CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

302 CAPITALISM’S ACHILLES HEEL
UTILITARIANISM
It was Bentham’s search for social justice through jurisprudence that led to
his philosophical convictions. If law was to be simple and enforcement repeatable,
then society needed a basis for deciding what was to its advantage.
Reading extensively in philosophy, Bentham was struck by David Hume
who had written on the concept of utility, that is, the usefulness of ideas and
pursuits, and by his fellow Englishman Joseph Priestley and the Italian Cesare
Beccairia, who had commented on notions of society’s greatest good.
Taking these concepts, Bentham produced his most important work, An Introduction
to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, published in 1789. In it
he laid out a utilitarian philosophy.
Utilitarianism has several interrelated features. First, it is anchored in
the idea of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. As Bentham
wrote: “The interest of the community then is what?—the sum of the interest
of the several members who compose it.” 2 The function of society is to
maximize its total advantages, and the gains of individual members are
viewed as contributing factors to the larger good of the whole. At the time in
aristocratic England, the notion of such sweeping social concern was strange
to many members of the elite, who frankly felt that the function of lower
ranks was to serve the upper class. It was against this tradition that Bentham,
in part, fought.
Second, alternative actions are to be appraised on the basis of their
utility. Bentham was concerned with the uses and merits of ideas, institutions,
traditions, laws, rights, properties, or other components of community.
Possible actions are to be weighed in terms of their anticipated
advantages and disadvantages. Choices are to be rooted in rationalism.
There is no separate ecclesiastical authority and, for that matter, no body
of simple customs that can direct choices. Determining utility is within
the powers of the mind of man.
Third and derived from the second, it is the consequences of actions
that determine their utility and therefore their contributions to the greatest
good. No before-the-fact moral stricture is overriding. After-the-fact outcomes
are determinative. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, a philosophy
focused upon projected or actual results, not controlled by some
preconceived set of religious or traditional intuitions.
Fourth, Bentham’s utilitarianism embraces the notion of selective sacri-