemma of Brexit rather well:

“When you enter a one way street in the wrong direction, no matter which way you turn, you will be entering all the other streets the wrong way.”[xvi]

2: “Opportunity costs”[xvii]

Two and three are paired together as closely related reasons. This principle relies on identifying what is “a relevant cost”[xviii]. What’s an important detriment/disadvantage? What’s the pros and cons “trade-offs”[xix]? Although these questions seemed to be asked, the calculations were skewed by misinformation and irrelevant issues to social welfare, such as whether UK passports should be blue or red. Misinformation severely impacts on calculations, for instance, money for the NHS is a relevant cost but needs to be calculated using true facts otherwise you end up with the wrong solution. For instance, the solution to problems in the NHS may be to provide them with more financial support, however, if all the facts are not transparently accounted for then the solution may be impossible to implement. In this way, the cost of losing huge sums of money preparing for Brexit drains money away from the NHS in itself with no upside to balance it out. Whereas paying the EU is not as costly as preparing and going through with Brexit and it does provide some upsides, such as EU funding for UK projects, which saves the UK money. By not admitting to these costs they could not be measured against each other to accurately predict ahead of the referendum whether there would be more money for the NHS if the UK stayed or left the EU. Thus, it was only relatively recently that the UK public learnt that Brexit was more expensive than remaining in the EU so the NHS is in greater danger of collapsing than before. Therefore, many members of the public voted on the false belief that the NHS would be better off if they voted for Brexit when in fact the opposite was true.   

3: “False dichotomies” (aka false bifurcation; the ‘either-or fallacy’)[xx]

In a nutshell, this logical fallacy occurs when you are presented with a restricted choice of x or y as though they are the only options available, when in fact there is a minimum of one further option z you could choose instead. Fitzpatrick demonstrates how such fallacious reasoning can also be used to manipulate voters into choosing option x over option y because y is so ridiculous you decide on x by default, forgetting that someone has thereby distracted you off a better option, z[xxi]. Fitzpatrick provides an example of a false dichotomy argument in American politics, which he refers to as a syllogism[xxii]. More precisely, perhaps he has ordered his false dichotomy argument as a disjunctive syllogism which takes the form of:

Premise 1: x V y (x or y)

Premise 2: ¬ y (not y)

Conclusion: ∴ x (therefore x)

I shall test his hypothesis that setting out contemporary politics in this logical form would help voters to detect erroneous arguments.

P1: Either you support the Leave campaign or you oppose the NHS (by ploughing money into the EU instead of the NHS)

P2: Nobody should oppose the NHS

C: Therefore everybody should support the Leave campaign (so vote for/support Leave)

This tries to exclude the possibility of supporting the NHS and supporting the Remain campaign. This false dichotomy disjunctive syllogism also ignores that merely planning Brexit has deprived the NHS of huge sums of money and so failed to help the referendum voters predict that now, nearly three years on, Leave supporters are saying that the NHS might collapse after Brexit and become a private health insurance system instead, which is the very opposite of the referendum promises. Had their promises been shown to be based on reality-creating fictions not true facts, then people would have been able to better predict the outcome of Brexit prior to the 2016 referendum. Thus, voters in 2016 mostly failed to see that there was no dichotomy. Voters could vote Remain and not be opposed to the NHS, quite the contrary, they were in a better position to support it. Fitzpatrick points out that the purpose of false dichotomies is to “distract” from “rational discussion” including weighing up the relevant, important opportunity costs[xxiii]. A comprehensive opportunity cost debate was further hindered by David Cameron’s refusal to allow EU leaders to come to the UK prior to the referendum to outline what Brexit may look like. Hence, the situation of knowing better now than we did back in 2016 could have been somewhat avoided had false dichotomies been exposed and a full opportunity cost debate had taken place prior to the 2016 referendum. This I think explains why many Leave voters felt deceived that they had been distracted into believing the Leave predictions of what a post-Brexit UK would look like, only to discover on exiting the EU, this would not be the case.  

