The fact that the famous utilitarian became socialist-minded in his later years deserves to become better known.
It came to my attention several years ago, ironically as a result of a reading suggestion by a friend who describes himself as an ex-Marxist. He recommended a book by Ira Berliner featuring his concepts of "positive" vs. "negative" liberty. I wasn't impressed by Berliner as a thinker; for one thing, he never offered a sufficiently clear definition of "positive liberty" for me to be clear on what it was he was disagreeing with. For another, I think it's possible to make the case for Marxist politics purely in terms of "negative" liberty anyway.
But I'm still glad I read the book, because it also featured a talk given in commemoration of Mill, and it was from this that I learned of his latter support for the socialist idea and was led to read his book Principles of Political Economy and Chapters on Socialism.
Worth noting here is that, even before he started favoring socialism, Mill was expressing support for the idea of an inheritance tax on everything beyond a "fair start" for each heir, pointing to the British aristocracy as an example of the decadence that excessive hereditary wealth can foster.
Matt McManus's article in Areo, "John Stuart Mill, Socialist?": https://areomagazine.com/2021/05/12/john-stuart-mill-socialist/
His talk with Ben Burgis about the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0por0j-FKU
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In fact there's a strong resemblance between Marx and Mill on what Berliner may have meant by positive liberty. Consider these two passages:
What [is wealth] if not the absolute elaboration of [man's] creative dispositions, without any preconditions other than antecedent historical evolution which make the totality of this evolution — i.e., the evolution of all human powers as such, unmeasured by any previously established yardstick —
an end in itself? What is this, if not a situation where man does not reproduce in any determined form, but produces his totality? Where he does not seek to remain something formed by the past, but is in the absolute movement of becoming? — Marx, Grundrisse
Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides,according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. — Mill, On Liberty
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