Page 18 - Contemporary Cultural Theory

THE CULTURAL CONTRADICTIONS OF UTILITARIANISM

philosophical systems of David Hume(1711–76), through to the
political economy of Adam Smith (1723–90) and David Ricardo
(1772–1823), and on to the self-proclaimed utilitarianism of Jeremy
Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806–73).
It is an overwhelmingly British intellectual tradition, but one which
certainly found echoes in 18th century French thought. Its political
correlate is liberalism, in the 19th century sense of the term.
Utilitarianism has provided the single most powerful justification for
the forms of social organization characteristic of modern capitalist
society: that they guarantee the greatest happiness of the greatest
number. It has provided the intellectual underpinnings for two important
academic disciplines, both of which are firmly entrenched within the
modern university curriculum: economics in particular, but also, if to
a lesser extent, political science. In its most recent manifestation, as
“economic rationalism”, it has provided the major analytical framework
for the policy making of governments in Britain and the United States,
Australia and New Zealand. There is in utilitarianism, moreover, not
only a theory of the market and of the state, but also a quite explicit
theory of culture.
The Canadian political philosopher, C.B.Macpherson, described
utilitarianism as a “theory of possessive individualism”, and argued
that from Hobbes onwards it had presupposed a model of “possessive
market society”. Macpherson himself identifies eight essential features
of this model, but only three need concern us here: that there is no
authoritative allocation of work; that there is no authoritative provision
of rewards for work; and that all individuals seek rationally to maximize
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their utilities. As Macpherson’s gloss on each of these serves to
elaborate, this implies, respectively, that “individuals are free to expend
their energies, skills and goods as they will”; that “individuals are not
given or guaranteed, by the state or the community, rewards appropriate
to their social functions”; and that individuals “seek to get the most
satisfaction they can for a given expenditure”. 25
Macpherson’s own interests were in the implications of this model,
and of its real basis in social fact, for a theory of political obligation.
But what we need to note are its implications for cultural theory. If
individuals are free to expend their energies as they will, if rewards
are not guaranteed by the state or the community, and if individuals
seek to maximize their own satisfaction (again, as they will), then it
requires only the further postulate that objects of cultural preference,be

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