- 24 Feb 2023 17:56
#15266117
On 13/10/2022, I commented here “The Ethics of Liberty” of M. Rothbard. I now turn to:
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Blackwell, Oxford.
Left anarchists reject the State as well as private ownership of the means of production. Libertarians are sort of right-wing anarchists; they too reject the State but they revere private property. Much has been said about the “night-watchman state” which was the political model of liberalism in the 19th century. This State does not intervene in economy and social affairs but it protects people and property against crime and ensures the proper execution of contracts. The question that libertarians ask themselves is: is a minimal State of this type not already too much State for us? They are divided on the answer. The starting point of libertarian reasoning is the Lockean state of nature, entirely made up of freedom (including private property). The most extremist of them, like Murray Rothbard, reject any State, however summary, because it necessarily betrays the natural law, i.e., the law of the state of nature. In the first part of his book, Nozick shows that natural morality is challenged both by the absence of a minimal State and by its existence. To get out of this contradiction, he develops a rational but imaginary scenario by which the minimal State would emerge from the state of nature without contravening the natural law. This scenario will be criticised by Rothbard.
I recall that, according to me, man is a social being by nature; there is no pre-social state of nature.
The part of the book that interests us the most is the one in which Nozick contradicts all the reasons that tempt politics to go beyond the minimal State, for example in the name of justice.
How does Nozick define fair distribution? It is a distribution of property which results from:
With regard to ACQUISITION, a distinction must be made between the products of human activity and natural resources not created by man.
The legitimacy of the TRANSFER comes from the free consent of the parties. There are three fair modes of transfer: exchange (purchase-sale), donation and bequest.
Such a theory obviously leaves no room for State taxes and transfers.
Nozick distinguishes theories of justice into two categories: “final theories” and “historical theories”. The first ones set a model to which the distribution must correspond in order to be declared fair, for example “to each according to his needs”. The second ones set conditions that the distribution processes must meet. The former aim for the result, the latter for the path that leads to it. Most egalitarian politics are final, Nozick's theory is historical.
A common flaw taints all final theories. Suppose, says Nozick, that for the final theory X, a fair distribution has been reached. Life goes on and fair acquisitions and transfers will quickly upset the distribution, which from fair will become unfair. It will therefore only be possible to maintain a just final distribution through a system of obligations and prohibitions. “Socialist society should prohibit capitalist actions between consenting adults” (p.163). Besides typical capitalist actions, egalitarianism must prohibit gifts and inheritances because they accumulate wealth in certain hands: the family becomes an embarrassment for these systems because it favours these actions which Nozick describes as “loving behavior”.
Nozick puts his finger on very real problems here. When society acts according to one value, it deteriorates the situation in relation to other values. The human condition is such that there are renunciations to which our choices, whatever they may be, condemn us. Some individuals are more sensitive to one renunciation, others to another. My conviction is that it is better to pursue a combination of several values; it will not fully satisfy anyone, but it seems more bearable than fundamentalism in a value, as Nozick practices it with freedom.
The evocation of parental love in the argument strikes me as specious. First by thinking of all the loving parents who have no material goods to bequeath. But there is more: the most benevolent desire that parents can have for their children, is that these ones may live in a just and peaceful world rather than seeing them endowed with privileges in an unjust world. John Stuart Mill wrote:
A good reform program relies on taxes to keep inequality within limits, as much as on obligations and prohibitions. But this option does not please Nozick any more, he who sees no difference between taxes, expropriation and forced labour:
When Louis XIV levied taxes, it was to finance the luxury of his parasitic life and that of his court. Current taxes largely finance public services. Opinions differ as to what these services should be, but at least the tax is not without compensation, which distinguishes it from forced labour. Even in the case of pro-poor transfers, the rich enjoy a compensatory advantage because the neighbouring of misery is unpleasant.
