Too little considered in relation to major works like On Liberty, the socialist element in Mill's works has met with a very mixed reception when it has been interpreted. Yet Mill's acceptance of certain socialist ideas was not the product of his wife's influence, nor was it contradictory to the central goals of his philosophy of liberty. Instead, Mill's objections to communism were consistent throughout his life, while his commitment to a cooperative form of socialism which lightened competition without abolishing it not only grew in strength from the mid-1830s onwards, but was fully integrated into his social and political thought and in fact must be interpreted as an extension of his concern for individuality, independence and self-cultivation rather than as existing in an uneasy relationship with these ideals. For cooperation was the economic dimension of Mill's theory of freedom, and when understood as such, Mill's relation not only to later nineteenth and early twentieth century neo-liberalism but also to modern political thought generally must be reconsidered, since Mill can no longer be seen as an apostle of `negative liberty' alone.
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Grégory Claeys (1987) studied this question.