4. Libertarianism

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kymlicka
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Entitlement Theory ◽  
Mutual Advantage ◽  
Increase Efficiency

This chapter focuses on libertarianism and its main assumptions. According to libertarians, people have a right to dispose freely of their goods and services, and that they have this right whether or not it is the best way to ensure productivity. Put another way, government has no right to interfere in the market, even in order to increase efficiency. The chapter begins with a discussion of the diversity of right-wing political theory, with particular emphasis on Robert Nozick’s entitlement theory of justice and his intuitive argument. It then considers the idea of a right to liberty and the contractarian idea of mutual advantage, along with Nozick’s principle of ‘self-ownership’. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the politics of libertarianism, taking into account its rejection of the principle of rectifying unequal circumstances, even as it shares with liberal equality a commitment to the principle of respect for people’s choices.

Aristotle, Kant and Rawls on Moral Motivation in a Just Society

1980 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven M. DeLue
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Mutual Respect ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Standards Of Conduct ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Just Society

John Rawls considers his Theory of Justice to be in the Kantian tradition. Generally there seems to be agreement among Rawls' critics that at least with respect to the procedural formulation of the principles of justice, it is difficult to call Rawls' position Kantian. In this article I will argue that Rawls' Kantianism is best understood as providing a motive source for acting upon known just standards of conduct. In this regard Rawls can be read as synthesizing aspects of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Kant's moral reasoning to provide the rationale to explain why an individual who knows what is morally correct conduct in a given situation, makes such knowledge the source of his action. Demonstrating the Aristotelean roots of Rawls' Kantianism with respect to the problem of motivation for just conduct helps one understand how Kant's moral theory can be viewed in Rawls' words not as a “morality of austere command but … [as] … an ethic of mutual respect and self esteem” (1971, p. 251). Secondly, this view of Kant provides the basis for understanding the anti-corporatist aspect of Rawls' political theory that my reading of Rawls makes necessary.

Privatization—Chipping Away at Government

2020 ◽  
pp. 106-128
Author(s):  
Donald Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Public Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

This chapter focuses on the right wing's astonishingly successful efforts to privatize public goods and services. Privatization has been one of the highest priorities of the right wing for many years, and the chapter shows how it threatens both labor and democracy. Intentionally blurring the lines between public and private institutions, private companies and market forces undermine the common good. This chapter documents the history of privatization in the United States, from President Reagan's early efforts to Clinton and Gore's belief in private markets. Showing how privatization undermines democratic government, the chapter describes complex contracts that are difficult to understand, poorly negotiated “public–private partnership” deals, and contracts that provide incentives to deny public services. With huge amounts of money at stake, privateers are increasingly weighing in on policy debates—not based on the public interest but rather in pursuit of avenues that increase their revenues, profits, and market share. Privatization not only destroys union jobs but also aims to cripple union political involvement so that the corporate agenda can spread unfettered. Nevertheless, community-based battles against privatization have succeeded in many localities, demonstrating the power of fighting back to defend public services, public jobs, and democratic processes.

The Unwritten Theory of Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-175
Author(s):  
Barbara H. Fried
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
General Audience ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Parallel Lives ◽  
Separateness Of Persons

Rawls’s Theory of Justice has had two parallel lives in political theory. The first—the version Rawls wrote—is a response to utilitarianism’s failure to take seriously the separateness of persons. The second—the unwritten version “received” by its general audience—is a response to libertarianism’s failure to take seriously our moral obligations to the well-being of our fellow citizens. This chapter explores how, had he written the second version, Rawls might have dealt with libertarians’ critique of “justice as fairness” as fundamentally illiberal, and how his two principles might have been transformed in the process.

Taking Utilitarianism Seriously

Utilitas ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-355
Author(s):  
P. J. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Significant Challenge ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
Adequate Response ◽  
Mutual Advantage ◽  
Important Sense ◽  
Utilitarian Theory ◽  
The Way

With a book as wide ranging and insightful as Barry's Justice as Impartiality, it is perhaps a little churlish to criticize it for paying insufficient attention to one's own particular interests. That said, in what follows I am going to do just that and claim that in an important sense Barry does not take utilitarianism seriously. Utilitarianism does receive some discussion in Barry's book, and in an important section which I will discuss he even appears to concede that utilitarianism provides a rival though ultimately inadequate theory of justice. Nevertheless, utilitarianism is not considered a rival to ‘justice as impartiality’ in the way that ‘justice as mutual advantage’ and ‘justice as reciprocity’ are. One response, and perhaps the only adequate response, would be to construct a rival utilitarian theory. I cannot provide such a theory in this paper, and I certainly would be very cautious about claiming that I could provide such a theory elsewhere. What I want to suggest is that utilitarianism is a genuine third theory to contrast with ‘justice as mutual advantage’ and ‘justice as impartiality’ – ‘justice as reciprocity’ being merely a hybrid of ‘justice as mutual advantage’, at least as Barry presents it (pp. 46–51). I also want to argue that it poses a more significant challenge to a contractualist theory such as Barry's than his discussion of utilitarianism reveals.

