The Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism

Jason Brennan, Bas van der Vossen, David Schmidtz, Jason Brennan, Bas van der Vossen, David Schmidtz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317486794
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Libertarians often bill their theory as an alternative to both the traditional Left and Right. The Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism helps readers fully examine this alternative without preaching it to them, exploring the contours of libertarian (sometimes also called classical liberal ) thinking on justice, institutions, interpersonal ethics, government, and political economy. The 31 chapters--all written specifically for this volume--are organized into five parts. Part I asks, what should libertarianism learn from other theories of justice, and what should defenders of other theories of justice learn from libertarianism? Part II asks, what are some of the deepest problems facing libertarian theories? Part III asks, what is the right way to think about property rights and the market? Part IV asks, how should we think about the state? Finally, part V asks, how well (or badly) can libertarianism deal with some of the major policy challenges of our day, such as immigration, trade, religion in politics, and paternalism in a free market. Among the Handbook 's chapters are those from critics who write about what they believe libertarians get right as well as others from leading libertarian theorists who identify what they think libertarians get wrong. As a whole, the Handbook provides a comprehensive, clear-eyed look at what libertarianism has been and could be, and why it matters.

I

Libertarianism and Other Theories

1

Learning from Libertarianism: Thanks from an Unrepentant Social Democrat

Richard W. Miller

Like many, probably most, political philosophers, I support laws that would ­substantially reduce economic inequalities that capitalism otherwise creates and would not dream of describing myself as a libertarian. Yet I will argue that libertarians have had important lessons to teach the likes of us. These lessons are deep. They ought to transform our typical premises and projects, even though they need not transform us into libertarians.

The nature and scope of these lessons is obscured by difficulties in categorizing the typical outlook of those with much to learn. “Egalitarian” is sometimes used to evoke our most pervasive common feature. But like all labels in political philosophy, including “libertarian,” “egalitarian” threatens to be either parodic or soporific. Few philosophers who would accept the label are levellers with a goal of economic equality, yet the treatment of people as equals is not a distinctive philosophical stance. Deepening the problem of characterizing the two sides in the productive exchange, most philosophers who would not dream of calling themselves “libertarian” think, nonetheless, that protection of the most important liberties is the most important political goal. They do not accord all freedoms this special status, especially in the economic realm, but this limitation does not distinguish them from most self-described libertarians. Few self-described libertarians are defenders of freedom from all interference with self-advancement that does not itself interfere. For example, few complain of taxation to fund fire departments and the construction and maintenance of highways.

The best way to make clear the importance of learning from libertarianism is to make the target of instruction political as well as philosophical. Most philosophers who would not dream of calling themselves libertarian seek to provide moral foundations that could sustain a familiar political program whose least misleading label is probably “social democracy.” After briefly describing this program in what are, I hope, boringly familiar terms, I will describe important lessons that philosophical social democrats should learn from libertarians. Libertarians have demolished the foundations in fairness for social democracy that philosophical social democrats have tried to construct. They have rightly emphasized the inherent value of forms of commercial self-advancement that philosophical social democrats have typically regarded as, at most, instrumentally important. Libertarians have correctly insisted that economic justice has no pattern. While all of these lessons can be absorbed by social democrats, the infusion makes a difference to their goals of economic justice; it does not just evoke new arguments for old prescriptions.

Granted, if all these lessons can be absorbed by social democracy, that is a reason for libertarians to consider becoming social democrats, or, in any case, to base opposition to social democracy on empirical criticisms of efficacy, not moral characterizations of what constitutes oppression. For libertarianism has distinctive problems of its own. The outcome of social democrats’ learning from libertarianism might, then, be reconciliation, in which each side has reason to be grateful to the other.