The tax hits the income of the hard worker who prefers money to leisure. On the other hand, it spares the leisure of those who are more attracted to free time. This is illogical, writes Nozick. He is right. It's perfectly illogical. But does giving up this illogical tax on people with the ability to pay not lead to far more painful problems: the inhumanity of letting the poor rot in his misery or the stupidity of abandoning public services? A common fault among libertarian authors is the inability to adequately measure the suffering inflicted by various causes: the suffering caused by an attack on freedom that they denounce (for example, having to pay taxes), the suffering induced by their proposals (for example, that caused by poverty due to the abandonment of social policies), the suffering inherent in a state that serves as a comparison (here, forced labour). This defect is indicative of a deeper flaw. Libertarianism is indifferent to human happiness and unhappiness. It clings to a theoretical postulate: the absolute preeminence of freedom over any other consideration, at all costs.
Through taxes and other levies, final justice systems take proceeds of some people to allocate them to others or to finance actions that the taxed person has not personally chosen. Nozick interprets it as follows:
We are not our possessions and our possessions are not us. It can be unpleasant to see your income burdened by taxes, but, fortunately, our person is not burdened. This assertion is gratuitous and absurd. Who feels dispossessed of his person because he pays taxes?
Various authors, including John Rawls, rely on the entanglement of chance in talent to relativize its merit. Nozick counters that we must accept that chance influences our lives regardless of merit. It would indeed be absurd and moreover impossible to want to eradicate chance completely. In my opinion, the place that society should reserve for the chance factor depends on how much the random event under consideration affects the lives of people concerned. An argument by Friedman in “Capitalism and Freedom” will help me to clarify this point. Suppose, he suggests, a group of four people walking down the street; one of them finds a 20 dollar bill on the sidewalk. Friedman rejects the idea that the other three would have the right to compel him to share or that he would have a moral obligation to do so. Friedman's assertion seems to me admissible in this case, because it is an opportunity that can be described as anecdotal luck. Imagine a society where the wealth of the inhabitants would depend only on the random amount of banknotes they pick up on the street. That is systemic luck; it significantly determines the social situation of individuals, as does, for example, birth. It seems unacceptable to me.
Nozick also speaks out against the idea that sharing must necessarily be fair. Those who criticize me when I share a cake in unequal parts are not offended by the discriminatory treatment between cinema managers when I go to see the film at one rather than the other. I do not have to justify, he says, the use I make of my money, vis-à-vis the zealots of justice. As often, Nozick draws erroneous or outrageous deductions from a correct proposal. If I systematically and repeatedly give a child a smaller portion of cake without justification, isn't it a form of psychological abuse?
In the same kind of argument, we find this questioning concerning equal opportunities: to marry me, my wife may have rejected someone less beautiful. Nozick asks: can I be forced to pay for cosmetic surgery for the less beautiful; or the community, can it force the most beautiful to undergo an operation that makes them ugly to ensure equal opportunities? We find again this confusion between what concerns persons and what concerns goods (the income brought in by talents), a boundary that seems not to exist for Nozick. But the absurd example of cosmetic surgery shows indirectly similarity with real facts not at all absurd. In civilized countries, welfare programs frequently fund surgeries and other treatments to repair the physical defects of those born with disabilities. Who complaints about that?
Nozick, after that, tries to make the “egalitarians” feel guilty. His weapon to do so is one of the seven deadly sins: envy.
Nozick finds this feeling, this emotion incomprehensible. Shouldn't we rather congratulate ourselves on the success of others?
As Nozick points out, it is a fundamental human tendency to compare oneself to others. In his opinion, the basic problem is a kind of inferiority complex that this comparison induces in some people who feel less gifted. In this case, if the tendency to comparison persists, no social reform could succeed in improving the self-esteem of these people.
Nozick limits his analysis to the question of individual capacities. He also claims that the comparison is most distressing when the success of the other stems from his talent rather than from other factors. This last assertion is in contradiction with the data from polls carried out within the framework of sociological studies, which show that undeserved privileges are more troublesome. Comparisons relate to rewards more often than to abilities. One would have to be very stubborn to claim that these rewards are always distributed on the basis of merit.
Nozick commits his usual fault in this reflection. It brings a social problem down to the level of the individual person. From then on, all social factors are erased. In reality, human beings, all human beings, not just egalitarians, engage in these comparisons. The persons most often compare themselves to a loosely estimated social average rather than to a given individual. Human beings are made up of strengths and weaknesses that must be analysed without condescension. In their book “The Inner Level”, the epidemiologists Pickett and Wilkinson have diagnosed many of the social dysfunctions caused by inequality: psychological troubles, addictions, health troubles. Our species is very sensitive to it. As they have shown from an anthropological point of view, our ancient history has something to do with it.
