contentious issue, especially among libertarians themselves. There is
no single theory that can be safely identified as the libertarian
theory, and probably no single principle or set of principles on which
all libertarians can agree. Nevertheless, there is a certain family
resemblance among libertarian theories that can serve as a framework
for analysis. Although there is much disagreement about the details,
libertarians are generally united by a rough agreement on a cluster of
normative principles, empirical generalizations, and policy
recommendations. Libertarians are committed to the belief that
individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both
ontologically and normatively primary; that individuals have rights
against certain kinds of forcible interference on the part of others;
that liberty, understood as non-interference, is the only thing that
can be legitimately demanded of others as a matter of legal or
political right; that robust property rights and the economic liberty
that follows from their consistent recognition are of central
importance in respecting individual liberty; that social order is not
at odds with but develops out of individual liberty; that the only
proper use of coercion is defensive or to rectify an error; that
governments are bound by essentially the same moral principles as
individuals; and that most existing and historical governments have
acted improperly insofar as they have utilized coercion for plunder,
aggression, redistribution, and other purposes beyond the protection
of individual liberty.
In terms of political recommendations, libertarians believe that most,
if not all, of the activities currently undertaken by states should be
either abandoned or transferred into private hands. The most
well-known version of this conclusion finds expression in the
so-called "minimal state" theories of Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand, and
others (Nozick 1974; Rand 1963a, 1963b) which hold that states may
legitimately provide police, courts, and a military, but nothing more.
Any further activity on the part of the state—regulating or
prohibiting the sale or use of drugs, conscripting individuals for
military service, providing taxpayer-funded support to the poor, or
even building public roads—is itself rights-violating and hence
illegitimate.
Libertarian advocates of a strictly minimal state are to be
distinguished from two closely related groups, who favor a smaller or
greater role for government, and who may or may not also label
themselves "libertarian." On one hand are so-called
anarcho-capitalists who believe that even the minimal state is too
large, and that a proper respect for individual rights requires the
abolition of government altogether and the provision of protective
services by private markets. On the other hand are those who generally
identify themselves as classical liberals. Members of this group tend
to share libertarians' confidence in free markets and skepticism over
government power, but are more willing to allow greater room for
coercive activity on the part of the state so as to allow, say, state
provision of public goods or even limited tax-funded welfare
transfers.
1. The Diversity of Libertarian Theories
As this article will use the term, libertarianism is a theory about
the proper role of government that can be, and has been, supported on
a number of different metaphysical, epistemological, and moral
grounds. Some libertarians are theists who believe that the doctrine
follows from a God-made natural law. Others are atheists who believe
it can be supported on purely secular grounds. Some libertarians are
rationalists who deduce libertarian conclusions from axiomatic first
principles. Others derive their libertarianism from empirical
generalizations or a reliance on evolved tradition. And when it comes
to comprehensive moral theories, libertarians represent an almost
exhaustive array of positions. Some are egoists who believe that
individuals have no natural duties to aid their fellow human beings,
while others adhere to moral doctrines that hold that the better-off
have significant duties to improve the lot of the worse-off. Some
libertarians are deontologists, while others are consequentialists,
contractarians, or virtue-theorists. Understanding libertarianism as a
narrow, limited thesis about the proper moral standing, and proper
zone of activity, of the state—and not a comprehensive ethical or
metaphysical doctrine—is crucial to making sense of this otherwise
baffling diversity of broader philosophic positions.
This article will focus primarily on libertarianism as a philosophic
doctrine. This means that, rather than giving close scrutiny to the
important empirical claims made both in support and criticism of
libertarianism, it will focus instead on the metaphysical,
epistemological, and especially moral claims made by the discussants.
Those interested in discussions of the non-philosophical aspects of
libertarianism can find some recommendations in the reference list
below.
Furthermore, this article will focus almost exclusively on libertarian
arguments regarding just two philosophical subjects: distributive
justice and political authority. There is a danger that this narrow
focus will be misleading, since it ignores a number of interesting and
important arguments that libertarians have made on subjects ranging
from free speech to self-defense, to the proper social treatment of
the mentally ill. More generally, it ignores the ways in which
libertarianism is a doctrine of social or civil liberty, and not just
one of economic liberty. For a variety of reasons, however, the
philosophic literature on libertarianism has mostly ignored these
other aspects of the theory, and so this article, as a summary of that
literature, will generally reflect that trend.
2. Natural Rights Libertarianism
Probably the most well-known and influential version of
libertarianism, at least among academic philosophers, is that based
upon a theory of natural rights. Natural rights theories vary, but are
united by a common belief that individuals have certain moral rights
simply by virtue of their status as human beings, that these rights
exist prior to and logically independent of the existence of
government, and that these rights constrain the ways in which it is
morally permissible for both other individuals and governments to
treat individuals.
a. Historical Roots: Locke
Although one can find some earlier traces of this doctrine among, for
instance, the English Levellers or the Spanish School of Salamanca,
John Locke's political thought is generally recognized as the most
important historical influence on contemporary natural rights versions
of libertarianism. The most important elements of Locke's theory in
this respect, set out in his Second Treatise, are his beliefs about
the law of nature, and his doctrine of property rights in external
goods.
Locke's idea of the law of nature draws on a distinction between law
and government that has been profoundly influential on the development
of libertarian thought. According to Locke, even if no government
existed over men, the state of nature would nevertheless not be a
state of "license." In other words, men would still be governed by
law, albeit one that does not originate from any political source
(c.f. Hayek 1973, ch. 4). This law, which Locke calls the "law of
nature" holds that "being all equal and independent, no one ought to
harm another in his life, liberty, or possessions" (Locke 1952, para.
6). This law of nature serves as a normative standard to govern human
conduct, rather than as a description of behavioral regularities in
the world (as are other laws of nature like, for instance, the law of
gravity). Nevertheless, it is a normative standard that Locke believes
is discoverable by human reason, and that binds us all equally as
rational agents.
Locke's belief in a prohibition on harming others stems from his more
basic belief that each individual "has a property in his own person"
(Locke 1952, para. 27). In other words, individuals are self-owners.
Throughout this essay we will refer to this principle, which has been
enormously influential on later libertarians, as the "self-ownership
principle." Though controversial, it has generally been taken to mean
that each individual possesses over her own body all those rights of
exclusive use that we normally associate with property in external
goods. But if this were all that individuals owned, their liberties
and ability to sustain themselves would obviously be extremely
limited. For almost anything we want to do—eating, walking, even
breathing, or speaking in order to ask another's permission—involves
the use of external goods such as land, trees, or air. From this,
Locke concludes, we must have some way of acquiring property in those
external goods, else they will be of no use to anyone. But since we
own ourselves, Locke argues, we therefore also own our labor. And by
"mixing" our labor with external goods, we can come to own those
external goods too. This allows individuals to make private use of the
world that God has given to them in common. There is a limit, however,
to this ability to appropriate external goods for private use, which
Locke captures in his famous "proviso" that holds that a legitimate
act of appropriation must leave "enough, and as good… in common for
others" (Locke 1952, para. 27). Still, even with this limit, the
combination of time, inheritance, and differential abilities,
motivation, and luck will lead to possibly substantial inequalities in
wealth between persons, and Locke acknowledges this as an acceptable
consequence of his doctrine (Locke 1952, para. 50).
b. Contemporary Natural Rights: Nozick
By far the single most important influence on the perception of
libertarianism among contemporary academic philosophers was Robert
Nozick in his book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). This book is an
explanation and exploration of libertarian rights that attempts to
show how a minimal, and no more than a minimal, state can arise via an
"invisible hand" process out of a state of nature without violating
the rights of individuals; to challenge the highly influential claims
of John Rawls that purport to show that a more-than-minimal state was
justified and required to achieve distributive justice; and to show
that a regime of libertarian rights could establish a "framework for
utopia" wherein different individuals would be free to seek out and
create mediating institutions to help them achieve their own
distinctive visions of the good life.
The details of Nozick's arguments can be found at Robert Nozick. Here,
we will just briefly point out a few elements of particular importance
in understanding Nozick's place in contemporary libertarian
thought—his focus on the "negative" aspects of liberty and rights, his
Kantian defense of rights, his historical theory of entitlement, and
his acceptance of a modified Lockean proviso on property acquisition.
A discussion of his argument for the minimal state can be found in the
section on anarcho-capitalism below.
