Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

“The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.”

– Jeremy Bentham, 1843

As frequently done since Bentham equated the moral good with the greatest happiness of the greatest number, I’ve replaced “happiness” with “good” as the former as in our Declaration of Independence’s “pursuit of happiness” clearly has wound up to mean “the guy with the most toys at the end wins.” To refer to “good” has both a moral and a utilitarian aspect. Also, “the pursuit of happiness” is in our American reading always “I’ve got mine, you get yours,” happiness always meaning yours and not others. Bentham is here not grounding moral behavior in Natural Rights of ambiguous meaning and origin but in determinable criteria and accountable results. At bottom rights are described as inalienable, natural, substantive, constitutional, original and so on but remain de facto and presumed. Bentham bypassed this hazard zone with what he thought was a straight forward principle of utility. However, we now know that an economic system, capitalism, can leave most without and a few with all and yet described as by Lee Edwards, leading historian of American conservatism, as benefiting all.

Blindness to what is clearly not for the good of all as well as the obdurate allegiance to what is hurting most is a problem of the first order we cannot leave alone.

By some accounts, at the end of all political conflicts, the winner is the side that offers to the greatest number the greatest amount of good, or pleasure, and the least amount of pain. Happiness and its absence are derived from this. By other accounts, the winner is the one who has the most money to capture the attention of the most voters. If we don’t include Bentham’s caveat that what is good benefits not one but all, Market Rule is our huckleberry. It puts individual good and happiness in your own personal stock portfolio.

This individual focus on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Let others get their own) lies deep in the American cultural imaginary, from Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” to Ayn Rand’s rational self-interest. This last is a bible of the Republican Party. Any brand of socialism not only leaves an anti-American bitterness to the tongue but threatens to curtail or end Market Rule, although that Rule cannot bring the greatest good to the greatest number, nor is it interested in doing so. In fact, as Senator Bernie Sanders never tires of pointing out, three men in the U.S have more wealth than the bottom half of the country. While this enrages Sanders and he sees it as persuasive in attracting voters away from the Republican Party and its at the hip attachment to Market Rule, it’s not denied Donald J. Trump two terms as president of the United States.

Exploring what is going on here discloses the well springs of a political confusion that was triggered variously, starting with Reagan’s transference of $79 trillion in wealth from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. In 2023 alone, the same study found that $3.9 trillion was redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. Trump’s “New Big Beautiful Bill” continues to increase the wealth of the wealthy impressively while further eroding income and Federal assistance programs of the bottom 80%.

If you separate Trump’s megalomaniacal edicts from standard Market Rule trickle down economics, you can separate a passing madness that will self-destruct from oligarchic economics that persist and won’t pass that easily. And one of the reasons for this being that the wealthy have gotten greater control of the dispensers of power, what Foucault refers to as discourse, practices and institutions.

I am not saying that Trump’s pathologies have not extended from there to what benefits Market Rule. For instance, he personally dislikes the Press because they are not loyal to him. He dislikes any part of the Constitutional order that he can’t extort. Inspector generals and oversight committees can out his errata. Megalomaniacs don’t like to be schooled, regulated, indicted, or observant of what gets in........

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