Jeremy Bentham: Utilitarianism and General Community Interests

Bentham summarized Smith’s ideas of self-interest based on utility as the pleasure-pain principle (Ekelund and Hébert, 1997). This principle proposes that an individual tries to acquire benefits and avoid costs based on two primary human motivational factors: pain and pleasure. This principle served as the basis of Jeremy Bentham’s theory of utility.

Bentham disagreed with Smith’s ideas that there could be an actual harmony of human interests. For example, crime maximizes the self-interest of the un-apprehended criminal over the general interest, and therefore, the best way to maximize utility for everyone is to implement the principle, “the interest of each individual must be identified with the general interest.” In other words, what is good for everyone could be shown to be best for each individual, generally speaking, and this is what Bentham thought should happen rather than each individual maximizing their own interests.

Bentham’s ideas of utility have application when considering the enactment of legislation and developing public policy, at least on the surface. Each individual interest is weighted equivalently in that the subtraction of one person’s benefit means addition of another’s interest. Both the rich man and the poor man have an equal weight applied to their interest. Furthermore, the sum of each individual interest comprises the general interest of the community under utilitarianism. Government action which increases benefits to the entire community at the expense of one portion is justified by Bentham’s model because the utility of all has been increased while the interests of only a few individuals have been minimized.

The specific mechanics for increasing the general interest in the area of economic welfare were embodied in the Felicific Calculus. Here we find many difficulties with summing individual interests to arrive at a measure of total general interests: (1) Pain and Pleasure among individuals were considered to be identical; (2) Pleasures of the mind were treated as equivalent to those of the body; (3) Money is a common denominator of tradeoffs between pain and pleasure; (4) Fallacy of composition in grouping interests may result in what seems like a valid aggregation, but which may actually not be in accordance with the will of the majority of individuals, thereby, actually lowering the general interest.

Although useful in discussing the objective of maximizing the utility of all involved, Utilitarianism suffers from too narrow a view of the range of human behavior and the corresponding impact on utility, especially utility of the general populace. Furthermore, the summation of individual interests into collective interests was highly prone to error because of the inaccuracies involved in engaging in interpersonal utility comparisons.

Reference

Ekelund, R. B., Jr., & Hébert, R. F. (1997). A history of economic theory and method (4th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.