First, Nozick, like almost all natural rights libertarians, stresses
negative liberties and rights above positive liberties and rights. The
distinction between positive and negative liberty, made famous by
Isaiah Berlin (Berlin 1990), is often thought of as a distinction
between "freedom to" and "freedom from." One has positive liberty when
one has the opportunity and ability to do what one wishes (or,
perhaps, what one "rationally" wishes or "ought" to wish). One has
negative liberty, on the other hand, when there is an absence of
external interferences to one's doing what one wishes—specifically,
when there is an absence of external interferences by other people. A
person who is too sick to gather food has his negative liberty
intact—no one is stopping him from gathering food—but not his positive
liberty as he is unable to gather food even though he wants to do so.
Nozick and most libertarians see the proper role of the state as
protecting negative liberty, not as promoting positive liberty, and so
toward this end Nozick focuses on negative rights as opposed to
positive rights. Negative rights are claims against others to refrain
from certain kinds of actions against you. Positive rights are claims
against others to perform some sort of positive action. Rights against
assault, for instance, are negative rights, since they simply require
others not to assault you. Welfare rights, on the other hand, are
positive rights insofar as they require others to provide you with
money or services. By enforcing negative rights, the state protects
our negative liberty. It is an empirical question whether enforcing
merely negative rights or, as more left-liberal philosophers would
promote, enforcing a mix of both negative and positive rights would
better promote positive liberty.
Second, while Nozick agrees with the broadly Lockean picture of the
content and government-independence of natural law and natural rights,
his remarks in defense of those rights draw their inspiration more
from Immanuel Kant than from Locke. Nozick does not provide a
full-blown argument to justify libertarian rights against other
non-libertarian rights theories—a point for which he has been widely
criticized, most famously by Thomas Nagel (Nagel 1975). But what he
does say in their defense suggests that he sees libertarian rights as
an entailment of the other-regarding element in Kant's second
formulation of the categorical imperative—that we treat the humanity
in ourselves and others as an end in itself, and never merely as a
means. According to Nozick, both utilitarianism and theories that
uphold positive rights sanction the involuntary sacrifice of one
individual's interests for the sake of others. Only libertarian
rights, which for Nozick take the form of absolute side-constraints
against force and fraud, show proper respect for the separateness of
persons by barring such sacrifice altogether, and allowing each
individual the liberty to pursue his or her own goals without
interference.
Third, it is important to note that Nozick's libertarianism evaluates
the justice of states of affairs, such as distributions of property,
in terms of the history or process by which that state of affairs
arose, and not by the extent to which it satisfies what he calls a
patterned or end-state principle of justice. Distributions of property
are just, according to Nozick, if they arose from previously just
distributions by just procedures. Discerning the justice of current
distributions thus requires that we establish a theory of justice in
transfer—to tell us which procedures constitute legitimate means of
transferring ownership between persons—and a theory of justice in
acquisition—to tell us how individuals might come to own external
goods that were previously owned by no one. And while Nozick does not
fully develop either of these theories, his skeletal position is
nevertheless significant, for it implies that it is only the proper
historical pedigree that makes a distribution just, and it is only
deviations from the proper pedigree that renders a distribution
unjust. An implication of this position is that one cannot discern
from time-slice statistical data alone—such as the claim that the top
fifth of the income distribution in the United States controls more
than 80 percent of the nation's wealth—that a distribution is unjust.
Rather, the justice of a distribution depends on how it came about—by
force or by trade? By differing degrees of hard work and luck? Or by
fraud and theft? Libertarianism's historical focus thus sets the
doctrine against both outcome-egalitarian views that hold that only
equal distributions are just, utilitarian views that hold that
distributions are just to the extent they maximize utility, and
prioritarian views that hold that distributions are just to the extent
they benefit the worse-off. Justice in distribution is a matter of
respecting people's rights, not of achieving a certain outcome.
The final distinctive element of Nozick's view is his acceptance of a
modified version of the Lockean proviso as part of his theory of
justice in acquisition. Nozick reads Locke's claim that legitimate
acts of appropriation must leave enough and as good for others as a
claim that such appropriations must not worsen the situation of others
(Nozick 1974, 175, 178). On the face of it, this seems like a small
change from Locke's original statement, but Nozick believes it allows
for much greater freedom for free exchange and capitalism (Nozick
1974, 182). Nozick reaches this conclusion on the basis of certain
empirical beliefs about the beneficial effects of private property:
it increases the social product by putting means of production in
the hands of those who can use them most efficiently (profitably);
experimentation is encouraged, because with separate persons
controlling resources, there is no one person or small group whom
someone with a new idea must convince to try it out; private property
enables people to decide on the pattern and type of risks they wish to
bear, leading to specialized types of risk bearing; private property
protects future persons by leading some to hold back resources from
current consumption for future markets; it provides alternative
sources of employment for unpopular persons who don't have to convince
any one person or small group to hire them, and so on. (Nozick 1974,
177)
If these assumptions are correct, then persons might not be made worse
off by acts of original appropriation even if those acts fail to leave
enough and as good for others to appropriate. Private property and the
capitalist markets to which it gives rise generate an abundance of
wealth, and latecomers to the appropriation game (like people today)
are in a much better position as a result. As David Schmidtz puts the
point:
Original appropriation diminishes the stock of what can be
originally appropriated, at least in the case of land, but that is not
the same thing as diminishing the stock of what can be owned. On the
contrary, in taking control of resources and thereby removing those
particular resources from the stock of goods that can be acquired by
original appropriation, people typically generate massive increases in
the stock of goods that can be acquired by trade. The lesson is that
appropriation is typically not a zero-sum game. It normally is a
positive-sum game. (Schmidtz and Goodin 1998, 30)
Relative to their level of well-being in a world where nothing is
privately held, then, individuals are generally not made worse off by
acts of private appropriation. Thus, Nozick concludes, the Lockean
proviso will "not provide a significant opportunity for future state
action" in the form of redistribution or regulation of private
property (Nozick 1974, 182).
c. Criticisms of Natural Rights Libertarianism
Nozick's libertarian theory has been subject to criticism on a number
of grounds. Here we will focus on two primary categories of criticism
of Lockean/Nozickian natural rights libertarianism—namely, with
respect to the principle of self-ownership and the derivation of
private property rights from self-ownership.
i. Principle of Self-Ownership
Criticisms of the self-ownership principle generally take one of two
forms. Some arguments attempt to sever the connection between the
principle of self-ownership and the more fundamental moral principles
that are thought to justify it. Nozick's suggestion that
self-ownership is warranted by the Kantian principle that no one
should be treated as a mere means, for instance, is criticized by G.A.
Cohen on the grounds that policies that violate self-ownership by
forcing the well-off to support the less advantaged do not necessarily
treat the well-off merely as means (Cohen 1995, 239–241). We can
satisfy Kant's imperative against treating others as mere means
without thereby committing ourselves to full self-ownership, Cohen
argues, and we have good reason to do so insofar as the principle of
self-ownership has other, implausible, consequences. The same general
pattern of argument holds against more intuitive defenses of the
self-ownership principle. Nozick's concern (Nozick 1977, 206),
elaborated by Cohen (Cohen 1995, 70), that theories that deny
self-ownership might license the forcible transfer of eyes from the
sight-endowed to the blind, for instance, or Murray Rothbard's claim
that the only alternatives to self-ownership are slavery or communism
(Rothbard 1973, 29), have been met with the response that a denial of
the permissibility of slavery, communism, and eye-transplants can be
made—and usually better made—on grounds other than self-ownership.
Other criticisms of self-ownership focus on the counterintuitive or
otherwise objectionable implications of self-ownership. Cohen, for
instance, argues that recognizing rights to full self-ownership allows
individuals' lives to be objectionably governed by brute luck in the
distribution of natural assets, since the self that people own is
largely a product of their luck in receiving a good or bad genetic
endowment, and being raised in a good or bad environment (Cohen 1995,
229). Richard Arneson, on the other hand, has argued that
self-ownership conflicts with Pareto-Optimality (Arneson 1991). His
concern is that since self-ownership is construed by libertarians as
an absolute right, it follows that it cannot be violated even in small
ways and even when great benefit would accrue from doing so. Thus, to
modify David Hume, absolute rights of self-ownership seem to prevent
us from scratching the finger of another even to prevent the
destruction of the whole world. And although the real objection here
seems to be to the absoluteness of self-ownership rights, rather than
to self-ownership rights as such, it remains unclear whether strict
libertarianism can be preserved if rights of self-ownership are given
a less than absolute status.
ii. Derivation of Full Private Property Ownership from Self-Ownership
Even if individuals have absolute rights to full self-ownership, it
can still be questioned whether there is a legitimate way of moving
from ownership of the self to ownership of external goods.
