The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (170 page)

Trotskyist political party that from the 1950s, when it was known as the Revolutionary Socialist League, pursued
entryism
into the British Labour Party. By the 1970s it had succeeded in penetrating and controlling several local Labour parties, particularly on Merseyside, and the Labour Party's national youth organization. Militant denied that it constituted an organization, claiming to be merely an informal grouping of like-minded Marxists struggling for socialism within the Labour Party.
At its peak in the mid-1980s Militant probably numbered only about 5,000 members. It concentrated on a narrow range of economic and ‘working class’ issues (for instance, the nationalization of the ‘largest 200 monopolies’); the essence of its tactics was to commit the party to direct action in support of a set of unattainable transitional demands, the inevitable failure to achieve which would lead to further overtly anti-democratic activity. For instance, its programme in Liverpool, where it controlled the city council, was based on a programme of no rent increases for council tenants, no rate rises, and no cuts in council services—inevitably leading the city into chaos and
de facto
bankruptcy.
The Labour Party took no action against the Militant Tendency until 1981. After the 1983 election the editorial board of Militant was expelled but Militant continued to dominate the party in Liverpool and to have three MPs. In 1986 expulsions on a larger scale were carried through and the party leader Neil Kinnock publicly denounced the Liverpool City Council at the Party Conference. By the 1992 election Militant Tendency had been removed from Parliament and its influence in the party extinguished.
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A state of affairs where war, and the use or threat of military force, are accorded the highest priority by the state in the pursuit of its political ends. Alternatively, a situation where military values (patriotism, unity, hierarchy, discipline) come to permeate civil society. In practice the two usages overlap. The term had its origins in the nineteenth century and in middle-class concern about the threat the military posed to civilian supremacy and fears about the erosion of secular liberal values. The debate has continued, with divergent views about the best means of subordinating the military to civilian authority: whether consciously to promote a closer identity of views between civilian and military leaders, or rely instead on the latter's professional formation and career interests. Militarism in Third World countries appears to relate more to domestic than to external crisis: here political instability, social unrest, economic weakness, and, in some cases, the threat of revolution, have been the ostensible reasons for military intervention, not only to displace civilian governments but increasingly to impose their own authoritarian social order.
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Term coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to describe the powerful alliance of the military, government agencies, and corporations involved in the defence industry. The military-industrial complex is seen as a danger, as each sector has an interest, either financial or strategic, in expanding the government's arms budget, which could lead to an arms race, and money being diverted away from more deserving schemes.

 
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(1773–1836)
Born in Northwater Bridge, Forfarshire in the North East of Scotland, the son of a mild-mannered shoemaker and smallholder, James Mill was subjected to a rigorous and detailed education at home, driven by the strong ambitions of his mother Isabel Milne . He showed considerable talent for composition, arithmetic, and Latin and Greek before the age of 7, and was given special treatment at the local parish school. His mother kept him away from other children as far as possible, and he was usually excused household chores. He was licensed to preach in 1798 and also became tutor to the family of LadyJane Stuart of Fettercairn, the beginning, perhaps, of a lifelong dislike of hereditary aristocracy, but not preventing him from joining the Stuarts when they moved to Edinburgh. Here, Mill enrolled himself at the university. His courses at Edinburgh were rich and exciting and in Dugald Stewart he was instructed by one of the great bearers of the European and Scottish
Enlightenment
. Mill's studies included history, political economy, and classics, especially Plato. In 1802 he went to London, ultimately establishing both his fame and his fortune with the publication of his
History of India
in 1817 and by gaining full-time employment in India House in 1819. Mill is now commonly remembered for two things: the education of his son John Stuart
Mill
, and his long and fruitful association with Jeremy
Bentham
. But other achievements need to be borne in mind. As an empiricist, James Mill extended and refined the classical view that the mind has no knowledge independent of experience. His
Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind
stands as a monumental effort to reduce mental phenomena to banks of sensation associated by laws of resemblance and contiguity, a truly Newtonian exercise. His essay on
Government
(1820) established a sensible operational definition of human nature, from which any defensible science of man would have to proceed. The achievement of the philosophic radicals was to better inform the radical mind, to make it more methodical, and to infuse it with a dedicated enthusiasm. Without James Mill , this achievement would have been impossible.
