James MacKaye

James Medbury MacKaye (April 8, 1872 - January 22, 1935) was an American engineer and philosopher.

MacKaye was born in New York City, the son of actor Steele MacKaye and Mary (Medbery) MacKaye, and brother of poet Percy MacKaye and conservationist Benton MacKaye. He attended Grammar School No. 40 near Groton, Massachusetts and Packard's Business College in New York, and in 1895 obtained an SB degree from Harvard University. In early 1890 MacKaye worked as a patent lawyer with the Census Bureau in Washington, and in April 1891 he became secretary to Nathaniel Southgate Shaler at the Harvard Geological Department, holding for a number of years various minor appointments in that institution. He joined the Boston firm Stone & Webster in 1899, where he worked as a research engineer. During the 28 years that he remained affiliated to that company he published several books on ethics, economics and politics, including Americanized Socialism, The Logic of Conduct and, most notably, The Economy of Happiness.

In this highly original but now largely forgotten work, MacKaye attempted to rescue the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham from the changes that this doctrine had subsequently undergone as a result of John Stuart Mill's moderating influence. MacKaye conceived human beings—and sentient beings generally—as mechanisms of transforming resources into happiness, which he argued was the only intrinsic good. The goal of a society was therefore viewed by MacKaye as the problem of finding that arrangement which would produce the highest output of happiness attainable given the inputs available. As he wrote,

MacKaye concluded that the form of social organization most conducive to that goal was a particular type of socialism which he dubbed "pantocracy".

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