Left-libertarians, such as Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne, and
Michael Otsuka, grant the self-ownership principle but deny that it
can yield full private property rights in external goods, especially
land (Steiner 1994; Vallentyne 2000; Otsuka 2003). Natural resources,
such theorists hold, belong to everyone in some equal way, and private
appropriation of them amounts to theft. Rather than returning all such
goods to the state of nature, however, most left-libertarians suggest
that those who claim ownership of such resources be subjected to a tax
to compensate others for the loss of their rights of use. Since the
tax is on the value of the external resource and not on individuals'
natural talents or efforts, it is thought that this line of argument
can provide a justification for a kind of egalitarian redistribution
that is compatible with full individual self-ownership.
While left-libertarians doubt that self-ownership can yield full
private property rights in external goods, others are doubtful that
the concept is determinate enough to yield any theory of justified
property ownership at all. Locke's metaphor on labor mixing, for
instance, is intuitively appealing, but notoriously difficult to work
out in detail (Waldron 1983). First, it is not clear why mixing one's
labor with something generates any rights at all. As Nozick himself
asks, "why isn't mixing what I own with what I don't own a way of
losing what I own rather than a way of gaining what I don't?" (Nozick
1974, 174–175). Second, it is not clear what the scope of the rights
generated by labor-mixing are. Again, Nozick playfully suggests (but
does not answer) this question when he asks whether a person who
builds a fence around virgin land thereby comes to own the enclosed
land, or simply the fence, or just the land immediately under it. But
the point is more worrisome than Nozick acknowledges. For as critics
such as Barbara Fried have pointed out, following Hohfeld, property
ownership is not a single right but a bundle of rights, and it is far
from clear which "sticks" from this bundle individuals should come to
control by virtue of their self-ownership (Fried 2004). Does one's
ownership right over a plot of land entail the right to store
radioactive waste on it? To dam the river that runs through it? To
shine a very bright light from it in the middle of the night (Friedman
1989, 168)? Problems such as these must, of course, be resolved by any
political theory—not just libertarians. The problem is that the
concept of self-ownership seems to offer little, if any, help in doing
so.
3. Consequentialist Libertarianism
While Nozickian libertarianism finds its inspiration in Locke and
Kant, there is another species of libertarianism that draws its
influence from David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. This
variety of libertarianism holds its political principles to be
grounded not in self-ownership or the natural rights of humanity, but
in the beneficial consequences that libertarian rights and
institutions produce, relative to possible and realistic alternatives.
To the extent that such theorists hold that consequences, and only
consequences, are relevant in the justification of libertarianism,
they can properly be labeled a form of consequentialism. Some of these
consequentialist forms of libertarianism are utilitarian. But
consequentialism is not identical to utilitarianism, and this section
will explore both traditional quantitative utilitarian defenses of
libertarianism, and other forms more difficult to classify.
a. Quantitative Utilitarianism
Philosophically, the approach that seeks to justify political
institutions by demonstrating their tendency to maximize utility has
its clearest origins in the thought of Jeremy Bentham, himself a legal
reformer as well as moral theorist. But, while Bentham was no advocate
of unfettered laissez-faire, his approach has been enormously
influential among economists, especially the Austrian and Chicago
Schools of Economics, many of whom have utilized utilitarian analysis
in support of libertarian political conclusions. Some influential
economists have been self-consciously libertarian—the most notable of
which being Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, and
Milton Friedman (the latter three are Nobel laureates). Richard
Epstein, more legal theorist than economist, nevertheless utilizes
utilitarian argument with an economic analysis of law to defend his
version of classical liberalism. His work in Principles for a Free
Society (1998) and Skepticism and Freedom (2003) is probably the most
philosophical of contemporary utilitarian defenses of libertarianism.
Buchanan's work is generally described as contractarian, though it
certainly draws heavily on utilitarian analysis. It too is highly
philosophical.
Utilitarian defenses of libertarianism generally consist of two
prongs: utilitarian arguments in support of private property and free
exchange and utilitarian arguments against government policies that
exceed the bounds of the minimal state. Utilitarian defenses of
private property and free exchange are too diverse to thoroughly
canvass in a single article. For the purposes of this article,
however, the focus will be on two main arguments that have been
especially influential: the so-called "Tragedy of the Commons"
argument for private property and the "Invisible Hand" argument for
free exchange.
i. The Tragedy of the Commons and Private Property
The Tragedy of the Commons argument notes that under certain
conditions when property is commonly owned or, equivalently, owned by
no one, it will be inefficiently used and quickly depleted. In his
original description of the problem of the commons, Garrett Hardin
asks us to imagine a pasture open to all, on which various herders
graze their cattle (Hardin 1968). Each additional animal that the
herder is able to graze means greater profit for the herder, who
captures that entire benefit for his or her self. Of course,
additional cattle on the pasture has a cost as well in terms of
crowding and diminished carrying capacity of the land, but importantly
this cost of additional grazing, unlike the benefit, is dispersed
among all herders. Since each herder thus receives the full benefit of
each additional animal but bears only a fraction of the dispersed
cost, it benefits him or her to graze more and more animals on the
land. But since this same logic applies equally well to all herders,
we can expect them all to act this way, with the result that the
carrying capacity of the field will quickly be exceeded.
The tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons is especially apparent if we
model it as a Prisoner's Dilemma, wherein each party has the option to
graze additional animals or not to graze. (See figure 1, below, where
A and B represent two herders, "graze" and "don't graze" their
possible options, and the four possible outcomes of their joint
action. Within the boxes, the numbers represent the utility each
herder receives from the outcome, with A's outcome listed on the left
and B's on the right). As the discussion above suggests, the best
outcome for each individual herder is to graze an additional animal,
but for the other herder not to—here the herder reaps all the benefit
and only a fraction of the cost. The worst outcome for each individual
herder, conversely, is to refrain from grazing an additional animal
while the other herder indulges—in this situation, the herder bears
costs but receives no benefit. The relationship between the other two
possible outcomes is important. Both herders would be better off if
neither grazed an additional animal, compared to the outcome in which
both do graze an additional animal. The long-term benefits of
operating within the carrying capacity of the land, we can assume,
outweigh the short-term gains to be had from mutual overgrazing. By
the logic of the Prisoner's Dilemma, however, rational self-interested
herders will not choose mutual restraint over mutual exploitation of
the resource. This is because, so long as the costs of over-grazing
are partially externalized on to other users of the resource, it is in
each herder's interest to overgraze regardless of what the other party
does. In the language of game theory, overgrazing dominates restraint.
As a result, not only is the resource consumed, but both parties are
made worse off individually than they could have been. Mutual
overgrazing creates a situation that not only yields a lower total
utility than mutual restraint (2 vs. 6), but that is Pareto-inferior
to mutual restraint—at least one party (indeed, both!) would have been
made better off by mutual restraint without anyone having been made
worse off.
B
Don't Graze
Graze
A
Don't Graze
3, 3
0, 5
Graze
5, 0
1, 1
Figure 1. The Tragedy of the Commons as Prisoner's Dilemma
The classic solution to the Tragedy of the Commons is private
property. Recall that the tragedy arises because individual herders do
not have to bear the full costs of their actions. Because the land is
common to all, the costs of overgrazing are partially externalized on
to other users of the resource. But private property changes this. If,
instead of being commonly owned by all, the field was instead divided
into smaller pieces of private property, then herders would have the
power to exclude others from using their own property. One would only
be able to graze cattle on one's own field, or on others' fields on
terms specified by their owners, and this means that the costs of that
overgrazing (in terms of diminished usability of the land or
diminished resale value because of that diminished usability) would be
borne by the overgrazer alone. Private property forces individuals to
internalize the cost of their actions, and this in turn provides
individuals with an incentive to use the resource wisely.
The lesson is that by creating and respecting private property rights
in external resources, governments can provide individuals with an
incentive to use those resources in an efficient way, without the need
for complicated government regulation and oversight of those
resources. Libertarians have used this basic insight to argue for
everything from privatization of roads (Klein and Fielding 1992) to
private property as a solution to various environmental problems
(Anderson and Leal 1991).
ii. The Invisible Hand and Free Exchange
Libertarians believe that individuals and groups should be free to
trade just about anything they wish with whomever they wish, with
little to no governmental restriction. They therefore oppose laws that
prohibit certain types of exchanges (such as prohibitions on
prostitution and sale of illegal drugs, minimum wage laws that
effectively prohibit low-wage labor agreements, and so on) as well as
laws that burden exchanges by imposing high transaction costs (such as
import tariffs).
