John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was one of the most important philosophers and economists of the nineteenth century. His book On Liberty (1859) parallels Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in advocating limits on governmental powers and is still an influential argument in favor of individual freedom and privacy.

Mill thought that the structure of the typical firm was an affront to freedom and individual autonomy. In The Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill described the relationship between firm owners and workers as an unnatural one: 'To work at the bidding and for the profit of another, without any interest in the work ... is not, even when wages are high, a satisfactory state to human beings of educated intelligence,' he wrote.

Attributing the conventional employer-employee relationship to the poor education of the working class, he predicted that the spread of education, and the political empowerment of working people, would change this situation:

The relation of masters and work-people will be gradually superseded by partnership ... perhaps finally in all, an association of laborers among themselves. (The Principles of Political Economy, 1848)

Why do you think Mill's vision of a post-capitalist economy of worker-owned cooperatives has not yet occurred?