MORAL ISSUE 8: Is the greatest good of the greatest number the measure of right action?

JEREMY BENTHAM

        Jeremy Bentham claims that the greatest pleasure of the greatest number is the measure of right action. He held that pleasures could be calculated, and the course of action that was likely to produce the greatest pleasure of the greatest number was the right action.

        STRENGTH: Bentham’s theory served as a basis of reform during the early industrial period, when property and market-place liberty rights of factory and mine owners took priority over the welfare (life and health) rights of workers.

        WEAKNESS: Bentham’s critics maintained that Bentham was reducing humans to animals. Animals could pursue pleasures as well as humans, and to make a maximum of pleasure the measure of right action was to equate humans with animals.

JOHN STUART MILL AND HARRIET TAYLOR

        John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor co-authored works that revised Bentham’s version of utilitarianism. To avoid the problems associated with the term “pleasure,” Mill and Taylor suggested that some pleasures are higher than others. Persons who have experienced both higher and lower pleasures, they argued, prefer the higher pleasures. They changed Bentham’s principle to “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” With this modification, the utilitarian principle prompted reforms and promoted an acceptance of moral liberalism in many societies.

        STRENGTH: Utilitarianism helps to resolve conflicts of rights. When welfare (life and health) rights come into conflict with liberty rights (property and liberty), for example, utilitarians place welfare rights over liberty rights.

        WEAKNESS: When the interests of the greatest number are the measure of right action, individuals and minorities can be treated arbitrarily under certain circumstances. When this happens, the problem is described as a tyranny of the majority’s interests.

KARL MARX

        Karl Marx maintained that the social goods of income, wealth, and power should be equally distributed. Justice required an equal and identical distribution of social goods. His position may be described as an extreme form of utilitarianism.

        STRENGTH: Marx’s theories appealed to workers who had been subject to exploitative wages by the owners of industries. They provided hope that starvation, disease, child labor and homelessness could be addressed among workers.

        WEAKNESS: An equal and identical distribution of social goods removes incentives. When workers know the will receive the same as everyone else regardless of effort, the incentive to improve oneself wanes. The effect is that productivity falls off, and fewer goods are produced to be distributed.

        Minorities who dissent from the Marxist goal, which aims at benefiting the greatest number of people, find themselves subject to oppression. The interests of the majority can tyrannize a minority or individual who does not agree with the claim that the right action is that which is likely to produce the greatest good of the greatest number. Marxism shares this weakness with the utilitarianism of Mill and Taylor.