Wednesday 15 February 2012 - Bentham's Birthday

Today is the birthday of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) </person/172> who founded the school of utilitarianism in England which included people like James and John Stuart Mill. Many British politicians and bureaucrats were influenced by his ideas and this resulted in a powerful pro-liberty reform movement in the early 19th century. Unfortunately, there was also a statist dimension to Bentham's ideas. The idea of "utility" was also used to justify greater government regulation and control in the name of increasing the "happiness" of the people, as judged by bureaucrats and politicians of course. The statist inclination of Benthamism was quickly identified by radical liberals like Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869) who argued that liberty and property could best be defended on the grounds of natural rights not utility. Hodgskin's letters to a Benthamite politician in 1832 make this point very well. </quote/147>.

Thomas Hodgskin argues for a Lockean notion of the right to property (“natural”) and against the Benthamite notion that property rights are created by the state (“artificial”) (1832)

The OLL has the Collected Works of Bentham in 11 vols. online </title/1920>.

I look on a right of property … with Mr. Locke, that nature establishes such a right (not) Mr. Bentham’s impious theory … that the legislator who established and preserved a right of property, deserved little less adoration than the Divinity himself.