Why Libertarianism Is Mistaken"
by Hugh LaFollette
In John Arthur and William Shaw (eds)
Justice and Economic Distribution, 1979, 194-206.
[pdf version]
Taxing the income of some people to provide goods or services to others, even those with urgent needs, is unjust. It is a violation of the wage earner's rights, a restriction of his freedom. At least that is what the libertarian tells us. I disagree. Not all redistribution of income is unjust; or so I shall argue.
Libertarianism has experienced a noticeable re-emergence in the past few years. F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Robert Nozick have given new intellectual impetus to the movement1 while a growing concern for personal autonomy has provided personal ground for the sowing of the idea. Yet even though this theory is prima facie plausible and demands serious reassessment of the concepts of liberty and property, it ultimately fails. Once we admit, as the libertarian does, that the state justifiably takes on certain functions, for example, police protection of persons and property, there is no rational basis for believing that the state is unjustified in redistributing tax revenue. We cannot stop, as the libertarian suggests, with the minimal state of classical liberal philosophy. I will not, in this paper, say exactly how far beyond the minimal state we should go. I only argue that libertarianism is not a moral option. On the surface this conclusion seems meager, yet its implications are far-reaching. By eliminating a previously plausible and popular conception of distributive justice, we will narrow the alternatives. By identifying a major flaw in libertarianism, we will secure direction in our search for an adequate theory.
After briefly describing libertarianism I will argue that the theory is guilty of internal incoherence: the theory falls prey to the very objection it offers against competing theories. Then I will consider four possible libertarian replies to my argument. Each, I will claim, fails to disarm my internal objection. After concluding my argument, I will speculate on the roles freedom and property should play in an adequate theory of distributive justice.
A DESCRIPTION OF LIBERTARIANISM
Central to libertarianism is the claim that individuals should be free from the interference of others. Personal liberty is the supreme moral good. Hence, one's liberty can justifiably be restricted only if he consents to the restriction. Any other restriction, including taxing incomes for purposes of redistribution, is unjust. Or the libertarian may couch his theory in the language of rights: each individual has natural negative rights2 to at least life, liberty, and property. No one can justifiably harm him, restrict his freedom, or take his property--that is, no one can violate his rights--without his consent. Moreover, these are general (in rem) rights; they apply, so to speak, against the whole world. And since rights invariably have correlative duties, all the people in the world have the duty not to interfere with the right holder's life, liberty, and property. Each person possesses these rights simply in virtue of his humanity--he does not have to do anything to obtain this moral protec- tion. The possession of rights does not depend upon the consent of others. They are essential moral constituents of personhood.
However, we should note that these two ways of speaking seem to amount to the same thing for the libertarian. Libertarian theorists often move back and forth between talk of negative rights and talk of liberty. I suspect that is because they ultimately see rights and liberty as equivalent or because they hold a theory of rights which is grounded in personal liberty. That is, the libertarian might say, the reason we have all and only libertarian rights (absolute negative rights to life, liberty property, etc.) is that these rights protect individual liberty. Hence, on both models liberty is fundamental.
Libertarianism also contends that in certain prescribed circumstances there can be positive in personam rights, that is, that individual X has a positive right to, say, $1,000 and someone else Y has a positive duty to give X that money. These positive rights, however, are not natural rights; they are not possessed by all persons just because they are persons. They can arise only consensually. For example, if A promises B that he will serve as a lifeguard at B's swimming pool, then B has a right against A and A has a duty to B--a duty to guard those in B's pool. But unless A so consents, he has no positive duties to B, or to anyone else for that matter. Consequently, for the libertarian, there are no general positive duties and no general positive rights. There are only alleged general positive rights; claims to such rights (or of such duties) are mistaken. For if there were positive general duties we would have to violate negative general rights to satisfy them. For example, suppose everyone had a positive general right to life; then everyone would have rights (entitlements) to those goods necessary to stay alive, e.g., food to eat. But food, or the money to buy it, doesn't grow on trees (or, if it does, the trees are owned). Those who own the food or the money have negative rights protecting their possession of these things. And negative general rights, for the libertarian, are absolute.3
There are no circumstances in which these rights can be justifiably overridden, in which one's liberty can be justifiably limited without his consent. Hence, X's rights to property (or life or liberty) can never be overridden for the benefit of others (to satisfy the alleged positive rights of others). X can choose to charitably give his property to, someone, or he can voluntarily give someone a positive right to his property. Nevertheless, morally he cannot be forced--either by legal sanctions or moral rules--to give up his life, liberty, or property. This moral/legal prohibition insures that an individual's liberty cannot be restricted in any way without his consent.
Thus we see two important features of libertarianism. First, the primary purpose of negative general rights is the protection of individual liberty, to insure that no one's life is restricted without his consent. Or as Nozick puts it: "Side constraints [which are equivalent to negative general rights] upon action reflect the underlying Kantian principle that individuals are ends and not merely means; they cannot be sacrificed or used for the achieving of other ends without their consent.... [These constraints] reflect the fact of our separate existences. They reflect the fact that no moral balancing act can take place among us."4 Secondly, the libertarian holds that a sufficient reason to reject any alleged moral rule or principle of distributive justice is that rule or principle restricts someone's freedom without his consent. Hayek, for example, argues that we should reject plans to expand governmental roles since such expansion necessarily undermines individual liberty.5 And Nozick's primary objection to Rawls is that Rawls's two principles restrict individual liberty without consent.
Libertarianism, though morally austere, has a certain plausibility. Each of us wants to be able to live his own life, to be free from the unnecessary interference of others. We want, in Kant's words, to be ends in ourselves and not mere means for others.6 But just because a theory is plausible does not mean that it is correct. Libertarianism, I think, can be shown to be mistaken. I will argue that negative general rights fail to protect individual liberty the way the libertarian suggests. Since the protection of liberty is the express purpose of these libertarian rights, the theory fails. My argument will also show that even the libertarian must hold that one should not reject a moral rule or principle of distributive justice simply because it permits (or requires) non-consensual limitations on freedom. Once this failure is exposed there appears to be no good reason for denying that there are at least some positive general duties and probably some positive general rights. How many and how extensive these duties or rights are is another question.