The reason utilitarian libertarians support free exchange is that,
they argue, it tends to allocate resources into the hands of those who
value them most, and in so doing to increase the total amount of
utility in society. The first step in seeing this is to understand
that even if trade is a zero-sum game in terms of the objects that are
traded (nothing is created or destroyed, just moved about), it is a
positive-sum game in terms of utility. This is because individuals
differ in terms of the subjective utility they assign to goods. A
person planning to move from Chicago to San Diego might assign a
relatively low utility value to her large, heavy furniture. It's
difficult and costly to move, and might not match the style of the new
home anyway. But to someone else who has just moved into an empty
apartment in Chicago, that furniture might have a very high utility
value indeed. If the first person values the furniture at $200 (or its
equivalent in terms of utility) and the second person values it at
$500, both will gain if they exchange for a price anywhere between
those two values. Each will have given up something they value less in
exchange for something they value more, and net utility will have
increased as a result.
As Friedrich Hayek has noted, much of the information about the
relative utility values assigned to different goods is transmitted to
different actors in the market via the price system (Hayek 1980). An
increase in a resource's price signals that demand for that resource
has increased relative to supply. Consumers can respond to this price
increase by continuing to use the resource at the now-higher price,
switching to a substitute good, or discontinuing use of that sort of
resource altogether. Each individual's decision is both affected by
the price of the relevant resources, and affects the price insofar as
it adds to or subtracts from aggregate supply and demand. Thus, though
they generally do not know it, each person's decision is a response to
the decisions of millions of other consumers and producers of the
resource, each of whom bases her decision on her own specialized,
local knowledge about that resource. And although all they are trying
to do is maximize their own utility, each individual will be led to
act in a way that leads the resource toward its highest-valued use.
Those who derive the most utility from the good will outbid others for
its use, and others will be led to look for cheaper substitutes.
On this account, one deeply influenced by the Austrian School of
Economics, the market is a constantly churning process of competition,
discovery, and innovation. Market prices represent aggregates of
information and so generally represent an advance over what any one
individual could hope to know on his own, but the individual decisions
out of which market prices arise are themselves based on imperfect
information. There are always opportunities that nobody has
discovered, and the passage of time, the changing of people's
preferences, and the development of new technological possibilities
ensures that this ignorance will never be fully overcome. The market
is thus never in a state of competitive equilibrium, and it will
always "fail" by the test of perfect efficiency. But it is precisely
today's market failures that provide the opportunities for tomorrow's
entrepreneurs to profit by new innovation (Kirzner 1996). Competition
is a process, not a goal to be reached, and it is a process driven by
the particular decisions of individuals who are mostly unaware of the
overall and long-term tendencies of their decisions taken as a whole.
Even if no market actor cares about increasing the aggregate level of
utility in society, he will be, as Adam Smith wrote, "led by an
invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention"
(Smith 1981). The dispersed knowledge of millions of market actors
will be taken into account in producing a distribution that comes as
close as practically possible to that which would be selected by a
benign, omniscient, and omnipotent despot. In reality, however, all
that government is required to do in order to achieve this effect is
to define and enforce clear property rights and to allow the price
system to freely adjust in response to changing conditions.
iii. Arguments Against Government Intervention
The above two arguments, if successful, demonstrate that free markets
and private property generate good utilitarian outcomes. But even if
this is true, it remains possible that selective government
intervention in the economy could produce outcomes that are even
better. Governments might use taxation and coercion for the provision
of public goods, or to prevent other sorts of market failures like
monopolies. Or governments might engage in redistributive taxation on
the grounds that given the diminishing marginal utility of wealth,
doing so will provide higher levels of overall utility. In order to
maintain their opposition to government intervention, then,
libertarians must produce arguments to show that such policies will
not produce greater utility than a policy of laissez-faire. Producing
such arguments is something of a cottage industry among libertarian
economists, and so we cannot hope to provide a complete summary here.
Two main categories of argument, however, have been especially
influential. We can call them incentive-based arguments and public
choice arguments.
Incentive arguments proceed by claiming that government policies
designed to promote utility actually produce incentives for
individuals to act in ways that run contrary to promotion of utility.
Examples of incentive arguments include arguments that (a)
government-provided (welfare) benefits dissuade individuals from
taking responsibility for their own economic well-being (Murray 1984),
(b) mandatory minimum wage laws generate unemployment among
low-skilled workers (Friedman 1962, 180–181), (c) legal prohibition of
drugs create a black market with inflated prices, low quality control,
and violence (Thornton 1991), and (d) higher taxes lead people to work
and/or invest less, and hence lead to lower economic growth.
Public choice arguments, on the other hand, are often employed by
libertarians to undermine the assumption that government will use its
powers to promote the public interest in the way its proponents claim
it will. Public choice as a field is based on the assumption that the
model of rational self-interest typically employed by economists to
predict the behavior of market agents can also be used to predict the
behavior of government agents. Rather than trying to maximize profit,
however, government agents are thought to be aiming at re-election (in
the case of elected officials) or maintenance or expansion of budget
and influence (in the case of bureaucrats). From this basic analytical
model, public choice theorists have argued that (a) the fact that the
costs of many policies are widely dispersed among taxpayers, while
their benefits are often concentrated in the hands of a few
beneficiaries, means that even grossly inefficient policies will be
enacted and, once enacted, very difficult to remove, (b) politicians
and bureaucrats will engage in "rent-seeking" behavior by exploiting
the powers of their office for personal gain rather than public good,
and (c) certain public goods will be over-supplied by political
processes, while others will be under-supplied, since government
agents lack both knowledge and incentives necessary to provide such
goods at efficient levels (Mitchell and Simmons 1994). These problems
are held to be endemic to political processes, and not easily subject
to legislative or constitutional correction. Hence, many conclude that
the only way to minimize the problems of political power is to
minimize the scope of political power itself by subjecting as few
areas of life as possible to political regulation.
b. Traditionalist Consequentialism
The quantitative utilitarians are often both rationalist and radical
in their approach to social reform. For them, the maximization of
utility serves as an axiomatic first principle, from which policy
conclusions can be straightforwardly deduced once empirical (or
quasi-empirical) assessments of causal relationships in the world have
been made. From Jeremy Bentham to Peter Singer, quantitative
utilitarians have advocated dramatic changes in social institutions,
all justified in the name of reason and the morality it gives rise to.
There is, however, another strain of consequentialism that is less
confident in the ability of human reason to radically reform social
institutions for the better. For these consequentialists, social
institutions are the product of an evolutionary process that itself is
the product of the decisions of millions of discrete individuals. Each
of these individuals in turn possess knowledge that, though by itself
is insignificant, in the aggregate represents more than any single
social reformer could ever hope to match. Humility, not radicalism, is
counseled by this variety of consequentialism.
Though it has its affinities with conservative doctrines such as those
of Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, and Russell Kirk, this strain of
consequentialism had its greatest influence on libertarianism through
the work of Friedrich Hayek. Hayek, however, takes pains to distance
himself from conservative ideology, noting that his respect for
tradition is not grounded in a fetish for the status quo or an
opposition to change as such, but in deeper, distinctively liberal
principles (Hayek 1960). For Hayek, tradition is valuable because, and
only to the extent that, it evolves in a peaceful, decentralized way.
Social norms that are chosen by free individuals and survive
competition from competing norms without being maintained by coercion
are, for that reason, worthy of respect even if we are not consciously
aware of all the reasons that the institution has survived. Somewhat
paradoxically then, Hayek believes that we can rationally support
institutions even when we lack substantive justifying reasons for
supporting them. The reason this can be rational is that even when we
lack substantive justifying reasons, we nevertheless have justifying
reasons in a procedural sense—the fact that the institution is the
result of an evolutionary procedure of a certain sort gives us reason
to believe that there are substantive justifying reasons for it, even
if we do not know what they are (Gaus 2006).
For Hayek, the procedures that lend justifying force to institutions
are, essentially, ones that leave individuals free to act as they wish
so long as they do not act aggressively toward others. For Hayek,
however, this principle is not a moral axiom but rather follows from
his beliefs regarding the limits and uses of knowledge in society. A
crucial piece of Hayek's arguments regarding the price system, (see
above) is his claim that each individual possesses a unique set of
knowledge about his or her local circumstances, special interests,
desires, abilities, and so forth. The price system, if allowed to
function freely without artificial floors or ceilings, will reflect
this knowledge and transmit it to other interested individuals, thus
allowing society to make effective use of dispersed knowledge. But
Hayek's defense of the price system is only one application of a more
general point. The fact that knowledge of all sorts exists in
dispersed form among many individuals is a fundamental fact about
human existence. And since this knowledge is constantly changing in
response to changing circumstances and cannot therefore be collected
and acted upon by any central authority, the only way to make use of
this knowledge effectively is to allow individuals the freedom to act
on it themselves. This means that government must disallow individuals
from coercing one another, and also must refrain from coercing them
themselves. The social order that such voluntary actions produce is
one that, given the complexity of social and economic systems and
radical limitations on our ability to acquire knowledge about its
particular details (Gaus 2007), cannot be imposed by fiat, but must
evolve spontaneously in a bottom-up manner. Hayek, like Mill before
him (Mill 1989), thus celebrates the fact that a free society allows
individuals to engage in "experiments in living" and therefore, as
Nozick argued in the neglected third part of his Anarchy, State, and
Utopia, can serve as a "utopia of utopias" where individuals are at
liberty to organize their own conception of the good life with others
who voluntarily choose to share their vision (Hayek 1960).
