Thread by @jholbo1

I have a loooong draft paper on this subject - Mill on Ireland. It's extremely complicated and, on the whole, Mill does not look good. The complications are of two sorts. 1) Mill has some repugnant commitments. 2) Mill is trying to be a practical politician. @delong 1/

https://twitter.com/elfsternberg/status/1488199531464331264

A couple years back @henryfarrell wrote about this at CT. He emphasizes aspects of 1). 2/ crookedtimber.org/2016/01/28/mil…

All that is undeniable but there is also 2), which doesn't make it much better, but Mill seems more tragic. The fact is: English policy was so genocidal that the reality of it couldn't be openly acknowledged, even by its critics. Mill, the politician, had to soft-pedal stuff. 3/

Classic utilitarian thinking, of course. I suspect that some of the worst stuff Henry quotes is not fully honest but is more like the framing Mill thinks he needs to adopt to get a hearing, to angle towards a least-bad solution. 4/

Which is not to deny 1). So it's tricky. Mill has genuinely awful ideas about eugenics. But he also has to not-see (not speak of) genocidal stuff, which makes him sound supportive of it, when I expect he was not. Real ugly trolley problem shit, in effect. 5/

This isn't really Twitter-fitted but I'll mention one of the most interesting moments. Mill coins 'dystopia', or 'dys-topia', to describe the Disraeli government's policies on Ireland. (Here are slips from my draft.) 6/

Now this is 1868, not 1845-1852, so the issue on the table isn't the Great Famine. It's the fate of the established church in Ireland; what to do about the Fenian uprising; also some land reform issues. What Mill is actually implying is quite precise. 7/

A few more bits from my draft concerning this. 8/

In political theory terms, we can borrow Dr Slice and Dr. Patch from Dave Estlund's "Utopophobia". 9/

Mill is accusing the Tories of being Dr. Slice who slices, knowing Dr. Patch is not going to Patch, and then goes golfing, planning to blame Patch, later, for the fact that the patient dies horribly. But he is also saying that this plan is so BAD that it actually won't work. 10/

This is true re: the established church option. The Disraeli govt. is basically proposing a second established church - Catholic - but knows perfectly well that's not going to happen - too expensive. But they are hoping someone else will take the blame when it fails. 11/

That is, they want to Slice - let's have 2 established churches - knowing Patch - let's establish the 2nd - won't happen. And the results will be bad and Patch, in effect the existing Irish Catholic hierarchy, will take the fall. (It's complicated.) 12/

Mill thinks it's fucked up and bullshit. (Everyone else does, too. No one believe the Tories on this established church issue.) But the land-use stuff is the real life and death issue. Mill thinks the Tories are advocating bloody-minded insanity. 13/

It is going to need so many dead Irish - so many millions, even in 1868 - that not enough Englishmen will be morally devilish enough to carry out the genocide. So you might as well adopt a better policy, since the evil one is, to repeat, too BAD to be practical. 14/

That Mill sees it in 1868 makes me think he saw it in 1845-1852. But he never really put it down on paper how horrible it was. Basically, you had English political economists liked Nassau Senior, and administrators like Charles Trevelyan. They are doing a Slice and Patch. 15/

They are Slicing - i.e. advocating policies that will result in millions of dead - while pretending that somehow it's someone else's job to Patch. And, coming out the other end, English landlords will get what they want: a profitable Ireland, substantially Irish-free. 16/

Mill is writing his toxic-seeming journalism (it really is pretty awful stuff) in the shadow of this Slice & Patch genocide-but-blame-someone-else scheme. He wants to try to work towards something less genocidal but still pretty damn atrocious. But what are you going to do? 17/

Some of the worst stuff Henry quotes sounds like plain anti-Irish bigotry. Was Mill so bad? I don't know, but I do know that later he wrote things extremely shrewd about how perverse the economic incentives were for Irish peasants. So I think Mill probably saw it all along. 18/

Henry sees Mill condemning welfare for millions starving. Yes, but I think the truth is that Mill sees the welfare proposals as likely to be exhausted and Slice will still be there, slicing. So what is needed is something besides Slice and Patch (but no Patch.) 19/

So Mill is being cruel to be kind, by his lights, opposing the welfare measures. He thinks the only shot is to try to expend effort transitioning to a different system, small tenants (not cottiers, not English system). 20/

I really should finish that draft and try to publish it somewhere. It's in a messy state but it's very interesting stuff. (I'm working on an ideal/non-ideal theory angle You'll be in it too @jtlevy.) 21/