Chapters on Socialism John Stuart Mill

These chapters originally appeared in the Fortnightly Review in the February, March, and April issues for 1879. As Helen Taylor (Mill's step-daughter) says in her explanatory note that appeared with that publication, Mill was working on the manuscripts for these chapters at the time of his death in 1873. His exposition and evaluation of the socialist ideas available to him did not include Karl Marx: the focus for the most part on the earlier ideas of the ``utopian socialists'' such as Charles Fourier.

Source of the Text

The text was digitized from an edited collection of Mill's writings, just called Socialism, published in 1891 (W.D.P. Bliss, editor, Humbolt Publishing, New York). There are some gaps in the text as edited by Bliss, in some of the material cited by Mill. I will try to remedy this by obtaining a copy of the Fortnightly review articles. I have indicated in the text where the elisions occur.

Contents

• Helen Taylor's Explanatory Note
• Introductory
• Socialist Objections to the Present Order of Society
• The Objections Examined
• The Difficulties of Socialism