caramelpence
4th June 2011, 19:55
Nozick, as a famed philosophical proponent of libertarianism, advances a conception of justice in which a just distribution of resources is defined not by a determinate end-state (as in Rawls) but by any given distribution having emerged in the right way, through consensual exchanges between individual economic actors. Nozick articulates the legitimacy of private acquisition and ownership through the notion of self-ownership, whereby private property is said to be an extension of the inherent rights that individuals have in their own bodies, and it is on this basis that Nozick and other libertarians argue that the role of the state should be limited to the nightwatchman function, that is, that the state should only protect the inviolability of the person and their consequent ownership rights, rather than engaging in redistribution and effort harnessing, which are seen to constitute forms of slavery.
I should make clear from the beginning that I object at a fundamental level to this approach to justice and rights, and that I see Nozick's moral ontology and libertarianism in general as grossly abstract and philosophical, in that they proceed from first principles that have no inherent justification or historical situation and seek to derive the components of a just social order by means of deduction from those first principles. This fundamental objection aside, however, I also believe that there are tensions within Nozick's own argument and that there is ultimately a contradiction between his moral ontology on the one hand and his institutional conclusions (i.e. the nightwatchman state) on the other. The reason for this is as follows. Even with a nightwatchman state based on some form of taxation that does not immediately discriminate against high-income individuals (say a lump sum payment or a proportional tax system) there are likely to be some individuals who will benefit from the limited functions that the state does carry out more than others - say those individuals who have lots of private assets that need to be guaranteed, or those individuals who are more susceptible to crime and who need the state to protect their immediate bodily autonomy through the prevention and punishment of criminal acts. If this is accepted, then it could be plausibly argued that the Nozickian nightwatchman state still involves the unjust (according to Nozickian ontology) taxation of resources because there is still a process of redistribution, whereby some individuals receive protection from the state that is disproportionately smaller than the amount of protection that they support through their tax burden. Given that conclusion, the question that arises is: what is so special about the taxation of individuals to support a nightwatchman state, given that it also involves a redistribution process of some kind, in the sense that some individuals are benefiting from the coerced contributions of others? If it's not special and is like other forms of more direct or explicit redistribution that libertarians are liable to reject as unjust, then it seems that you need to pick one of two conclusions - either accept that more extensive redistribution is not unjust after all and that the entireity of Nozickian moral ontology needs to be reworked or just rejected in its entirety, or accept that the nightwatchman state is also unjust, which means descending into the absurdity that is anarcho-capitalism.
Discuss.
I should make clear from the beginning that I object at a fundamental level to this approach to justice and rights, and that I see Nozick's moral ontology and libertarianism in general as grossly abstract and philosophical, in that they proceed from first principles that have no inherent justification or historical situation and seek to derive the components of a just social order by means of deduction from those first principles. This fundamental objection aside, however, I also believe that there are tensions within Nozick's own argument and that there is ultimately a contradiction between his moral ontology on the one hand and his institutional conclusions (i.e. the nightwatchman state) on the other. The reason for this is as follows. Even with a nightwatchman state based on some form of taxation that does not immediately discriminate against high-income individuals (say a lump sum payment or a proportional tax system) there are likely to be some individuals who will benefit from the limited functions that the state does carry out more than others - say those individuals who have lots of private assets that need to be guaranteed, or those individuals who are more susceptible to crime and who need the state to protect their immediate bodily autonomy through the prevention and punishment of criminal acts. If this is accepted, then it could be plausibly argued that the Nozickian nightwatchman state still involves the unjust (according to Nozickian ontology) taxation of resources because there is still a process of redistribution, whereby some individuals receive protection from the state that is disproportionately smaller than the amount of protection that they support through their tax burden. Given that conclusion, the question that arises is: what is so special about the taxation of individuals to support a nightwatchman state, given that it also involves a redistribution process of some kind, in the sense that some individuals are benefiting from the coerced contributions of others? If it's not special and is like other forms of more direct or explicit redistribution that libertarians are liable to reject as unjust, then it seems that you need to pick one of two conclusions - either accept that more extensive redistribution is not unjust after all and that the entireity of Nozickian moral ontology needs to be reworked or just rejected in its entirety, or accept that the nightwatchman state is also unjust, which means descending into the absurdity that is anarcho-capitalism.
Discuss.