Hayek's ideas about the relationship between knowledge, freedom, and a
constitutional order were first developed at length in The
Constitution of Liberty, later developed in his series Law,
Legislation and Liberty, and given their last, and most accessible
(though not necessarily most reliable (Caldwell 2005)) statement in
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988). Since then, the
most extensive integration of these ideas into a libertarian framework
is in Randy Barnett's The Structure of Liberty, wherein Barnett argues
that a "polycentric constitutional order" (see below regarding
anarcho-capitalism) is best suited to solve not only the Hayekian
problem of the use of knowledge in society, but also what he calls the
problems of "interest" and "power" (Barnett 1998). More recently,
Hayekian insights have been put to use by contemporary philosophers
Chandran Kukathas (1989; 2006) and Gerald Gaus (2006; 2007).
c. Criticisms of Consequentialist Libertarianism
Consequentialist defenses of libertarianism are, of course, varieties
of consequentialist moral argument, and are susceptible therefore to
the same kinds of criticisms leveled against consequentialist moral
arguments in general. Beyond these standard criticisms, moreover,
consequentialist defenses of libertarianism are subject to four
special difficulties.
First, consequentialist arguments seem unlikely to lead one to
full-fledged libertarianism, as opposed to more moderate forms of
classical liberalism. Intuitively, it seems implausible that simple
protection of individual negative liberties would do a better job than
any alternative institutional arrangement at maximizing utility or
peace and prosperity or whatever. And this intuitive doubt is
buttressed by economic analyses showing that unregulated capitalist
markets suffer from production of negative externalities, from
monopoly power, and from undersupply of certain public goods, all of
which cry out for some form of government protection (Buchanan 1985).
Even granting libertarian claims that (a) these problems are vastly
overstated, (b) often caused by previous failures of government to
adequately respect or enforce private property rights, and (c)
government ability to correct these is not as great as one might
think, it's nevertheless implausible to suppose, a priori, that it
will never be the case that government can do a better job than the
market by interfering with strict libertarian rights.
Second, consequentialist defenses of libertarianism are subject to
objections when a great deal of benefit can be had at a very low cost.
So-called cases of "easy rescue," for instance, challenge the wisdom
of adhering to absolute prohibitions on coercive conduct. After all,
if the majority of the world's population lives in dire poverty and
suffer from easily preventable diseases and deaths, couldn't utility
be increased by increasing taxes slightly on wealthy Americans and
using that surplus to provide basic medical aid to those in desperate
need? The prevalence of such cases is an empirical question, but their
possibility points (at least) to a "fragility" in the consequentialist
case for libertarian prohibitions on redistributive taxation.
Third, the consequentialist theories at the root of these libertarian
arguments are often seriously under-theorized. For instance, Randy
Barnett bases his defense of libertarian natural rights on the claim
that they promote the end of "happiness, peace and prosperity"
(Barnett 1998). But this leaves a host of difficult questions
unaddressed. The meaning of each of these terms, for instance, has
been subject to intense philosophical debate. Which sense of
happiness, then, does libertarianism promote? What happens when these
ends conflict—when we have to choose, say, between peace and
prosperity? And in what sense do libertarian rights "promote" these
ends? Are they supposed to maximize happiness in the aggregate? Or to
maximize each person's happiness? Or to maximize the weighted sum of
happiness, peace, and prosperity? Richard Epstein is on more familiar
and hence, perhaps, firmer ground when he says that his version of
classical liberalism is meant to maximize utility, but even here the
claim that utility maximization is the proper end of political action
is asserted without argument. The lesson is that while
consequentialist political arguments might seem less abstract and
philosophical (in the pejorative sense) than deontological arguments,
consequentialism is still, nevertheless, a moral theory, and needs to
be clearly articulated and defended as any other moral theory.
Possibly because consequentialist defenses of libertarianism have been
put forward mainly by non-philosophers, this challenge has yet to be
met.
A fourth and related point has to do with issues surrounding the
distribution of wealth, happiness, opportunities, and other goods
allegedly promoted by libertarian rights. In part, this is a worry
common to all maximizing versions of consequentialism, but it is of
special relevance in this context given the close relation between
economic systems and distributional issues. The worry is that
morality, or justice, requires more than simply producing an abundance
of wealth, happiness, or whatever. It requires that each person gets a
fair share—whether that is defined as an equal share, a share
sufficient for living a good life, or something else. Intuitively fair
distributions are simply not something that libertarian institutions
can guarantee, devoid as they are of any means for redistributing
these goods from the well-off to the less well-off. Furthermore, once
it is granted that libertarianism is likely to produce unequal
distributions of wealth, the Hayekian argument for relying on the free
price system to allocate goods no longer holds as strongly as it
appeared to. For we cannot simply assume that a free price system will
lead to goods being allocated to their most valued use if some people
have an abundance of wealth and others very little at all. A free
market of self-interested persons will not distribute bread to the
starving man, no matter how much utility he would derive from it, if
he cannot pay for it. And a wealthy person, such as Bill Gates, will
still always be able to outbid a poor person for season tickets to the
Mariners, even if the poor person values the tickets much more highly
than he, since the marginal value of the dollars he spends on the
tickets is much lower to him than the marginal value of the poor
person's dollars. Both by an external standard of fairness and by an
internal standard of utility-maximization, then, unregulated free
markets seem to fall short.
4. Anarcho-Capitalism
Anarcho-capitalists claim that no state is morally justified (hence
their anarchism), and that the traditional functions of the state
ought to be provided by voluntary production and trade instead (hence
their capitalism). This position poses a serious challenge to both
moderate classical liberals and more radical minimal state
libertarians, though, as we shall see, the stability of the latter
position is especially threatened by the anarchist challenge.
Anarcho-capitalism can be defended on either consequentialist or
deontological grounds, though usually a mix of both arguments is
proffered. On the consequentialist side, it is argued that police
protection, court systems, and even law itself can be provided
voluntarily for a price like any other market good (Friedman 1989;
Rothbard 1978; Barnett 1998; Hasnas 2003; Hasnas 2007). And not only
is it possible for markets to provide these traditionally
state-supplied goods, it is actually more desirable for them to do so
given that competitive pressures in this market, as in others, will
produce an array of goods that is of higher general quality and that
is diverse enough to satisfy individuals' differing preferences
(Friedman 1989; Barnett 1998). Deontologically, anarcho-capitalists
argue that the minimal state necessarily violates individual rights
insofar as it (1) claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force and
thereby prohibits other individuals from exercising force in
accordance with their natural rights, and (2) funds its protective
services with coercively obtained tax revenue that it sometimes (3)
uses redistributively to pay for protection for those who are unable
to pay for themselves (Rothbard 1978; Childs 1994).
Robert Nozick was one of the first academic philosophers to take the
anarchist challenge seriously. In the first part of his Anarchy,
State, and Utopia he argued that the minimal state can evolve out of
an anarcho-capitalist society through an invisible hand process that
does not violate anyone's rights. Competitive pressures and violent
conflict, he argued, will provide incentives for competing defensive
agencies to merge or collude so that, effectively, monopolies will
emerge over certain geographical areas (Nozick 1974). Since these
monopolies are merely de facto, however, the dominant protection
agency does not yet constitute a state. For that to occur, the
"dominant protection agency" must claim that it would be morally
illegitimate for other protection agencies to operate, and make some
reasonably effective attempt to prohibit them from doing so. Nozick's
argument that it would be legitimate for the dominant protection
agency to do so is one of the most controversial aspects of his
argument. Essentially, he argues that individuals have rights not to
be subject to the risk of rights-violation, and that the dominant
protection agency may legitimately prohibit the protective activities
of its competitors on grounds that their procedures involve the
imposition of risk. In claiming and enforcing this monopoly, the
dominant protection agency becomes what Nozick calls the "ultraminimal
state"—ultraminimal because it does not provide protective services
for all persons within its geographical territory, but only those who
pay for them. The transition from the ultraminimal state to the
minimal one occurs when the dominant protection agency (now state)
provides protective services to all individuals within its territory,
and Nozick argues that the state is morally obligated to do this in
order to provide compensation to the individuals who have been
disadvantaged by its seizure of monopoly power.