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(1806–73)
Born in Pentonville, London, the first of six children by James
Mill
and Harriet Burrows , educated at Home by his father in a gloomy and humourless environment, with occasional extramural assistance from
Bentham
and Francis Place , John Stuart began Greek at the age of 3, Latin at the age of 8—reading six of Plato's
Dialogues
before the age of 10—and chemistry and logic before the age of 12. He also acquired European languages, apparently quite easily, notably French and German. His domestic education was designed, above all else, to further the utilitarian creed and to make John Stuart the instrument of those reforms which Bentham and James
Mill
would not live to make themselves. The ‘poor boy’, as his dour father so patiently explained, was to be made ‘a successor worthy of both of us’. In fact, although he studied Roman law with John Austin , an important and much neglected utilitarian thinker, John Stuart did not read Bentham systematically until he was fifteen. And he was not finally converted to Benthamism until he became familiar with Dumont's French edition of Bentham's writings in 1821–2. After this, apart from full-time employment at India House, there followed four years of confident political activism, including the advocacy of birth control, parliamentary reform, and universal male suffrage. In 1826–7, John Stuart suffered a severe and seemingly endless nervous breakdown. After this experience, nothing was ever quite the same again. And three important shifts away from his earlier philosophic radicalism can easily be identified. (1) The first of these led to a fervent belief in self-culture and self-improvement and a corresponding move away from the typical Benthamite indifference to personal character. John Stuart's new or revised utilitarianism was now squarely based on an ethic of self-culture and not at all on hedonism, and it derived its inspiration, in part at least, from
Coleridge
and the European romantics. The famous essay
On Liberty
of 1859 argues that a concern for personal character also meant the scrutiny of self-regarding conduct. The liberty principle itself required a disinterested concern to improve individual conduct and character. Like Wordsworth, Mill had come to the view that progress would only take place once the ‘inward passions’ and not merely ‘outward arrangements’ had been cultivated and developed. (2) The second shift is a little more elusive perhaps, but equally important. After the breakdown, John Stuart became increasingly concerned to promote agreement by avoiding an appeal to first or final principles. Now he preferred instead to recommend secondary or intermediate maxims capable of inspiring broad agreement. Even the
System of Logic
(1843) was conceived and written to avoid provoking philosophical controversy. And while the Logic could hardly be described as neutral, since it was an uncompromising defence of the inductive school in science, Mill thought that logic was an area upon which the most diverse of philosophic partisans could meet and join hands. In short, after the breakdown John Stuart counted very much on consensus, not just in philosophical discourse, but also in political practice. His view now was that the instructed or educated few had the crucial task of maintaining and developing a considered agreement amongst themselves. Without that agreement, political stability was less likely and clear, intellectual authority would either be diminished or lost entirely. (3) The third and final shift of ideas and belief was towards a quiet and contemplative ‘toryism’. After the breakdown, John Stuart acquired an enduring concern for national character, as well as a strong distaste for those cultures, like the English and American, which were dominated by money-grubbing and by competition for material gain. What mattered more and more to him, was strong authority and noble ideals and this occasionally issued as an irritable and aristocratic disdain for the prosaic nature of the ordinary man. But no one ought to doubt his contempt for the usual English conservative. As a Liberal MP for the Westminster constituency, he was charged in the House of Commons with having said that all conservatives were stupid. He denied this, replying that what he had said was that all stupid people were conservative.
Mill was the leading liberal feminist of his day. He wrote
The Subjection of Women
(1869)—the only one of his books that was not a commercial success—and proposed an amendment to the Reform Bill of 1867 to substitute ‘person’ for ‘man’. It failed, but got 73 votes. As with
On Liberty
, Mill stated that his views on the emancipation of women were deeply influenced by his wife, Harriet
Taylor
. His intellectual relationship with his wife was very similar to
Condorcet's
with Sophie de Grouchy . It enabled those who disagreed with the two books to put them down to his wife's meddling.
JH