Artist
16thApril2005, 02:13
Robert Nozick who, in Anarchy, State and Utopia, 1974, sets forth a complex restatement of what many have seen as a Lockean theory of the state, justice, and private property. Beginning from the individualistic assumption that there is no true political entity other than individuals, and that only individuals have the rights, and relying on a Kantian view of rights, he presents an influential defence of private property, of accumulation, and of social and political inequalities, not as things good in themselves, but as things which can be removed only by denying the rights of individuals. He believes that conditions can be laid down for determining when property is justly acquired, and also justly transferred: crudely, the first when it is acquired without denying to anyone else any right or perpetuating any injustice, the second when property passes by voluntary and open transaction between fully knowing, and responsible beings. He then attempts to formulate ‘justice-preserving’ rules of transfer: if property passes justly from a to b and justly from b to c, then c holds it justly if a held it justly. It can then be shown that there may be just holdings of large accumulations, just distributions which are vastly unequal, and so on. Any theory of ‘distributive justice’, which concentrates not on just transfer, but on the end state of a distribution, is, Nozick thinks, bound to do violence to our far surer and more philosophically defensible ideas of the just transaction, and so should be rejected as a covert justification of injustice. In this way he argues against many (e.g. socialist) ideas of redistribution, and in favour of certain kinds of private property. Nozick’s argument is essentially liberal: it proceeds by arguing that everyone should be free to do what he has a right to do, but not to interfere with other’s rights. From the same idea Nozick derives a defence of private medicine arguing that no doctor can be justly compelled to offer his service in accordance with a ideal distribution of medical benefits, and independently of his voluntary agreements. And likewise, for many other received ideas of social justice. However, Nozick find cause to uphold, not a traditional conservatism, but rather what he calls the minimal state, i.e. the least powerful political arrangement compatible with protection of rights. All political order is a prima facie interference with a natural right to pursue one’s ends, and – having considered seriously the arguments for anarchism – Nozick concludes that political order can therefore be justified only if it can be shown to contribute to the upholding of individual rights.
Nozick’s arguments reformulate a debate that has long existed between those who think of justice in terms of patterns of distribution, and those who think of it in terms of transaction. His views have been criticized (a) because they do not taken into account the difficulties posed by the idea of a ‘just original acquisition’; (b) because they are based on an unargued individualism concerning human nature and human rights, which attempts to detach the individual from the history and social arrangement which has formed him; and (c) because Nozick seems not to attend to the many functions that a state may fulfil besides that of policing the rights of its members.
Nozick’s arguments reformulate a debate that has long existed between those who think of justice in terms of patterns of distribution, and those who think of it in terms of transaction. His views have been criticized (a) because they do not taken into account the difficulties posed by the idea of a ‘just original acquisition’; (b) because they are based on an unargued individualism concerning human nature and human rights, which attempts to detach the individual from the history and social arrangement which has formed him; and (c) because Nozick seems not to attend to the many functions that a state may fulfil besides that of policing the rights of its members.