Nozick's arguments against the anarchist have been challenged on a
number of grounds. First, the justification for the state it provides
is entirely hypothetical—the most he attempts to claim is that a state
could arise legitimately from the state of nature, not that any actual
state has (Rothbard 1977). But if hypotheticals were all that
mattered, then an equally compelling story could be told of how the
minimal state could devolve back into merely one competitive agency
among others by a process that violates no one's rights (Childs 1977),
thus leaving us at a justificatory stalemate. Second, it is
questionable whether prohibiting activities that run the risk of
violating rights, but do not actually violate any, is compatible with
fundamental liberal principles (Rothbard 1977). Finally, even if the
general principle of prohibition with compensation is legitimate, it
is nevertheless doubtful that the proper way to compensate the
anarchist who has been harmed by the state's claim of monopoly is to
provide him with precisely what he does not want—state police and
military services (Childs 1977).
Until decisively rebutted, then, the anarchist position remains a
serious challenge for libertarians, especially of the minimal state
variety. This is true regardless of whether their libertarianism is
defended on consequentialist or natural rights grounds. For the
consequentialist libertarian, the challenge is to explain why law and
protective services are the only goods that require state provision in
order to maximize utility (or whatever the maximandum may be). If, for
instance, the consequentialist justification for the state provision
of law is that law is a public good, then the question is: Why should
other public goods not also be provided? The claim that only police,
courts, and military fit the bill appears to be more an a priori
article of faith than a consequence of empirical analysis. This
consideration might explain why so many consequentialist libertarians
are in fact classical liberals who are willing to grant legitimacy to
a larger than minimal state (Friedman 1962; Hayek 1960; Epstein 2003).
For deontological libertarians, on the other hand, the challenge is to
show why the state is justified in (a) prohibiting individuals from
exercising or purchasing protective activities on their own and (b)
financing protective services through coercive and redistributive
taxation. If this sort of prohibition, and this sort of coercion and
redistribution is justified, why not others? Once the bright line of
non-aggression has been crossed, it is difficult to find a compelling
substitute.
This is not to say that anarcho-capitalists do not face challenges of
their own. First, many have pointed out that there is a paucity of
empirical evidence to support the claim that anarcho-capitalism could
function in a modern post-industrial society. Pointing to
quasi-examples from Medieval Iceland (Friedman 1979) does little to
alleviate this concern (Epstein 2003). Second, even if a plausible
case could be made for the market provision of law and private
defense, the market provision of national defense, which fits the
characteristics of a public good almost perfectly, remains a far more
difficult challenge (Friedman 1989). Finally, when it comes to rights
and anarchy, one philosopher's modus ponens is another's modus
tollens. If respect for robust rights of self-ownership and property
in external goods, as libertarians understand them, entail
anarcho-capitalism, why not then reject these rights rather than
embrace anarcho-capitalism? Rothbard, Nozick and other natural rights
libertarians are notoriously lacking in foundational arguments to
support their strong belief in these rights. In the absence of strong
countervailing reasons to accept these rights and the libertarian
interpretation of them, the fact that they lead to what might seem to
be absurd conclusions could be a decisive reason to reject them.
5. Other Approaches to Libertarianism
This entry has focused on the main approaches to libertarianism
popular among academic philosophers. But it has not been exhaustive.
There are other philosophical defenses of libertarianism that space
prevents exploring in detail, but deserve mention nevertheless. These
include defenses of libertarianism that proceed from teleological and
contractual considerations.
a. Teleological Libertarianism
One increasingly influential approach takes as its normative
foundation a virtue-centered ethical theory. Such theories hold that
libertarian political institutions are justified in the way they allow
individuals to develop as virtuous agents. Ayn Rand was perhaps the
earliest modern proponent of such theory, and while her writings were
largely ignored by academics, the core idea has since been picked up
and developed with greater sophistication by philosophers like Tara
Smith, Douglas Rasmussen, and Douglas Den Uyl (Rasmussen and Den Uyl
1991; 2005).
Teleological versions of libertarianism are in some significant
respects similar to consequentialist versions, insofar as they hold
that political institutions are to be judged in light of their
tendency to yield a certain sort of outcome. But the consequentialism
at work here is markedly different from the aggregative and impartial
consequentialism of act-utilitarianism. Political institutions are to
be judged based on the extent to which they allow individuals to
flourish, but flourishing is a value that is agent-relative (and not
agent-neutral as is happiness for the utilitarian), and also one that
can only be achieved by the self-directed activity of each individual
agent (and not something that can be distributed among individuals by
the state). It is thus not the job of political institutions to
promote flourishing by means of activist policies, but merely to make
room for it by enforcing the core set of libertarian rights.
These claims lead to challenges for the teleological libertarian,
however. If human flourishing is good, it must be so in an
agent-neutral or in an agent-relative sense. If it is good in an
agent-neutral sense, then it is unclear why we do not share positive
duties to promote the flourishing of others, alongside merely negative
duties to refrain from hindering their pursuit of their own
flourishing.
Teleological libertarians generally argue that flourishing is
something that cannot be provided for one by others since it is
essentially a matter of exercising one's own practical reason in the
pursuit of a good life. But surely others can provide for us some of
the means for our exercise of practical reason—from basics such as
food and shelter to more complex goods such as education and perhaps
even the social bases of self-respect. If, on the other hand, human
flourishing is a good in merely an agent-relative sense, then it is
unclear why others' flourishing imposes any duties on us at
all—positive or negative. If duties to respect the negative rights of
others are not grounded in the agent-neutral value of others'
flourishing, then presumably they must be grounded in our own
flourishing, but (a) making the wrongness of harming others depend on
its negative effect on us seems to make that wrongness too contingent
on situational facts—surely there are some cases in which violating
the rights of others can benefit us, even in the long-term holistic
sense required by eudaimonistic accounts. And (b) the fact that
wronging others will hurt us seems to be the wrong kind of explanation
for why rights-violating acts are wrong. It seems to get matters
backwards: rights-violating actions are wrong because of their effects
on the person whose rights are violated, not because they detract from
the rights-violator's virtue.
b. Contractarian Libertarianism
Another moral framework that has become increasingly popular among
philosophers since Rawls's Theory of Justice (1971) is
contractarianism. As a moral theory, contractarianism is the idea that
moral principles are justified if and only if they are the product of
a certain kind of agreement among persons. Among libertarians, this
idea has been developed by Jan Narveson in his book, The Libertarian
Idea (1988), which attempts to show that rational individuals would
agree to a government that took individual negative liberty as the
only relevant consideration in setting policy. And, while not
self-described as a contractarian, Loren Lomasky's work in Persons,
Rights, and the Moral Community (1987) has many affinities with this
approach, as it attempts to defend libertarianism as a kind of policy
of mutual-advantage between persons.
c. Conclusion: Libertarianism as an Overlapping Consensus
Most of the libertarian theories we have surveyed in this article have
a common structure: foundational philosophical commitments are set
out, theories are built upon them, and practical conclusions are
derived from those theories. This approach has the advantage of
thoroughness—one's ultimate political conclusions are undergirded by a
weighty philosophical system to which any challengers can be directed.
The downside of this approach is that anyone who disagrees with one's
philosophic foundations will not be much persuaded by one's
conclusions drawn from them—and philosophers are not generally known
for their widespread agreement on foundational issues.
As a result, much of the most interesting work in contemporary
libertarian theory skips systematic theory-building altogether, and
heads straight to the analysis of concrete problems. Often this
analysis proceeds by accepting some set of values as given—often the
values embraced by those who are not sympathetic to libertarianism as
a political theory—and showing that libertarian political institutions
will better realize those values than competing institutional
frameworks. Daniel Shapiro's recent work on welfare states (Shapiro
2007), for instance, is a good example of this trend, in arguing that
contemporary welfare states are unjustifiable from a variety of
popular theoretical approaches. Loren Lomasky (2005) has written a
humorous but important piece arguing that Rawls's foundational
principles are better suited to defending Nozickian libertarianism
than even Nozick's foundational principles are. And David Schmidtz
(Schmidtz and Goodin 1998) has argued that market institutions are
supported on grounds of individual responsibility that any moral
framework ought to take seriously. While such approaches lack the
theoretical completeness that philosophers naturally crave, they
nevertheless have the virtue of addressing crucially important social
issues in a way that dispenses with the need for complete agreement on
comprehensive moral theories.
A theoretical justification of this approach can be found in John
Rawls's notion of an overlapping consensus, as developed in his work
Political Liberalism (1993). Rawls's idea is that decisions about
which political institutions and principles to adopt ought to be based
on those aspects of morality on which all reasonable theories
converge, rather than any one particular foundational moral theory,
because there is reasonable and apparently intractable disagreement
about foundational moral issues. Extending this overlapping consensus
approach to libertarianism, then, entails viewing libertarianism as a
political theory that is compatible with a variety of foundational
metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical views. Individuals need not
settle their reasonable disagreements regarding moral issues in order
to agree upon a framework for political association; and
libertarianism, with its robust toleration of individual differences,
seems well-suited to serve as the principle for such a framework
(Barnett 2004).
