Reform liberalism and technocracy

Abstract

This chapter discusses the shift away from laissez faire liberalism in nineteenth-century Britain towards a reform liberalism which recognised the need for significant government intervention in social policy and economic regulation. In Britain and in several other industrialising countries, liberals became politically influential at a time when most of the population did not have the right to vote. Laissez faire was enabled by the resistance of nineteenth-century liberal politicians and thinkers like John Stuart Mill towards extending the vote to the industrial working and poor classes. The chapter explores Jeremy Bentham's doctrine of utilitarianism — the pursuit of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The greater good, as understood in utilitarian terms, was Bentham's conceptualisation of the public interest. The discussion then examines the technocratic social policy advocated by Edwin Chadwick and other Benthamite reformers.