Saturday Forum: The Harm Principle

From On Liberty by JS Mill

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.

For an explanation of why this is a good principle,  do read the whole book.

Today’s discussion point: is it always a good princple, or are there exceptions? And is there much work still to be done to free people in the UK from wrongful compulsion?

Can it be right to put a 20 mph limit on a road where it is perfectly safe to drive at 25 mph (but not 30 mph), because you are prohibiting the act of driving at 24 mph which does no harm to anyone? Yes, potentially. The purpose of the prohibition is to prevent harm to others, and this is achieved by reducing speeds generally, and that is all the harm principle demands.

Can it be right to impose a minimum price on a unit of alcohol: to prohibit the harmless act of selling and buying a unit of alcohol at a lower price. You can argue that the selling does harm to others (the buyers) and you are not prohibiting the buying, but this doesn’t seem very convincing.

You can argue that alcohol abuse causes harm to third parties such as family members, but this argument seems to be on a slippery slope  whereby any compulsion used against an individual “for their own good” can be justiified because of the secondary impact of their welfare on others. And this argument has no regard for collateral damage – in this case to the purchase of alcohol that is not abused.

Perhaps a minimum alcohol price can be justified on pure utilitarian grounds and the harm principle is just wrong. But if so, this seems to be the kind of pure utilitarianism that calculates the single correct behaviour for everybody and has no difficulty coercing people to adopt it. This might describe a collectivist’s utopia, but it is surely a liberal’s nightmare.

Are there bigger examples than these? Can the planning and licensing systems be justified? Can we demand that the monarch be Anglican? Is there compulsion contrary to the harm principle involved in discrimination against minorities and women?

Comments are open.

* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.

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15 Comments

  • With alcohol, the harm to others is the cost imposed on society in general and the NHS in particular by excessive drinking in terms of accidents, disease and violent crime. This is a large, quantifiable and rising cost, which is precisely the reason for imposing a minimum price. I would therefore suggest a minimum price falls squarely within the bounds proposed by Mill.

  • The problem is one of direct versus indirect harm. You can take an infinite amount of authoritarian measures to prevent indirect harm.

  • If the alcoholic paid all their own medical and care costs, or just died alone in misery -as in Mills’ Victorian England – then you could in theory justify not impeding the free markets right to sell an intensely damaging substance at dirt cheap prices to anyone who was addicted to it. As long as you were willing to ignore the appalling impact on the families of those who abuse alcohol.

    Except then you also have to consider the further impact on society of the random violence and vandalism that also flows from selling a dirt cheap potent drug that (unlike Cannabis to open up a different ‘front’ in the debate) inflames aggression in individuals.

    I once spent a night observing in the A and E department of my local hospital -biggest problem, drunks. I have spent several nights on Town Centre patrol with the police and witnessed 10 police officers (some of whom have to be drawn in from nearby small towns for the purpose) doing a brilliant job of containing the drunks who would otherwise turn Thursday to Saturday nights out into mayhem (as well as having watched them many times when I have been in Town as a consumer). Having lived close to the Town Centre for 27 years I and my neighbours have to endure the sporadic noise and vandalism that results from random drunks wandering home in the early hours of the morning.

    There is no way any responsible politician/observer can justify selling alcohol at a few pence a can -or bottle of white lightning. Having first read On Liberty in 1975 (I still have the battered copy on the shelf next to me) I don’t think Mill with his harm test would disagree.

  • Paul Griffiths 16th Mar '13 - 12:17pm

    This question, of course, goes to the heart of liberalism. Slightly shamefully, I am going to duck my chance to pitch in except to say: If the harm principle were really all there was to liberalism, wouldn’t we all be libertarians?

  • The problem is that there isn’t a fine line between what harms you and what harms society as a whole (as Paul says, Mill didn’t live in a welfare state). In the simplest case, if you harm your health, I have to pick up the bill through the NHS. In raising the money we can try to target the people who are incurring such expenses – e.g. through taxing booze – but it’s just an approximation and some people will be unfairly hit. But if we think taxing certain expenditure is illiberal interference, does the same apply to taxing income? Maybe if we’re going to force people to pay taxes, we may as well tax ‘harmful’ things.

    I also think there’s a big distinction between preventing people from doing things, and nudging them away. Hard vs soft paternalism, if you like. People can use the state to help them make good decisions (we’re not perfect), but actually banning things for those who want to do otherwise is something else. Minimum alcohol pricing is a tricky one here, actually: is it a form of prohibition for the poor, or just a way of reducing how you get for your money?

    PS In one form or another, legalise all drugs. Liberals (not to mention pragmatists) should be far more concerned about the total prohibition of other drugs (with users criminally sentenced!) than with comparatively small changes to alcohol regulation.

  • @Paul Griffiths: one of the reasons that, when I flirted with radical libertarianism, I came to reject it, was because I came to see the Harm Principle, as usually understood, to be incomplete.

  • I agree with some of what R.C. says but feel that there are potential conflicts between liberty and the social good, depending on the details. If the minimum price per unit was not set too high, the method was a tax where the proceeds were used within the health services including information, education and rehabilitation then there might be more of a case for doing it (as long as the mimimum price is not set too high!). Community pubs may also benefit from this…………

  • Margaret Williams 17th Mar '13 - 5:56pm

    JS Mill is not God. We have to think for ourselves. If you went by R Cs argument you could not implement any public health measures, not even take the handle off the pump of the Broad Street cholera well. This is essentially a free marketeer argument of the sort usually espoused by right wing Toies to protect their friends in the drinks industry. Don’t be fooled there is anything truly Liberal about it.

  • A plaintive discussion point might be suicide. The simple fact remains that you can’t stop someone who is determined to cause themself ultimate harm.

    I don’t think the harm principle is incomplete, rather politicos sometimes overlook that it is guides personal choices as well as executive decisions, nor is it a zero-sum game.

  • Michael Parsons 1st Apr '13 - 2:21pm

    Geoffrey, I don’t thin k I would care much for being forced to be free!

    Also it seems to me there is a great difference not being recognised here: that is, it is one thing to deal with the harmful consequences of a choice, for example it seems OK to arrest violent drunkards on the street and pack them off to four weeks hard agricultural labour in some remote place; as limiting harm they were doing. But it is quite another to punish them (by higher prices, expensive personal licences to drink etc) just in case they were on their way to a pub to get violently drunk and vomit over passers-by, without any allowance for varying constitutional tolerences of alcohol. That way we are surely entering North Korea. Many dogs that aren’t pit-bulls are violent, and some pit bulls are friendly. It is actual conduct, not possible conduct, that needs control (and that goes for spaniels too).

  • Simon Banks 2nd Apr '13 - 7:59pm

    I can see one limitation on this principle and some difficulties. The limitation is that Mill, understandably for his time, defined benefit and harm purely in human terms. Am I justified in preventing someone from shooting tigers or destroying arctic ecosystems? The balance of human happiness or unhappiness resulting might be unclear, but I’d say yes I am because we have a responsibility to the whole planet.

    The difficulties surround the definition of harm. Joe drinking or smoking heavily hurts me and others in the pocket because of the healthcare he’ll draw on. It may not be philosophically watertight, but I’d say that’s justification for “moral coercion” (publicity campaigns etc) but not for legal coercion provided Joe doesn’t blow smoke in my face or drink drive and hit someone. It can also be argued that someone suffering mental distress constitutes harm, which is clearly fair in the case of someone traumatised by being threatened with a fake gun, but carries the danger of being extended to the person horrified by seeing two men kissing.

    Nonetheless, it’s a most valuable principle that helps resolve many dilemmas.

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