6. References and Further Reading
* Anderson, T. L. and Leal, D. R. Free-market Environmentalism.
San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1991.
o Argues that free markets can do a better job than
government regulation and management at protecting and promoting
environmental goods, with detailed application to water markets,
oceans, forests, and more.
* Arneson, R. "Lockean Self-Ownership: Toward a Demolition."
Political Studies, 39 (March), 36–54, 1991.
o A criticism of the concept of self-ownership from a
contemporary liberal egalitarian philosopher. Argues that the
principle is both less determinate than has been typically supposed,
and that even where it has determinate implications it is unacceptable
on moral grounds.
* Barnett, R. E. The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of
Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
o A contemporary work of libertarian theory that weaves
Hayekian insights regarding prices and information, public choice
insights regarding governmental inefficiencies, and restitution-based
insights on punishment arguing for a "polycentric constitutional
order" (anarcho-capitalism).
* Barnett, R. E. "The Moral Foundations of Modern Libertarianism,"
in Peter Berkowitz (ed.), Varieties of Conservatism in America.
Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2004.
o Argues that libertarians need not choose between
consequentialist and deontological foundations for their position, but
can advocate it based on the idea that libertarianism's
support for the rule of law serves as the basis for an
"overlapping consensus" of reasonable moral views.
* Barry, N. P. On Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism. London:
Macmillan, 1986.
o A thorough and largely sympathetic survey of the major
varieties of classical liberal and libertarian political thought,
together with their philosophic foundations and weaknesses.
* Berlin, I. "Two Concepts of Liberty," in Isaiah Berlin, Four
Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990 [1958].
o A classic defense of the political pursuit of negative
over positive liberty. See, however, Rothbard's essay "Isaiah Berlin
on Negative Freedom" in The Ethics of Liberty (1982) for a libertarian
criticism of this distinction and Berlin's argument for it.
* Buchanan, A. Ethics, Efficiency and the Market. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985.
o Critical survey of consequentialist, natural rights, and
other deontological arguments for free markets by a first-rate
philosopher.
* Buchanan, J. and Tullock, G. The Calculus of Consent. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1962.
o The founding text of the public choice school of political
economics, which applies the assumption of rational self-interest to
government agents to predict their behavior and assist in
institutional design.
* Caldwell, B. Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of
F.A. Hayek. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
o An excellent source for biographical details of Hayek's
life, as well as a concise summary of his economic, political, social,
and scientific thought, and discussion of its influence.
* Childs, R. A. "The Invisible Hand Strikes Back." Journal of
Libertarian Studies, 1 (1), 23–33, 1977.
o An attempt to refute Nozick's argument that society can
progress from anarchy to a minimal state by an "invisible hand"
process that violates no one's rights.
* Childs, R. A. "Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn
Rand," in J. K. Taylor (ed.), Liberty Against Power: Essays by Roy A.
Childs, Jr. San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes, 1994 [1969].
o Argues that Ayn Rand's defense of a minimal state is
incompatible with her more basic views regarding men's natural rights
against the initiation of force, and that a proper respect for those
rights requires anarcho-capitalism.
* Cohen, G. A. Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
o A critical exploration of Nozick's reliance on the concept
of "self-ownership." Cohen argues that Nozick's libertarian
conclusions do not necessarily follow from self-ownership, and that we
have good reason to reject the concept anyway.
* Epstein, R. A. Simple Rules for a Complex World. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1995.
o An argument for a classical liberal order centered on the
virtues of the simple legal rules such an order would employ. Epstein
provides both a theoretical argument for the virtues of simplicity,
and applications of the argument to a wide array of legal
controversies.
* Epstein, R. A. Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling
Individual Liberty with the Common Good. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
o Epstein's most philosophical contribution to classical
liberal theory, an argument based on a utilitarian justification of
natural law reasoning, and a reinterpretation of Mill's Harm
Principle.
* Epstein, R. A. Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for
Classical Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
o A defense of classical liberalism from challenges of moral
relativism, skepticism over legal rules, skepticism over core concepts
of classical liberalism, and behavioral economics.
* Fried, B. "Left-Libertarianissm: A Review Essay." Philosophy and
Public Affairs, 32 (1), 66–92, 2004.
o Ostensibly a critique of the coherence and alleged
"libertarianism" of contemporary left-libertarian theories. Fried's
criticisms, however, apply to many natural-rights approaches to
right-libertarianism as well. See also the response piece by
Vallentyne, Steiner, and Otsuka in vol. 33, no. 2, of the same
journal.
* Friedman, D. "Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A
Historical Case." Journal of Legal Studies, 8 (2), 399–415, 1979.
o Puts forth Medieval Iceland as a case study of a
well-functioning anarchic social order.
* Friedman, D. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical
Capitalism, 2nd ed. La Salle: Open Court, 1989.
o A utilitarian defense of anarcho-capitalism. The second
condition also contains a valuable postscript that discusses problems
for non-utilitarian defenses of libertarianism.
* Friedman, M. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1962.
o Argues that economic freedom and political freedom are
intimately connected, and presents the case for free markets and
voluntary action in education, poverty relief, occupational licensure,
and more. A classic.
* Gaus, G. "Hayek on the Evolution of Society and Mind," in E.
Feser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
o A systematic exploration of the concept of "evolution" as
employed in Hayek's social and economic thought, and in his philosophy
of mind. Defends Hayek's use of the concept against criticisms that it
is normatively vacuous or that it fails to justify a market order.
* Gaus, G. "Social Complexity and Evolved Moral Principles," in P.
McNamara (ed.), Liberalism, Conservatism, and Hayek's Idea of
Spontaneous Order. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
o An exploration and defense of the Hayekian idea that
because of the complexity of social orders, governments should adhere
to abstract moral principles rather than violating those principles
and seeking to promote expedient outcomes.
* Hardin, G. "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science,162, 1243–1248, 1968.
o The classic statement of the tragedy of the commons.
Hardin, however, draws the distinctively un-libertarian conclusion
that because the carrying capacity of the earth as a whole is a
commons, freedom to reproduce must be severely coercively curtailed if
overpopulation and its attendant problems are to be avoided.
* Hasnas, J. "Reflections on the Minimal State." Politics,
Philosophy and Economics, 2 (1), 115–128, 2003.
o Argues that public-good arguments for the state provision
of law and law enforcement fail, since the state can ensure such goods
are provided without providing them itself. Hence, even if they were
valid, public good arguments would not justify the "minimal state,"
but something smaller.
* Hasnas, J. "The Obviousness of Anarchy," in R. Long and T.
Machan (eds.), Anarchism/Minarchism: Is Government Part of a Free
Country? United Kingdom: Ashgate Press, 2007.
o Argues that anarchism's feasibility can be demonstrated by
surveying a number of contemporary and historical examples where the
goods that government is thought to be necessary to provide have been
or are provided by voluntary means.
* Hayek, F. A. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1960.
o The early statement of Hayek's social theory, later
developed in more detail in his Law, Legislation, and Liberty series.
This book presents Hayek's theory of freedom, coercion, and law,
presents a defense of a classical liberal social order, and discusses
the problems involved in modern welfare states.
* Hayek, F. A. Law, Legislation and Liberty. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1973.
o This three volume series represents the fullest
development of Hayek's social and political thought, applying his
concepts of dispersed knowledge and spontaneous order to the phenomena
of law and justice.
* Hayek, F. A. "The Use of Knowledge in Society," in F. Hayek
(ed.), Individualism and Economic Order. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1980 [1945].
o Hayek's seminal paper discussing the way in which a free
price system serves to convey information and coordinate social
action.
* Hayek, F. A. and Bartley III, W. W. The Fatal Conceit: The
Errors of Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
o Presents Hayek's theory of the origins and evolution of
modern society, his defense of a form of liberal traditionalism, and
his critique of political rationalism, especially as it manifests
itself in socialism.
* Kirzner, I. The Meaning of Market Process. New York: Routledge, 1996.
o A collection of essays by one of the world's leading
Austrian economists. This book focuses on the role of ignorance,
uncertainty, and time in market competition, and the role of the
entrepreneur in the continual (but always incomplete) move toward
equilibrium.
* Klein, D. and Fielding, G. J. "Private Toll Roads: Learning from
the Nineteenth Century." Transportation Quarterly, 7 (July), 321–341,
1992.
o Discusses how roads, considered by many economists to be a
classic public good, were provided on a fee-for-use basis in the
nineteenth century, and what lessons can be learned from this example
for contemporary transportation policy.