SOCIAL DEMOCRATS AND LIBERTARIANS

The audience for the libertarian lessons that I will describe are philosophers who share (and share with many millions of nonphilosophers) a political perspective with the following elements, which often lead to the complaint, “There is too much economic inequality in my country.” While these philosophers are not opposed to a market-based economy, they support political measures to improve people’s lives that would substantially reduce economic inequalities that capitalist enterprise would otherwise create. While the improvement that they seek includes help for those who are poor, they think that many others, who are not poor, should also be helped to meet a variety of needs through measures that reduce the income of the best-off in their societies. For example, along with anti-poverty programs and assurance to the poor of care for severe illness, they want government to provide extensive access to educational and cultural resources and assurance to all of adequate care for illness in general. They want policies for taxation and growth that give strong preference to the income of those who are not rich over those who are. They believe that these measures would be enacted if their fellow citizens were well-informed and fulfilled their political duties.

People with this shared political perspective identify themselves through a variety of labels. In the United States, they call themselves “liberals” or “progressives.” Elsewhere, they may call themselves “social democrats” or “socialists.” Since “liberal” evokes a very different outlook outside of North America, “progressive” claims a presumptuous title to the way forward, and “socialist” evokes obsolete critiques of capitalism, “social democrat” is the least misleading name.

Social democrats seek to use the state to help some people by means that require taking from others. The help that they seek ranges far and wide among sources of wellbeing. This use of the state is morally wrong unless it is impartial; it is wrong to force people to contribute to an endeavor in which they count for less than others. So, on philosophical reflection, the general goal of social democrats, in matters of domestic economic justice, ought to be, at least to a first approximation, the impartial promotion of the wellbeing of members of their society. Taking the failure of utilitarianism as a lesson already learned from powerful critics including John Rawls in their camp and Robert Nozick among libertarians, philosophical social democrats should regard the endeavor of impartial political promotion of wellbeing as appropriately monitored by some version of Rawls’ device of “the original position.” A variant of the original position of representatives that Rawls came to favor after A Theory of Justice ¹ is well-suited to this task: A system of laws and policies that shapes people’s lives throughout a society is relevantly impartial if one would choose it if one sought to advance the wellbeing of someone for whom one is responsible, among those who will be affected, but did not know who this is.

Of course, the general aspiration to laws that impartially promote wellbeing might not be effectively pursued by the social democratic political program. Its uses of the state might be pervasively self-defeating. This dependence on empirical facts is nothing to be ashamed of. To the contrary: only fanatics base political programs on moral principles alone. At the same time, in the division of labor that advances principled political argument, the philosophers whom I have just described have the distinctive task of finding sound moral foundations for social democracy, moral principles that yield social democracy when combined with empirically warranted claims about efficacy. So, they should be on the lookout for productive challenges from partisans of moral principles different from their own.

The challenges whose productivity I will celebrate come from libertarians. Who are they? In answering this question, one can take advantage of the universal opinion that Robert Nozick was a libertarian when he wrote Anarchy, State and Utopia. At the start of his book, he summarized his stance as the view that any state that goes beyond “the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on … will violate persons’ rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified” (1974: ix). Unfortunately, “and so on” is vague, and the measurement of functions as “narrow” depends on shifting terms of political and philosophical combat. Many of those who regard themselves as libertarians and who look to Anarchy, State and Utopia as a central source of insight would locate in that “so on” governmental endeavors, coping with public goods problems, externalities and other obstacles to self-advancement, which include tax-funded fire protection, construction and maintenance of highways, elementary education, and the imposition of patent-protection and limits to liability for unpaid debts. The distinctive feature of the activities that they support, shared with those that Nozick names, is that these general endeavors advance the self-chosen projects of some and have expected net lifetime costs for no one on account of their expected benefits. (The absence of net costs for anyone, despite the imposition of some costs, is also the feature to which Nozick himself appeals in justifying the state that he countenances in the face of anarchist objections.) The crucial contrast with the general aspiration of social democracy is the “noteworthy implication” that Nozick immediately presents: “the state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others.” Someone who accepts this much breadth to Nozick’s “and so on” will have a corresponding understanding of economic entitlement: holdings that result from noncoercive work, nonfraudulent exchange and voluntary transfer ought not to be interfered with in ways that can be expected to impose net costs on some who advance themselves through those processes.