Nozick adds his voice to the reductive politics of the “social choice” theorists. He wonders: why don't the 51% of voters who are less wealthy vote for radical redistribution measures to their advantage to the detriment of the wealthiest 49%? But he knows the answer: there is an alternative majority: the top 51% against the bottom 49%. It all depends on whether the middle 2% will ally with the top 49% or the bottom. It turns out that those at the top have more to offer them. QED. How many neglected factors! The graph of income distribution has the shape of a spinning-top and not a cylinder; inequality is not only pecuniary; socio-professional groups (employees, self-employed, executives, etc.) each have their own culture creating solidarity; ethical or ideological (even racial or religious) factors come into play in voting.
Libertarianism is generally perceived, and it certainly wishes so, as a theory celebrating the individual; opposed to him, society, always ready to undermine his rights, is the adversary. But behind the beautiful phrases, let's reconstitute the ideal society according to Nozick. The individual risks being badly mistreated. The whims of luck-unluck have no counterweight. The individual has just the right to accept the distribution of the property as he finds it as well as the rules of acquisition and transfer so well specified by Nozick. If he is not served by luck, the poor individual finds himself faced with a State cut off from its social functions, the night watcher-State, which jealously protects the property of others. With such an “individualism”, the real individual can feel crushed.
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Blackwell, Oxford.
Left anarchists reject the State as well as private ownership of the means of production. Libertarians are sort of right-wing anarchists; they too reject the State but they revere private property. Much has been said about the “night-watchman state” which was the political model of liberalism in the 19th century. This State does not intervene in economy and social affairs but it protects people and property against crime and ensures the proper execution of contracts. The question that libertarians ask themselves is: is a minimal State of this type not already too much State for us? They are divided on the answer. The starting point of libertarian reasoning is the Lockean state of nature, entirely made up of freedom (including private property). The most extremist of them, like Murray Rothbard, reject any State, however summary, because it necessarily betrays the natural law, i.e., the law of the state of nature. In the first part of his book, Nozick shows that natural morality is challenged both by the absence of a minimal State and by its existence. To get out of this contradiction, he develops a rational but imaginary scenario by which the minimal State would emerge from the state of nature without contravening the natural law. This scenario will be criticised by Rothbard.
I recall that, according to me, man is a social being by nature; there is no pre-social state of nature.
The part of the book that interests us the most is the one in which Nozick contradicts all the reasons that tempt politics to go beyond the minimal State, for example in the name of justice.
How does Nozick define fair distribution? It is a distribution of property which results from:
- - Acquisitions that respect the principle of fair acquisition
- Transfers of ownership that respect the principle of fair transfer.
With regard to ACQUISITION, a distinction must be made between the products of human activity and natural resources not created by man.
- - One legitimately acquires the goods of which one is the producer.
- As for the land, the water sources, the riches of the subsoil, Nozick defends the right of the first comer. We have a right to what we discover. Nozick devotes quite a lot of pages to this question, because he understands that this principle must undergo limits. The ownership of the gifts of nature is a subject that has caused much ink to flow before and after Nozick, who is inspired by Locke. I am not developing this issue presently, because I intend to devote a later article to it.
The legitimacy of the TRANSFER comes from the free consent of the parties. There are three fair modes of transfer: exchange (purchase-sale), donation and bequest.
Such a theory obviously leaves no room for State taxes and transfers.
Nozick distinguishes theories of justice into two categories: “final theories” and “historical theories”. The first ones set a model to which the distribution must correspond in order to be declared fair, for example “to each according to his needs”. The second ones set conditions that the distribution processes must meet. The former aim for the result, the latter for the path that leads to it. Most egalitarian politics are final, Nozick's theory is historical.
A common flaw taints all final theories. Suppose, says Nozick, that for the final theory X, a fair distribution has been reached. Life goes on and fair acquisitions and transfers will quickly upset the distribution, which from fair will become unfair. It will therefore only be possible to maintain a just final distribution through a system of obligations and prohibitions. “Socialist society should prohibit capitalist actions between consenting adults” (p.163). Besides typical capitalist actions, egalitarianism must prohibit gifts and inheritances because they accumulate wealth in certain hands: the family becomes an embarrassment for these systems because it favours these actions which Nozick describes as “loving behavior”.