* Kukathas, C. Hayek and Modern Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989.
o A sympathetic but critical appraisal of Hayek's social
thought by a contemporary libertarian political theorist.
* Kukathas, C. "The Mirage of Global Justice." Social Philosophy
and Policy, 23 (1), 1–28, 2006.
o A libertarian contribution to the debate on international
justice, this paper argues that the political pursuit of global
justice is an unworthy goal, and that the design of international
institutions should be aimed at limiting power rather than securing
justice.
* Locke, J. The Second Treatise of Government. New York:
MacMillan, 1952 [1689].
o Locke's classic statement of his positive political
philosophy, which expounds upon the ideas of natural law, property
rights, and limited governments.
* Lomasky, L. E. Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1987.
o A thorough and unique philosophical defense of classical
liberalism, based on the idea that agents require liberty to pursue
projects that matter to them, and must grant liberty to others to
expect it themselves.
* Lomasky, L. E. "Libertarianism at Twin Harvard." Social
Philosophy and Policy, 22 (1), 178–199, 2005.
o A playful piece that paints a picture of Twin Harvard (on
Twin Earth) where Rawls is a libertarian and Nozick a welfare-state
liberal, which suggests that Twin-Rawls and Twin-Nozick just might be
more consistent than their real-world counterparts.
* Mack, E. "Self-ownership, Marxism, and Egalitarianism: Part I:
Challenges to Historical Entitlement." Politics, Philosophy and
Economics, 1 (1), 75–108, 2002a.
o A response to Cohen's criticism of Nozick, this piece
defends the idea that rights to self-ownership legitimately yield
unequal distributions of income and wealth.
* Mack, E. "Self-ownership, Marxism, and Egalitarianism: Part II:
Challenges to the Self-ownership Thesis." Politics, Philosophy and
Economics, 1 (2), 237–276, 2002b.
o This second part of Mack's response to Cohen defends the
self-ownership thesis against his criticisms.
* Mack, E. and Gaus, G. "Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism:
The Liberty Tradition," in G. Gaus and C. Kukathas (eds.), Handbook of
Political Theory. London: Sage, 2004.
o A helpful discussion of classical liberalism and
libertarianism, which focuses on the various commitments these
theories share, and how their disagreement about the centrality or
validity of some of these commitments divides the various members of
this intellectual tradition.
* Mill, J. S. "On Liberty,"in Stefan Collini (ed.), On Liberty and
Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989 [1859].
o Mill's classic statement of the moral foundations of
liberalism. Mill famously argues that each person should be at liberty
to do as he wills so long as he does not harm others in doing so. One
of the most influential defenses of individuality, free thought, and
expression in the Western canon.
* Mitchell, W. and Simmons, R. Beyond Politics: Markets, Welfare,
and the Failure of Bureaucracy. San Francisco: Westview Press, 1994.
o An accessible primer on public choice theory, with special
focus on its implications for advocates of limited government.
* Murray, C. Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980. New
York: Basic Books, 1984.
o Argues that the growth of welfare in 1960s and 1970s
America worsened the lot of poor and minority citizens, largely by
eroding their incentive and ability to take responsibility for their
lives.
* Nagel, T. "Libertarianism Without Foundations." Yale Law
Journal, 85, 136–149, 1975.
o Argues that Nozick's defense of libertarianism is entirely
unsuccessful insofar as it fails to provide a defense of the robust
conception of individual rights that supports it.
* Narveson, J. The Libertarian Idea. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1988.
o A contractarian defense of libertarianism, inspired by the
work of David Gauthier and Robert Nozick. Discusses both libertarian
theory and its application to current controversies such as children's
rights, zoning laws, and national defense.
* Nozick, R. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
o Nozick's classic statement of libertarian principles.
Highlights include a lengthy criticism of Rawls's Theory of Justice,
and a neglected third section on how a libertarian society serves as a
"framework for utopia."
* Otsuka, M. Libertarianism Without Inequality. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003.
o One of the most recent systematic developments of
left-libertarianism, combining individual rights to full
self-ownership with the egalitarian principle of equal opportunity for
welfare.
* Otteson, J. Actual Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
o A Kantian defense of classical liberalism, centered on the
idea of respect for persons, and developed with an Aristotelian
conception of judgment.
* Rand, A. "Man's Rights," in A. Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness.
New York: Signet, 1963a.
* Rand, A. "The Nature of Government," in A. Rand, The Virtue of
Selfishness. New York: Signet, 1963b.
o These two essays provide the core statement of Rand's
political philosophy. While rejecting the label "libertarian," Rand
here advocates a minimal state that uses force only in retaliation as
the only political system compatible with man's rational nature.
* Rasmussen, D. B. and Den Uyl, D. J. Liberty and Nature: An
Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order. La Salle: Open Court, 1991.
o Drawing some inspiration from Rand's work, this text is
one of the most thoroughgoing applications of Aristotelian moral
philosophy to the defense of natural law and classical liberalism.
* Rasmussen, D.B. and Den Uyl, D. J. Norms of Liberty: A
Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.
o A development of their earlier work, this view provides a
more foundational defense for the authors' Aristotelian version of
classical liberalism, and defends the view against communitarian and
conservative critics.
* Rawls, J. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
o Rawls's classic expansion of his thoughts on domestic
justice, following his seminal work A Theory of Justice (1971).
* Rothbard, M. N. "Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of
the State." Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1 (1), 45–57, 1977.
o Defends the anarcho-capitalist position against Nozick's
arguments in the first part of Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
* Rothbard, M. N. For a New Liberty. New York: Collier, 1978.
o Rothbard's most accessible book, this volume sets out a
natural rights basis for anarcho-capitalism. While weak in
foundational moral theory, the volume provides a number of ingenious
discussions of how a stateless society cold solve many pressing social
and economic problems.
* Rothbard, M. N. The Ethics of Liberty. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1982.
o This book explores many of the themes of Rothbard's For a
New Liberty in greater theoretical depth. It develops Rothbard's
theory of liberty, shows how it is incompatible with even a minimal
state, and contrasts his position with those of von Mises, Hayek, and
Robert Nozick.
* Schmidtz, D. Elements of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
o Develops a pluralist account of justice based on
considerations of desert, reciprocity, equality, and need, and shows
how a classical liberal conception of the state is sensitive to this
wide array of moral concerns.
* Schmidtz, D. and Goodin, R. Social Welfare and Individual
Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
o Part of Cambridge University Press's "For and Against"
series, this volume has Schmidtz presenting the case for limited
government involvement in the promotion of individual welfare via
market regulation and redistribution, and Goodin presenting the case
for a more active welfare state. A very accessible and useful volume.
* Shapiro, D. Is the Welfare State Justified? Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007.
o Draws heavily on empirical research to argue that none of
the dominant positions in contemporary political
philosophy—egalitarianism, positive rights theory, communitarianism,
and so on—support contemporary central welfare state institutions.
* Skoble, A. Deleting the State.New York: Open Court Press, 2008.
o An extended contemporary treatment of the case for
anarcho-capitalism, arguing that centralized coercive political
authority is incompatible with the value of liberty.
* Smith, A. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations, 2 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981 [1776].
o One of the most historically important statements of the
economic case for free exchange. Smith's book remains a masterful
statement of both the strengths and weaknesses of a market economy.
* Steiner, H. An Essay on Rights. New York: Blackwell, 1994.
o Sets forward a libertarian theory of rights that protect
each individual's claim to self-ownership, but which allows for the
redistribution of external goods. An influential left-libertarian work
in the Lockean tradition of natural rights.
* Thornton, M. The Economics of Prohibition. Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 1991.
o An application of the Austrian theory of economics to the
issue of drug and alcohol prohibition, which argues that all such
prohibitions should be repealed.
* Vallentyne, P. "Left-Libertarianism: A Primer," in P. Vallentyne
and H. Steiner (eds.), Left Libertarianism and its Critics: The
Contemporary Debate. New York: Palgrave, 2000.
o A useful overview of the core commitments of
left-libertarianism, its historical origins and contemporary
development, and its responses to common objections.
* von Mises, L. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis.
J. Kahane (transl.). Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981 [1922].
o A thorough critique of socialism from one of the leading
figures in Austrian economics. Contains Mises's famous argument that
economic calculation in a purely socialist society is impossible,
given its lack of a free price system to convey information about
relative supply and demand.
* Waldron, J. "Two Worries About Mixing One's Labour." The
Philosophical Quarterly, 33 (130), 37–44, 1983.
o Argues that the Lockean idea of mixing one's labor with
external property is incoherent and adds nothing to whatever other
arguments Locke might have for the justification of private property.
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