ABSTRACT
The social upheaval following the industrial revolution had created a class of capitalists who owned the means of production and a class of labourers who owned only their own labour power. Many of the dispossessed proletariat were living in conditions of such misery and squalor that they were worse off than feudal peasants. Criticism of the evils of competition came both from supporters who wished to make the free market system work as Smith envisaged and from opponents who wished to overthrow it. John Stuart Mill was a staunch believer in Smith’s Free Market Religion. He set out the principles of the Faith in his Principles of Political Economy, and he took upon himself the burden of defending the religion against its Socialist critics. Mill’s Doctrine that “money makes no difference” is based on the belief that there is no essential difference between a barter economy and a monetary economy.