Nozick puts his finger on very real problems here. When society acts according to one value, it deteriorates the situation in relation to other values. The human condition is such that there are renunciations to which our choices, whatever they may be, condemn us. Some individuals are more sensitive to one renunciation, others to another. My conviction is that it is better to pursue a combination of several values; it will not fully satisfy anyone, but it seems more bearable than fundamentalism in a value, as Nozick practices it with freedom.
The evocation of parental love in the argument strikes me as specious. First by thinking of all the loving parents who have no material goods to bequeath. But there is more: the most benevolent desire that parents can have for their children, is that these ones may live in a just and peaceful world rather than seeing them endowed with privileges in an unjust world. John Stuart Mill wrote:
“Parents have an obligation to society to try to make their children honourable members of it and have a duty to provide children, as far as it depends on them, with the education and the means that will make them capable of making a success of their life by their own efforts”.
A good reform program relies on taxes to keep inequality within limits, as much as on obligations and prohibitions. But this option does not please Nozick any more, he who sees no difference between taxes, expropriation and forced labour:
“The taxation of labour income is to be put on the same footing as forced labor (…); taking n hours' livelihood is like taking n hours from the person; it is like forcing the person to work n hours for another purpose” (p.169).
When Louis XIV levied taxes, it was to finance the luxury of his parasitic life and that of his court. Current taxes largely finance public services. Opinions differ as to what these services should be, but at least the tax is not without compensation, which distinguishes it from forced labour. Even in the case of pro-poor transfers, the rich enjoy a compensatory advantage because the neighbouring of misery is unpleasant.
The tax hits the income of the hard worker who prefers money to leisure. On the other hand, it spares the leisure of those who are more attracted to free time. This is illogical, writes Nozick. He is right. It's perfectly illogical. But does giving up this illogical tax on people with the ability to pay not lead to far more painful problems: the inhumanity of letting the poor rot in his misery or the stupidity of abandoning public services? A common fault among libertarian authors is the inability to adequately measure the suffering inflicted by various causes: the suffering caused by an attack on freedom that they denounce (for example, having to pay taxes), the suffering induced by their proposals (for example, that caused by poverty due to the abandonment of social policies), the suffering inherent in a state that serves as a comparison (here, forced labour). This defect is indicative of a deeper flaw. Libertarianism is indifferent to human happiness and unhappiness. It clings to a theoretical postulate: the absolute preeminence of freedom over any other consideration, at all costs.
Through taxes and other levies, final justice systems take proceeds of some people to allocate them to others or to finance actions that the taxed person has not personally chosen. Nozick interprets it as follows:
“This process by which they make these decisions about you makes them a partial owner of you. » (…) (The final principles of distributive justice) result in a shift from the classical liberal notion of self-ownership to a notion of (partial) property rights in other people. » (p.172).
We are not our possessions and our possessions are not us. It can be unpleasant to see your income burdened by taxes, but, fortunately, our person is not burdened. This assertion is gratuitous and absurd. Who feels dispossessed of his person because he pays taxes?
Various authors, including John Rawls, rely on the entanglement of chance in talent to relativize its merit. Nozick counters that we must accept that chance influences our lives regardless of merit. It would indeed be absurd and moreover impossible to want to eradicate chance completely. In my opinion, the place that society should reserve for the chance factor depends on how much the random event under consideration affects the lives of people concerned. An argument by Friedman in “Capitalism and Freedom” will help me to clarify this point. Suppose, he suggests, a group of four people walking down the street; one of them finds a 20 dollar bill on the sidewalk. Friedman rejects the idea that the other three would have the right to compel him to share or that he would have a moral obligation to do so. Friedman's assertion seems to me admissible in this case, because it is an opportunity that can be described as anecdotal luck. Imagine a society where the wealth of the inhabitants would depend only on the random amount of banknotes they pick up on the street. That is systemic luck; it significantly determines the social situation of individuals, as does, for example, birth. It seems unacceptable to me.
