Begging the question with style: Anarchy, state, and Utopia at thirty years

Social Philosophy and Policy

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 221-254

  Fried, Barbara H ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 12144265410     PISSN: 02650525     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0265052505041099     Document Type: Review

References (43)

1. It has been suggested to me that while Anarchy, State, and Utopia has been very influential within the academy, its influence (along with the entire Lockean tradition) on "rank-and-file" libertarians outside the academic mainstream has been slight, as compared to the influence of works by Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Robert LeFevre, Leonard Read, and a number of others who are marginal (or completely invisible) figures in the academic philosophical community. I quote: "Rank-and-file libertarians always regarded him as someone who was fun to have around, mostly because of the hand-wringing and tooth-gnashing that he caused among establishment academics who had to watch one of their own say these awful things, but he was never regarded by libertarians as a serious theorist. He was seen as someone who liked to watch his own mind at work (and whose mind was indeed enjoyable to watch at work), and who asked good questions that serious theorists needed to work on, but he was not a positive contributor to libertarian thought.... I've met Objectivists, neo-Objectivists, Randians, neo-Randians, Rothbardians, Lefevrians, Austrians, neo-Hobbesians, Galambossians, Konkinians, religionists, and utilitarians, but I have never met someone who could fairly be described as Nozickian, in the sense of treating Nozick as a serious contributor to his/her world view. Nozick is important because academic philosophers talk about him, and libertarians talk about him because he is important to academic philosophers. But he is not important to modern libertarianism." E-mail correspondence from Gary Lawson, March 25, 2002. This account of the split between academic and rank-and-file libertarianism is intriguing, and well worth pursuing in its own right, but not one I am competent to assess. For purposes of this essay, I confine my focus to how Nozick has been absorbed by his primary audience.
2. No doubt, there is a more general lesson here about the vulnerability of all comprehensive schemes of political philosophy, giving the critic the (always) easier hand to play.
3. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 316. Subsequent references to the book will appear parenthetically in the text, abbreviated as ASU, with page numbers following.
4. A standard liberal argument against counting external (nosy) preferences is given in Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 234-38.
5. There are other grounds that Nozick might more profitably have seized on to differentiate the local from the national case here. One that comes to mind is the practical difficulty (costliness) of exit from both communities and the practical availability of meaningful alternatives. As I have suggested elsewhere, it is no easy matter to defend the proposition that any particular baseline of exit options is required by libertarian principles in order to validate the "choice" to stay put. See Barbara H. Fried, "If You Don't Like It, Leave It: The Problem of Exit in Social Contractarian Arguments," Philosophy and Public Affairs 31, no. 1 (2003): 40-64. But at least the end to which such an inquiry gestures - to give individuals meaningful choice over the arrangements they are living in - seems to be in tune with broad, libertarian values. One cannot say the same of the ground that Nozick has chosen here (whether we are in fact offended by our neighbors' chosen lifestyles).
6. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1773), s.v. "rhetoric."
7. I thank Gillian Lester for this shrewd observation about the parallels in the book's rhetorical and substantive performances.
8. Adam Bellow, In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History (New York: Doubleday 2003).
9. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2.528-29. References are to act, scene, and line.
10. I have no basis to judge the truth of the claim myself. But one person who does has vouched for it: "I knew [Nozick] before ASU was a gleam in his eye, and he really had been a leftist, having been a member, and if I recall correctly the ring leader, of the YPSL (the Young People's Socialist League) at Columbia. The chapter eventually became the SDS, with all of the tumult that ensued at Columbia, but that was after Nozick's time. He really was a convert to libertarianism; [I] knew his fellow graduate student who accomplished the deed." Correspondence with Ellen Frankel Paul, 2003.
11. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 3.2.219-20.
12. "But this rough magic / I here abjure... I'll break my staff, / Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, / And deeper than did ever plummet sound / I'll drown my book" (The Tempest, 5.1.50-57).
13. Julius Caesar, 3.2.218-25.
14. I use the word "resurfaces" advisedly, as typically Nozick does not try to resurrect the affirmative case hard on the heels of his own (unanswered) assault on it. Rather, he typically reintroduces it several pages or even chapters later, without any acknowledgment of the criticisms and abuses that he himself heaped on it. For further discussion, see Section IV below.
