Classical utilitarianism, as formulated by Jeremy Bentham, holds that utility is quantifiable, expressible on a single cardinal scale (conventionally money), and comparable across individuals (interpersonal comparisons of utility), with the moral aim of maximizing "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Combined with the principle of diminishing marginal utility — that each additional increment of a good yields progressively less additional utility to its possessor — this doctrine implies a strong logical impetus toward redistributing resources from those with more to those with less, since utility gained by the poor recipient is assumed to exceed utility lost by the wealthy donor. This is a theory in political philosophy concerning distributive justice, and Bentham tempers its radical redistributive implications with a distinction between "absolute" and "practical" equality, grounded in the claim that incentives and individual motivation (labor as the source of value) must be preserved for utility to be produced at all — an empirical rather than logically necessary constraint.
Classical utilitarianism, as formulated by Jeremy Bentham, holds that utility is quantifiable, expressible on a single cardinal scale (conventionally money), and comparable across individuals (interp…