I suggest other false dichotomies that occur in Brexit debates which could be modelled on Fitzpatrick’s syllogism. One such example which may show the force of Fitzpatrick’s argument structure is:

P1: Either you respect a referendum result/will of the people or you want to oppose it /democracy

P2: Nobody should want to oppose a referendum result/ democracy

C: So you should respect the referendum result (delivering Brexit and not having a second referendum)

This all avoids z: the first referendum was in 1975 and was also about whether to stay in the EEC (now the EU) two years after joining. Thus, the first referendum was not in 2016, that one in fact counts as the second referendum on EU membership. So by that logic, the 2016 referendum should not overturn the first referendum result in 1975 and thereby the advocate of the above disjunctive syllogism would also have to assent to the parallel conclusion that the 2016 referendum disrespects democracy.

Any once-in-a-generation argument doesn’t avoid this conclusion because it seems impossible to measure what one generation is since it is a moving target. How can it be that, at time T, person A, belongs to generation G and so is free to vote on EU membership while person B who is only a few months younger belongs to generation G2 and cannot vote? Both may have the same lifespan, dying in the same year at almost the same age yet categorize as different generations with different rights. Indeed, person B could outlive person A and thus be more affected by person A’s vote than person A themselves. Like grains of sand being added, babies are continuously being born and attempts to distinguish such clear generational categories on which to base wide ranging rights seems to me too arbitrary.

Fitzpatrick’s reasons for supporting J.S. Mill’s political philosophy also capture the problems of obtaining a Brexit deal and finding solutions which satisfy both MPs and voters. Often people look for solutions to Brexit which amount to “the desire to have the best of both worlds” and forget that many things boil down to a “trade-off”[xxiv]. So, if by solution one means having your cake and eating it then voters will be left with just “the illusion of a solution by someone seeking their vote.”[xxv]

Thus, I think Fitzpatrick’s interpretation of J.S. Mill’s brand of Utilitarianism and Consequentialism gives us incredibly useful tools of thought. However, we need to appreciate them and learn to use them wisely. We always need to think and analyse for ourselves not just blindly follow doctrines and principles because “no single philosophical vision has a monopoly on the truth”[xxvi].

So listen, debate, analyse and unearth the truth and problem solve accordingly.

The path dependence could have been avoided had the UK followed Fitzpatrick’s interpretation[xxvii] of how to put J.S. Mill’s political philosophy into practice: be a reality-based community who is skilled at spotting false dichotomies thereby weighing up the opportunity cost accurately to make reliable predictions and take the best course of action which does not leave a country stuck up a one-way street! 

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[i] John Fitzpatrick R., John Stuart Mill’s Political Philosophy, Continuum Studies in British Philosophy (Great Britain: Continuum, 2006), 150–57.

[ii] Fitzpatrick, 150–57.

[iii] Fitzpatrick, John Stuart Mill’s Political Philosophy.

[iv] Fitzpatrick.

[v] Fitzpatrick, 150.

[vi] Fitzpatrick, 150.

[vii] Fitzpatrick, 150–54.

[viii] Fitzpatrick, 150–51.

[ix] Fitzpatrick, 150.

[x] Fitzpatrick, 151.

[xi] Fitzpatrick, 151.

[xii] Fitzpatrick, 150–57.

[xiii] Fitzpatrick, 151.

[xiv] Fitzpatrick, 151–52.

[xv] Fitzpatrick, 152.

[xvi] Fitzpatrick, 152.

[xvii] Fitzpatrick, 152.

[xviii] Fitzpatrick, 153.

[xix] Fitzpatrick, 154.

[xx] Fitzpatrick, 154.

[xxi] Fitzpatrick, 155.

[xxii] Fitzpatrick, 155.

[xxiii] Fitzpatrick, 157.

[xxiv] Fitzpatrick, 154.

[xxv] Fitzpatrick, 154.

[xxvi] Fitzpatrick, 152.

[xxvii] Fitzpatrick, John Stuart Mill’s Political Philosophy.