15. Richard III, 3.7.204-5.
16. Ibid., 204-26.
17. I am indebted for this observation to Renata Adler, Canaries in the Mineshaft: Essays on Politics and Media (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001). Some emendation is perhaps in order here, in light of the 2003 Jayson Blair scandal. To my ear, the New York Times's paroxysms of front-page self-flagellation in the wake of disclosures that it had been "had" by a cub reporter, while in rhetorical demeanor miles apart from its bland, business-like daily corrections page, reflect a similar rhetorical strategy underneath. The comical excesses of this elaborate ritual of self-debasement, which chronicled, for days on end, every signpost on the road to the Times's ruin, seem intended to communicate simultaneously the overwhelming social importance of the Times - why else would one possibly care? - and the unprecedented nature of its fall from grace.
18. Most of Nozick's contempt in the book is reserved for egalitarians of various stripes. Utilitarianism comes in only for sporadic floggings. What accounts for this disproportionate allocation of critical attention is itself an interesting question, but one outside the scope of this essay. For what it's worth, I think it has a couple of possible explanations. One is simply occasion. The book was written partly as a response to Rawls's A Theory of Justice, which had been published just three years earlier, a motivation that leaves its imprint in the disproportionate attention given to egalitarian theories. Another explanation, I think, has to do with the close (and unacknowledged) kinship that Nozick's own theory has to utilitarianism. In particular, the basic intuition of utilitarianism that Nozick would like to reject (that the interests of the individual may sometimes be sacrificed for the general good) is essential to getting his own argument to go through at various critical junctures. That unacknowledged kinship would, I think, surface were Nozick to push hard on his criticisms of utilitarianism, and may partly explain his reticence to do so. In addition, one of the frequent criticisms of utilitarianism - the pragmatic problems with implementing it, given the difficulties of measuring welfare so as to make appropriate trade-offs - could be levied with as much force against Nozick's argument. Consider, for example, the difficulties entailed in ascertaining the counterfactual histories necessary to implement his principle of rectification, his particular interpretation of the Lockean proviso, and the requirement that "full market compensation" be paid for permissible boundary crossings. Some realization that his own argument might not fare much better than does utilitarianism against the charge of being held hostage to unresolvable empirical issues may explain Nozick's lack of enthusiasm for pushing this particular criticism hard.
19. Probably not. This is another point at which I think Nozick is slightly tone-deaf and risks turning his audience against him by overplaying his hand rhetorically.
20. See also ASU, 328 and 330, on the same childish yearnings for a "sleek, simple utopian scheme" that everyone will accept, that is complete enough in theory "to cover all problems which actually will arise" ( ibid., 330), and that will operate in practice exactly as predicted in theory (ibid., 328).
21. See also ASU, 328 and 330, on the same childish yearnings for a "sleek, simple utopian scheme" that everyone will accept, that is complete enough in theory "to cover all problems which actually will arise" ( ibid., 330), and that will operate in practice exactly as predicted in theory (ibid., 328).
22. See also ASU, 328 and 330, on the same childish yearnings for a "sleek, simple utopian scheme" that everyone will accept, that is complete enough in theory "to cover all problems which actually will arise" ( ibid., 330), and that will operate in practice exactly as predicted in theory (ibid., 328).
23. For yet another example, consider Nozick's insinuation that advocates of end-state distributive principles have deliberately sought out redistributive mechanisms that will obscure what they are up to: "Whether it is done through taxation on wages ... or through seizure of profits or through there being a big social pot so it's not clear what's coming from where and what's going where, patterned principles of distributive justice involve appropriating the actions of other persons" (ASU, 172).
