A Thinking Reed

Of liberals, libertarians, and utilitarians

Written by

Lee M.

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I don’t recall exactly how I came across it, but this is interesting: from a 1975 issue of the New York Review of Books, Peter Singer reviews philosopher Robert Nozick’s libertarian classic Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

Surprisingly, Singer suggests that many of Nozick’s criticisms of John Rawls’ redistributionist liberalism hit their mark. In fact, Singer seems to want to use Nozick’s position as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of Rawls’ rights-based liberalism, thus clearing the way for utilitarianism (Singer’s preferred ethical theory) to underwrite the kind of distributive policies that liberals favor.

I’m actually quite sympathetic to Singer’s view that we should be utilitarians, at least as far as property rights are concerned. Certainly I don’t think that libertarians have provided a convincing or adequate account of how property rights are initially acquired, much less that the property holdings in our current society are, in general, derived from just initial acquisitions. (If anything, the historical record would suggest the opposite.)

Comments

5 responses to “Of liberals, libertarians, and utilitarians”

  1. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

    Actual history was always the fly in the ointment for theories that appeared to justify not just capitalism but the actual distribution of wealth.

    I don’t recall that Nozick ever claimed the existing distribution was not hopelessly corrupted by uncorrected injustice.

    In practise, we seem not only to need and accept a right of conquest (or do the Angles, Saxons, and Danes still need to vacate the British Isles?) but a sort of statute of limitations on claims to correct existing injustices as among private parties rather than nations or whole peoples.

    Or maybe we are just relying on all the witnesses being dead.

    Reply
  2. Lee

    “I don’t recall that Nozick ever claimed the existing distribution was not hopelessly corrupted by uncorrected injustice.”

    I think that’s right — in fact, I seem to recall Nozick endorsing something like Rawls’ difference principle to rectify historical injustices. Needless to say, most libertarians haven’t followed suit!

    Reply
  3. Lee

    This is also interesting and relevant:

    http://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/sidgwick/lectures/braeburn/scontran.lec01.html

    Reply
  4. Lee

    Oh, and on the right of conquest: I imagine our acceptance of it is a combination of fait accompli and “victors write the history.” Surely not enough to ground a deontological view of property rights.

    Reply
  5. Rick Ritchie

    I don’t see how “right of conquest” needs to figure in at all. Rather than see the right of Angles and Saxons and Danes to live in Britain as right of conquest, it makes more sense to reject the idea of a sovereignty over a geographical area. Perhaps the claiming of such sovereignty is the act of aggression. The rest is just immigration. The East Indian who lives in a house where there was before no house and perhaps no field has not conquered anybody.

    I also have to wonder how we could frame displacing the current inhabitants of Britain. Who would they be wronging now and how? Were the conquered ancestors entitled to free policing in the current generation?

    The idea of a statute of limitations is more helpful, I think. It seems to be based on the idea that as history moves forward, you are more likely to aggress against an innocent party than provide redress to someone who has actually been harmed. I would apply it individually rather than corporately.

    Reply

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