Does libertarianism imply the welfare state?

Res Publica

Volumn 3, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 131-148

  Machan, Tibor R ^a  

^a CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 53249094300     PISSN: 13564765     EISSN: 15728692     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF02333601     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. I refer to both formulations throughout the paper, although I consider the one drawn from the Lockean tradition the more successful, based as it is on considerations of rights, rather than the supposedly neutral or descriptive state of negative liberty.
2. Those who have helped with this include Ayn Rand, Murray N. Rothbard, John Hospers, Robert Nozick, Jan Narveson, Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Eric Mack, Roger Pilon and myself.
3. As a political position, libertarianism could be approached from varied philosophical paths; those who do reach it from some given position do, of course, hold that theirs is the sound argument for this political system. But in this respect libertarianism is akin to other non-totalist political positions: as a Democrat or Republican one does not always commit oneself to the most successful philosophical defence that might be advanced in support of the political stance one takes. This is true even if in fact there is a sound case to be made via just one coherent philosophical route. For a brief statement of several of the arguments for the crucial elements of the polity of libertarianism
4. See Tibor R. Machan, The Virtue of Liberty (New York, Irvington-on-Hudson: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1994), ch.l.
5. The one libertarian who does not repudiate such a position might be Jeffrey Friedman, editor of Critical Review and someone who appears to embrace what he calls "post-libertarianism". I take this to be an uneasy hybrid of libertarianism and welfarism based on the view that political ideas need to be defended on purely consequentialist grounds and thus that sometimes the protection of the right to individual liberty may not yield the best possible consequences for society.
6. Sterba has advanced his views in many forums, including James P. Sterba, ed., Justice: Alternative Perspectives (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1991);
7. James P. Sterba, ed., Morality and Social Justice (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995);
8. James P. Sterba, ed., Social and Political Philosophy (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1995); his
9. Contemporary Political and Social Philosophy (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth Publishing Co. Inc., 1995) and in a variety of articles in The Journal of Social Philosophy, Social Theory and Practice and Ethics. Some discussions are repeated nearly verbatim, although when others respond Sterba attempts to address the new or reiterated twists in their arguments. He often makes ambiguous use of the notion of "liberty". For example, he says in "A Brief reply to Three Commentators" in
10. Christopher Gray, ed., Philosophical Reflections on the United States Constitution (Lewiston, N.Y. : The Edwin Meilen Press, 1989), 197, that "
11. [M]y contention is that in such situations [where negative rights cannot be secured because, to quote H.L.A. Hart's paraphrasing of John Locke, it is not a situation 'where peace is possible'] the liberty of the poor has moral priority over the liberty of the rich despite the fact that the rich usually have the power to enforce a resolution favouring themselves." Is this negative or positive liberty? It seems to be positive liberty in the case of the poor, and negative liberty in the case of the rich. The poor have negative liberty in that no one is preventing them from pursuing their ends -this happens through their unfortunate circumstances (poverty, illness, ignorance, etc.). What they lack is positive liberty -i.e., being enabled to do what they want or ought to. Yet Sterba seems oblivious to this ambiguity, making it appear that the liberty the poor lack is the sort that he favours violating when it comes to the rich. Indeed, Sterba's focus should be on whether the rich really own what they are said to have property rights to, not on liberty at all. He seems to believe that when some lack what they (seriously) need, they come to own what others have but do not (seriously) need.
12. Mack has presented his views in various papers and collections of essays (e.g., in Tibor R. Machan, ed., The Libertarian Alternative (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Co., 1973), idem
13. . The Libertarian Reader (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982) and
14. Tibor R. Machan and Douglas B. Rasmussen, eds., Liberty for the 21st Century, New Essays in Libertarian Thought (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995));
15. Rasmussen and Den Uyl present their position in D.B. Rasmussen and D.J. Den Uyl Liberty and Nature, An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order (LaSalle, III.: Open Court Publ., 1991); my case is to be found in
16. Tibor R. Machan, Human Rights and Human Liberties (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1975);
17. Individuals and Their Rights (LaSalle, 111.: Open Court Publ., 1989);
18. Capitalism and Individualism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990);