24. There is some irony in Nozick's rhetorically loading the dice through this particular device, given the fuss he makes elsewhere in ASU about the use of the term "distributive justice." By using the word "distributive" in this context, argues Nozick, end-state theorists smuggle into the argument over who gets what the (undefended) presupposition that there is some "person or group entitled to control all the resources" to begin with, and by extension therefore to redistribute them at any time (ASU, 149). Instead, Nozick suggests, we should use the neutral word "holdings." As deployed by Nozick in the balance of the book, the word "holdings" comes to mean, roughly, "That which you, as a matter of fact, possess, which (in my view, for reasons I don't care to spell out or defend, though they have something to do with Lockean entitlement theory) it would violate your rights to take away from you." Consider, too, this passage, in which Nozick implies that ownership of others is not merely the by-product of end-state theories but their motivation: "End-state and most patterned principles of distributive justice institute (partial) ownership by others of people and their actions and labor. These principles involve a shift from the classical liberals' notion of self-ownership to a notion of (partial) property rights in other people" ( ASU, 172), The slippery word "institute" here implies (without outright stating) that end-state principles are chosen in order to create partial ownership of others. This impression is underscored by the word "shift" here, which implies a parallelism in the intentions of "classical liberals" (undeniably to institute "self-ownership") and redistributionists.
25. There is some irony in Nozick's rhetorically loading the dice through this particular device, given the fuss he makes elsewhere in ASU about the use of the term "distributive justice." By using the word "distributive" in this context, argues Nozick, end-state theorists smuggle into the argument over who gets what the (undefended) presupposition that there is some "person or group entitled to control all the resources" to begin with, and by extension therefore to redistribute them at any time (ASU, 149). Instead, Nozick suggests, we should use the neutral word "holdings." As deployed by Nozick in the balance of the book, the word "holdings" comes to mean, roughly, "That which you, as a matter of fact, possess, which (in my view, for reasons I don't care to spell out or defend, though they have something to do with Lockean entitlement theory) it would violate your rights to take away from you." Consider, too, this passage, in which Nozick implies that ownership of others is not merely the by-product of end-state theories but their motivation: "End-state and most patterned principles of distributive justice institute (partial) ownership by others of people and their actions and labor. These principles involve a shift from the classical liberals' notion of self-ownership to a notion of (partial) property rights in other people" ( ASU, 172), The slippery word "institute" here implies (without outright stating) that end-state principles are chosen in order to create partial ownership of others. This impression is underscored by the word "shift" here, which implies a parallelism in the intentions of "classical liberals" (undeniably to institute "self-ownership") and redistributionists.
26. "This process whereby they take this decision from you makes them a part-owner of you; it gives them a property right in you. Just as having such partial control and power of decision, by right, over an animal or inanimate object would be to have a property right in it" (ASU, 172).
27. There is an answer to this question, which Nozick treats as rhetorical. The rationale for treating families as the units to which distribution takes place is that families themselves tend to pool income and make consumption decisions jointly - the same rationale that explains why, since 1948, the U.S. income tax system has treated traditional families (married couples and their minor children), rather than each member of a family, as the taxpaying unit, and why the U.S. estate and gift tax system exempts from taxation all transfers of property between spouses.
28. For an exhaustive catalogue of these arguments by two enthusiasts, see Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell, Fairness versus Welfare (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
29. "One would suppose that considerations of desert, which deterrence theorists had thought avoidable if not incoherent, would play a role here; one would suppose this if one weren't bewildered at how to proceed, even using such considerations, in assigning the 'proper' weight to different persons' (un)happiness" (ASU, 62).
30. See, for example, Nozick's response to his (apt) concern that his attempt to justify the minimal state by showing that it could in theory come into being through a just (invisible-hand) process may be morally irrelevant: "[O]ne would feel more confidence if an explanation of how a state would arise from a state of nature [Nozick's emphasis] also specified reasons why an ultraminimal state would be transformed into a minimal one [my emphasis], in addition to moral reasons, if it specified incentives for [people doing what they ought, including providing compensation where required]." Instead of answering this objection, Nozick follows it up with this caveat: "We should note that even in the event that no nonmoral incentives or causes are found to be sufficient for the transition from an ultraminimal to a minimal state, and the explanation continues to lean heavily upon people's moral motivations, it does not specify people's objective as that of establishing a state. Instead, persons view themselves as providing other persons with compensation for particular prohibitions they have imposed upon them. The explanation remains an invisible-hand one" (ASU, 119). A fair paraphrase of this whole paragraph would go roughly as follows: I've shown how we could in theory get a just minimal state through an invisible-hand process. You might rightly object that I haven't shown we ever could in practice. But I'd like to point out that even if your objection is apt, the process I've shown you is an invisible-hand one. I hesitate to include the "non sequitur" as a rhetorical device, as that description implies some subtlety and charm that maneuvers like this lack, at least to my ear. They are likely merely to irritate the close reader, raising the question whether Nozick is asleep at the switch here, or is simply counting on his readers to be so.
