Utility

A couple of weeks ago, Canadian Karen and I were having a conversation based on situations we had both encountered but which in my opinion, amounted to Utility.

Karen was bemoaning the fact that something at her work could change based on the vote of all the staff and she feared that they would simply vote selfishly.
This sparked off a memory from working at Mayhem.
The Headmaster wanted to give us an extra day's holiday in place of one of our In Service Training Days (INSET). In order to do this, we had to do two or three 'twilight' training sessions. Several people pointed out that although it would be lovely to have an extra day's holiday, in order to do the twilight sessions they would have to make difficult and costly childcare arrangements and possibly not even see their children on those evenings.
Now my own opinion on this was that a good leader would have proceeded no further, taken the rap and gone back to plan A. However, this was not the case, our leader decided to allow the staff to vote on it, which again, seems like the democratic thing to do. A cynic might argue that he knew what the outcome would be and so he would have his way on the matter, but oh well.

As everyone knew the problems for several colleagues, and as all teachers are members of one union or another, I assumed they would vote ethically rather than selfishly, but I was wrong, oh so very wrong. The vote was something along the lines of 75% in favour of the day off. Although it would have been nice to have an extra day of holiday and I, like many colleagues who didn't have small children, preferred to stay in school instead of taking work home, and thus was in school until at least 18.00 every night in any case, so to me this was a free day, but of course it never occurred to me to vote for it.

To me, the Utility Principle should apply. John Stuart Mill took the idea of ethical utilitarianism from previous thinkers and brought it to us as the underpinning of a political philosophy, and one that is a shining strand in modern socialism.

We should act, and our laws and rules should be formulated so that Happiness is maximised and Pain is minimised for the people as a whole.
Now the example I have given, may seem at first to show that people act in accordance with this principle in that they maximise their own happiness - ie everyone gets a day off - and minimise pain - ie the people with childcare issues are fewer than the number who don't - and thus the Utility Principle applies.
But this is not the case for Mill, in fact he is very specific and clear about what he means by happiness and what he means by pain. What is selfish and base does not constitute happiness. States of happiness caused by higher level activities, such as reading poetry, or altruism, have higher utility overall (meaning to society) than lower ones such as lying in bed for an extra morning. The pain of the people not being able to see their children on those evenings and having to go to considerable effort and expense to have them cared for, was very real pain and does impact on society. In fact we can't even calculate the future cost of such pain.

I would argue that socialism relies on this principle of maximising happiness and minimising pain across society.
On Monday I was given a lift by a friend who asked me about Blair's socialism, not a surprising question since there are many people who contend that if you are not an out and out communist you are not socialist enough.
Alana's question was partly based on an incident where an American friend of hers, either visiting or living in Britain, had come across the apparent anomaly of the Private Health Care system existing alongside of the NHS. The friend seemed to have reached the conclusion for some reason that Tony Blair had introduced this, whereas it has always existed and the idea that he could dismantle this or even that such a thing would be desirable, is ludicrous, all of which I explained.

But people's memories are short, and however diluted you may feel Blair's socialism is, he did nonetheless, do what was necessary to put the Labour Party back into power and thus change the ideology on which the country is governed.
Conservative ideology is based on the notion that people are fundamentally selfish and government exploits that so that there is much for the most selfish, the stronger in some way, and some crumbs 'trickle down' to the masses. If the masses are only receiving crumbs then they will be motivated to get off their backsides and aim for the glittering prizes.
Socialist ideology is broadly based on the idea that if we work together, we can all have enough. So we maximise happiness and minimise pain for all.

The problem is that Socialism may well be naive as I was in thinking that my colleagues would not put themselves first. Mainly because of socialism and to a certain extent liberalism over the past century, people have more now than they had when Bentham and Mill were writing about Utilitarianism.
The Labour Party in Britain is squabbling over the Party leadership instead of putting the ideal of socialism first and instead of reminding everyone in the country what it stands for.
And it needs also to take the next step in its thinking. Blair did that once and has been continually criticised for it, but without socialist thinking being able to adapt and move on while keeping its strong underlying ideals, there is no future for it.