Someone who endorses these views of just political coercion and morally protected self-advancement, for reasons that do not depend on empirical beliefs about further beneficent consequences, should be regarded as a libertarian. Since nothing is gained by stringent definitions of affiliation (least of all from someone who would not dream of affiliating), I will also include those who regard these views as much closer to the truth than current rival perspectives and derive insight from them to criticize those perspectives.

LESSON 1: THE LIMITS OF FAIRNESS

Few philosophical social democrats think that there is a general duty to choose as one would from a standpoint of impartial concern for everyone. Yet they have a political program based on impartial political concern, and they ask fellow citizens to join them as a matter of moral duty. What could be the grounds for this moral appeal? The reasons that they give have been reasons of fairness, presented or prefigured by Rawls in A Theory of Justice, where he labeled his theory “justice as fairness.” Libertarians’ criticisms of those reasons, presented or prefigured by Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia, have created cracks in these foundations for social democracy that have not been repaired.

It might seem that the requirement of impartiality in what a government does is all that is needed to sustain a requirement that political choice express impartial concern. But that quick inference would show a misunderstanding of the limits to the proper functions of government at the core of libertarianism. Within its proper sphere, government should be impartial. But what is this proper sphere? The issue is whether people have a duty to support the extension of political coercion beyond endeavors that improve the lives of some, with no significant risk of imposing net lifetime costs on others, into the endeavor of impartial political provision of help that does impose a significant risk of net lifetime costs on some. A rationale is needed for this further step, a rationale that a cluster of considerations that stand behind the label “justice as fairness” seeks to provide.

One rationale, suggested by several passages in A Theory of Justice, is that those who benefit from undeserved advantages, such as birth in a favorable situation, must ignore those benefits when they consider whether laws conforming to proposed distributive standards would treat them justly. ² But it does not seem that people do something wrong in making good use of undeserved advantages so long as those advantages are not wrongly obtained. Why, then, should they ignore these benefits in considering whether laws treat them justly? ³

Another rationale is suggested by Rawls’ claim that reliance on the original position reconciles the imposition of a basic structure with the autonomy of those on whom it is imposed, so that “society … comes as close as a society can to being a voluntary scheme” (1999a: 12). Developing this theme, those who have joined Rawls in refusing to extrapolate his account of justice beyond national borders have emphasized the special moral challenge posed by political coercion. (See, for example, Miller 1998; Blake 2002; Nagel 2005.) The corresponding rationale would be that political coercion is unjust unless it has an adequate justification to those subject to it; the justification must be based on a standard for judging the total system of laws that each would choose as best promoting his or her interests as a whole in the course of his or her life if ignorant of the special features of those interests. But the need for impartiality in laws that can be justified to all citizens despite their coerciveness does not obviously require a general commitment to use government to impartially advance every citizen’s interests as a whole. Laws protecting against theft, fraud, murder, and rape should be financed and administered ­impartially. But why should those on whom the laws are imposed take on further projects of ­redistribution? ⁴

Another rationale appeals to everyone’s profound dependence on a shared system of social cooperation. Since each would have hardly anything in the absence of a shared co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Biographical Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Respecting and Caring
• PART I: LIBERTARIANISM AND OTHER THEORIES
• PART II: QUESTIONING LIBERTARIAN PRINCIPLES
• PART III: THE ROLE OF PROPERTY AND THE MARKET
• PART IV: WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE STATE?
• PART V: APLIED LIBERTARIAN ISSUES
• 26.The Libertarian Case for Open Borders
• 27.Religion and Politics
• 28.A Libertarian Approach to Medicine
• 29.Tolerance
• 30.Paternalism and the Limits of Liberty
• 31.Free Markets and Exploitation
• Index