31. See Nozick's discussion of "How May the Dominant Agency Act?" (ASU, 101 ff.).
32. For a similar declaration of triumph on this point, see ASU, 132-33: "[My invisible-hand argument] differs from views that 'de facto might makes state (legal) right' in holding that... the process of accumulating sole effective enforcement and overseeing power may take place without anyone's rights being violated; that a state may arise by a process in which no one's rights are violated."
33. Indeed, when he makes a later appearance in his critique of Rawls, Nozick the Reasonable concedes that the principle of rectification could, in practice, demand adjustments that would swamp all other considerations of justice and in the end justify some system of distribution that looks a lot like the Rawlsian scheme (ASU, 231).
34. The reigning muse for Nozick here might be E. B. White's Will Strunk. Strunk, said White, "scorned the vague, the tame, the colorless, the irresolute. He felt it was worse to be irresolute than to be wrong. I remember a day in class when he leaned far forward, in his characteristic pose-the pose of a man about to impart a secret - and croaked, 'If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!...' This comical piece of advice struck me as sound at the time, and I still respect it. Why compound ignorance with inaudibility? Why run and hide?" E. B. White, introduction to William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style (New York: Macmillan, 1959), xi.
35. Here, again, Nozick takes a page from White's Strunk. See White's charming description of Strunk's device for filling up the time he had created by following his own advice to "omit needless words": "In those days when I was sitting in his class, he omitted so many needless words, and omitted them so forcibly and with such eagerness and obvious relish, that he often seemed in the position of having shortchanged himself - a man left with nothing more to say yet with time to fill, a radio prophet who had outdistanced the clock. Will Strunk got out of this predicament by a simple trick: he uttered every sentence three times. When he delivered his oration on brevity to the class, he leaned forward over his desk, grasped his coat lapels in his hands, and, in a husky, conspiratorial voice, said, 'Rule Thirteen. Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!'" Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, viii.
36. Here, as elsewhere in this essay, I may be reading too much into something that reflects nothing more than the sort of careless writing that we are all guilty of from time to time. There isn't always providence in the fall of a sparrow.
37. I note, on behalf of the legal sticklers out there, that helicopter travel won't help Nozick's legally fastidious marauders much, since it - as much as foot-travel across a neighbor's land - constitutes trespass under the common-law definition of ownership rights in the Anglo-American legal tradition: "cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos" (he who owns the land owns everything reaching up to the very heavens and down to the depths of the earth).
38. For another example, see Nozick's discussion of why one can't leave to private contract the problem of coordinating among private protective agencies (ASU, 89-90).
39. It has been suggested to me again that historical context may supply an answer that the text alone does not. I quote: "Much of this silly argument is a response to hotly debated issues between individualist anarchists and minimalists that went on at a furious pace in the early 1970s. That's where the whole business about protective agencies comes from: the Rothbardian anarchists. But since mainstream political philosophy didn't know anything about this tempestuous (and often pretty wacky) debate, Nozick's arguments just look preposterous and unique to him. They may be preposterous, but they occurred in a context, now pretty much lost to interpreters. The Rothbardian anarchists argued in this (often ludicrous) way, including all the minutiae [quoted above], and Nozick responded in kind." Correspondence with Ellen Frankel Paul, 2003.
40. Just for the record, among the difficulties skipped over in the last example are the assumption that state-of-nature theory has a position on unfair procedures; that, notwithstanding Nozick's own concession that it is quite unclear what those unfair procedures are, all honorable dominant protective associations would know them when they see them (and see them in the same places); and that even a good Lockean dominant protective association would regard it as required, rather than merely optional, to defer to extraterritorial judgments arrived at by "fair" procedures.
41. She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
42. "Epilogue," in Robert Lowell, Day by Day (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1975).
43. I am grateful to both Seana Shiffrin and Gary Lawson for pushing me on this point, each in a different way.