How do you design a state on Utilitarian grounds? What’s the best way to make all of your people happy?
These are the questions that Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill attempt to answer.
What is Utilitarianism?
Utilitarianism runs on the Principle of Utility, which says that you ought to maximise net happiness.
Produce as much happiness as possible, with the least amount of pain.
See the system as a little like a machine. The individuals don’t matter. The only thing that matters is the amount of happiness produced.
You input actions, and the output is pleasure minus pain. Whatever will produce the highest output of that equation is the right action.
Check out this sample tutorial on Utilitarianism
A Utilitarian Dystopia?
One idea is inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s design for a prison.
Bentham wanted to create a prison with the least amount of violence for the least amount of guard effort. The result was the “panopticon”.
The panopticon is a circular prison with a central guard tower. The interior of each of the cells can be seen from the tower. But the interior of tower cannot be seen by the inmates. They never know if they’re being watched or not, and therefore behave themselves.
With minimal man power, the prison’s guards exert complete control of the inmates’ minds, and reduce violence significantly.
In his study of punishment and state power, Michel Foucault traced the structure of the government’s power. He began with the grizzly executions of traitors, torn to pieces in front of the crowd. A demonstration of the power of the king. But as the power of the state grows, so does the ingeniousness of the punishment. Historically, it begins to focus on the mind, not the body. The inspiration for the guillotine is exactly that – to deliver an end to consciousness with the minimal amount of pain to the body. Though this approach often leads to barbarity on a much wider scale than that seen before.
The aim of the state is, as ever, to exert its power over the population. What once began as the public demonstration of its power over a few unlucky victims can become a more insidious form of control over all of its citizens’ minds.
With Bentham’s idea of the panopticon, the state can enter a new stage of power relations with the public. Foucault says that Bentham’s real insight was that power rests in being seen, but unknown. Thereby, the public police themselves, feeling the state in every aspect of their lives:
“He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.”
– Foucault
This caricature of the Utilitarian state is perhaps best expressed in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
In this dystopian novel, the government’s aim is the maximisation of its citizens’ pleasure through its extreme control. For instance, recognising the need for manual labour, it engineers an underclass of humans brain-damaged enough to find it fulfilling. Or, knowing the pain of mere existence, it produces a wonder drug, Soma, which relieves your pain or puts you to sleep depending upon the dose. Maximum pleasure with minimum pain. And nothing real, or meaningful. No happiness mixed with tears. And no freedom whatsoever.
A liberal solution
The Utilitarian Philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that a government’s complete control over its population would reduce that population’s happiness. Even if the government’s sole aim was to increase aggregate happiness.
This is because the government doesn’t know you. It doesn’t know what will make you happy. You are the authority on your own personal happiness.
Mill argued, on a Utilitarian basis, that the best way of increasing aggregate happiness is for the government to not have any control over its subjects’ lives. As long as their behaviour doesn’t cause harm to others.
To find out more about Bentham, Mill and Liberalism, check out our video here:
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