Nozick also speaks out against the idea that sharing must necessarily be fair. Those who criticize me when I share a cake in unequal parts are not offended by the discriminatory treatment between cinema managers when I go to see the film at one rather than the other. I do not have to justify, he says, the use I make of my money, vis-à-vis the zealots of justice. As often, Nozick draws erroneous or outrageous deductions from a correct proposal. If I systematically and repeatedly give a child a smaller portion of cake without justification, isn't it a form of psychological abuse?
In the same kind of argument, we find this questioning concerning equal opportunities: to marry me, my wife may have rejected someone less beautiful. Nozick asks: can I be forced to pay for cosmetic surgery for the less beautiful; or the community, can it force the most beautiful to undergo an operation that makes them ugly to ensure equal opportunities? We find again this confusion between what concerns persons and what concerns goods (the income brought in by talents), a boundary that seems not to exist for Nozick. But the absurd example of cosmetic surgery shows indirectly similarity with real facts not at all absurd. In civilized countries, welfare programs frequently fund surgeries and other treatments to repair the physical defects of those born with disabilities. Who complaints about that?
Nozick, after that, tries to make the “egalitarians” feel guilty. His weapon to do so is one of the seven deadly sins: envy.
“The envious person, if he cannot (also) possess a thing (talent etc.) that another has, prefers that this other person not have it either. The envious man would rather neither of them have it than the others having it when he doesn't” (p.239).
Nozick finds this feeling, this emotion incomprehensible. Shouldn't we rather congratulate ourselves on the success of others?
“How can another’s activities, or their characteristics, affect my self-esteem? Shouldn't my self-esteem, my sense of worth, depend only on facts about me? If in some way I am evaluating myself, how can facts about other people come into play” (p.240).
As Nozick points out, it is a fundamental human tendency to compare oneself to others. In his opinion, the basic problem is a kind of inferiority complex that this comparison induces in some people who feel less gifted. In this case, if the tendency to comparison persists, no social reform could succeed in improving the self-esteem of these people.
Nozick limits his analysis to the question of individual capacities. He also claims that the comparison is most distressing when the success of the other stems from his talent rather than from other factors. This last assertion is in contradiction with the data from polls carried out within the framework of sociological studies, which show that undeserved privileges are more troublesome. Comparisons relate to rewards more often than to abilities. One would have to be very stubborn to claim that these rewards are always distributed on the basis of merit.
Nozick commits his usual fault in this reflection. It brings a social problem down to the level of the individual person. From then on, all social factors are erased. In reality, human beings, all human beings, not just egalitarians, engage in these comparisons. The persons most often compare themselves to a loosely estimated social average rather than to a given individual. Human beings are made up of strengths and weaknesses that must be analysed without condescension. In their book “The Inner Level”, the epidemiologists Pickett and Wilkinson have diagnosed many of the social dysfunctions caused by inequality: psychological troubles, addictions, health troubles. Our species is very sensitive to it. As they have shown from an anthropological point of view, our ancient history has something to do with it.
Nozick adds his voice to the reductive politics of the “social choice” theorists. He wonders: why don't the 51% of voters who are less wealthy vote for radical redistribution measures to their advantage to the detriment of the wealthiest 49%? But he knows the answer: there is an alternative majority: the top 51% against the bottom 49%. It all depends on whether the middle 2% will ally with the top 49% or the bottom. It turns out that those at the top have more to offer them. QED. How many neglected factors! The graph of income distribution has the shape of a spinning-top and not a cylinder; inequality is not only pecuniary; socio-professional groups (employees, self-employed, executives, etc.) each have their own culture creating solidarity; ethical or ideological (even racial or religious) factors come into play in voting.
Libertarianism is generally perceived, and it certainly wishes so, as a theory celebrating the individual; opposed to him, society, always ready to undermine his rights, is the adversary. But behind the beautiful phrases, let's reconstitute the ideal society according to Nozick. The individual risks being badly mistreated. The whims of luck-unluck have no counterweight. The individual has just the right to accept the distribution of the property as he finds it as well as the rules of acquisition and transfer so well specified by Nozick. If he is not served by luck, the poor individual finds himself faced with a State cut off from its social functions, the night watcher-State, which jealously protects the property of others. With such an “individualism”, the real individual can feel crushed.
Paul Jael
- By Puffer Fish
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