19. and Private Rights and Public Illusions (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1995);
20. Jan Narveson lays out his arguments in The Libertarian Idea (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 1991);
21. and Robert Nozick explains his (by now repudiated) reasons for libertarianism in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
22. James P. Sterba, "Reconciling Conceptions of Justice" in J.P. Sterba, ed., Morality and Social Justice, supra n.5, 1-44, at 7.
23. If it is government policy that prevents people from being able to enrich themselves -e.g., by preventing effective trade, savings, the holding and long term tending of property, etc. -then those who are poor couldn't have become better off. They are thus innocent in experiencing this lamentable condition.
24. This proviso is crucial. Free moral agents can, even under the most favourable social conditions, fail to develop. If one judges conceptions of political justice by reference to the requirement that self-development must be assured for everyone, no system of laws will ever make the grade. Too many people, unfortunately, at least implicitly embrace that requirement: thus Marx's postulate of the future development of a "new person" who would flourish not as a result of free choice but by historical necessity.
25. Supra n.7, at 15. There is little discussion in Sterba's work of why people are poor or otherwise experience circumstances that afford them little or no opportunity for flourishing. It is not clear how much his reasoning may be under the influence of Marxian or similarly responsibility-denying approaches. In the absence of significant discussion of the matter, it is understandable why Sterba appears to view life as largely a zero sum game. 11 Here most libertarians invoke views drawn from philosophies of human nature, action theory, motivational psychology, etc. They largely embrace the position that when human beings are not kept in subjugation, they will tend to work toward their improvement, regardless of where they are on the continuum between destitution and abundance. Libertarians differ on the details, of course, with some subscribing to a neo-Hobbesian idea about what leads people to act, while others rely on a view of agency derived from Ayn Rand or adopt the Hayekian notion of natural evolution. None accept what seems to underlie many statist positions, namely that most people are congenitally passive, even when they are not actively kept in subjugation. On this view, of course, neither the poor (and some among them who are lazy) nor the rich (and some among them who are greedy) are personally responsible for their economic position in life. Nor, of course, can those who resist Sterba's analysis be blamed for possible moral blindness (a charge implicit in some of what Sterba has said about libertarians) since they, too, must be as they are because of circumstances beyond their control.
26. E-mail communication, June 1996.
27. A.R. Rutten, in personal communication.
28. Stephen Cox, personal communication. The point is, of course, that classically made by Rawls -the difference principle.
29. George Seigin, personal communication.
30. Randy Holcombe, personal communication. The "personal Communications" above were posted on the "libprof list on the Internet during June 1996.
31. J.P. Sterba, "Liberty and Welfare", Ethics 105 (1994-1995), 64-98, at 90 n.41.
32. Of course, Sterba begs the question when he asserts that the steps he recommends are the ones "required to secure the basic needs of the poor". When one considers that the positive right to welfare Sterba advocates comes, to nothing less than the legal institution of forcibly taking from people what they have obtained peacefully, by depriving no one of anything these others own, very possibly through their own ingenuity and work and/or voluntary exchange -that is, not via coercion -the implication is clear that theft ought to be legalized in certain cases.
33. Frederic Bastiat, Selected Essays on Political Economy, ed. Gerge B. de Huscar (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1964), 13.
34. Supra n.18.
35. Compare "Good Samaritan" Laws, e.g. Lester H. Hunt, "An Argument Against the Legal Requirement to Rescue", Journal of Social Philosophy 26 (1995), 16-38.
36. This may account, in part, for the indignation felt by some poor when they are offered help. Their dignity has been offended, for they know that their poverty follows from their conscious or implicit choices, ones they find, and ones which may indeed be, fully justified.
37. Perhaps Sterba does not appreciate the difference between meaning (or intending) and doing good. For his implied charge gains its moral force from what seems to me a misunderstanding of morality on Kantian lines, wherein what counts is how intensely one intends the right or good, regardless of whether it will actually be attained. So-called tough love, for example, which is concerned with consequences, often in opposition to showing care and considerateness, has no place in such a moral framework.
38. Rasmussen and Den Uyl, supra n.6.
39. I wish to thank the editorial team of Res Publica, scholars mentioned in notes; and particularly Pat FitzGerald, for their useful criticism of and editorial help with this paper. Of course, I take full responsibility for the final outcome.