What Does Nozick's Minimal State Do?

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gene E. Mumy
Keyword(s):  
Public Finance ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Minimal State ◽  
Entitlement Theory ◽  
Moral Boundaries ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Legitimate State

In the first half of the 1970s, two books appeared which have subsequently been regarded as major works in political philosophy: John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971), and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). Economists have devoted a considerable amount of ink to commentary, pro and con, on A Theory of Justice; and it is getting to be a rare public finance textbook that does not, in its discussion of governmental redistribution, describe the Kantian contract made behind the veil of ignorance. On the other hand, while Nozick has not exactly been ignored, economists have not joined the debate over Anarchy, State, and Utopia with the same gusto. When economists have joined the debate, their concern has been, more often than not, with Nozick's entitlement theory of distributive justice, as is the case with Varian (1975) and Sen (1977). What is largely missing, then, is any economic analysis of the processes that give rise to Nozick's morally legitimate state, which he calls the minimal state, and the characteristics and likely activities of the minimal state within the moral boundaries set by Nozick, his assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.

Will Kymlicka Goes Practical: Politics Meets (Political) Theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Egor Fedotov
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Ethnic Politics ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Theoretical Treatment ◽  
Life Choices ◽  
Meaningful Life ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Cultural Minorities ◽  
Practical Politics

Will Kymlicka’s liberal theory of justice and of minority rights provides a useful explanation of why the rights of national cultural minorities are worthy of being protected. Kymlicka argues in particular that minorities’ exploitation of their own cultures (read: languages) supplies them with the possibility to make some meaningful (life) choices. It follows, then, that deprivation of such exploitation constitutes a deprivation of individuals’ liberty. Kymlicka’s liberal theory of justice and of minority rights, however, is deficient in the two major respects. In the first respect, it is plagued by ambiguities as regards Kymlicka’s theoretical treatment of justice as a factor that helps to account for the change of states’ policies towards national cultural minorities. In the second respect, it accords remarkably little room, at the end of the day, to the possibility of there being legitimate concerns shareable by majorities rather than minorities regarding minority rights claims in ethnic politics. It follows, then, that re-thinking of received insights is called for.

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Schmidtz
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Robert Nozick ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Cooperative Society ◽  
Experience Machine ◽  
Mutual Advantage

Anarchy, State, and Utopia is arguably the twentieth century’s most influential work of political philosophy after Rawls’s Theory of Justice. It substantially responds to Rawls, despite ranging over many topics. The Experience Machine, discussed in Part I, engagingly articulates Nozick’s discomfort with utilitarianism, and with Rawls’s way of modeling separate personhood. That is, Rawls depicts bargainers as separate consumers, entitled to separate shares, while dismissing the separateness of what they do as arbitrary. Part II continues to pound on the incongruousness of respecting our separateness as consumers (see his discussions of distributing grades and mates) while implicitly denigrating and even denying our separateness as producers. Part III argues that true utopia would not impose a favored vision of utopia while silencing incompatible rivals. It would instead be a cooperative society for mutual advantage, premised on everyone coming to the table with a robust right to say no to unattractive offers.

‘They Stole Our Land’: debating the expropriation of white farms in Zimbabwe

2003 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Entitlement Theory ◽  
Moral Arguments ◽  
Robert Mugabe ◽  
Viable Approach ◽  
Moral High Ground ◽  
Land Question ◽  
Land Policies ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

In Zimbabwe today, Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF colleagues are busy expropriating white-owned farms, and claiming the moral high ground while they do so. Indeed, many observers, inside Zimbabwe and elsewhere, take it for granted that, whatever Mugabe's excesses, there is justice in his cause. But is there? This paper examines three moral arguments that Mugabe and his supporters advance to justify their land policies: that the peasants need the land, that the war of liberation was fought for the land, and that Zimbabweans are only taking back land that was originally stolen from them. The last of these arguments, which rests on an implicit entitlement theory of justice, is the strongest, and this essay therefore scrutinises it closely. It argues, however, that despite their emotive appeal, all three arguments are flawed beyond repair. Debunking them should help pave the way for a more sensible and more viable approach to the land question in Zimbabwe.

scholarly journals The moral economy of security

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Loader ◽  
Benjamin Goold ◽  
Angélica Thumala
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Private Security ◽  
The Other ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Two Bodies

In this article we draw upon our recent research into security consumption to answer two questions: first, under what conditions do people experience the buying and selling of security goods and services as morally troubling? Second, what are the theoretical implications of understanding private security as, in certain respects, tainted trade? We begin by drawing on two bodies of work on morality and markets (one found in political theory, the other in cultural sociology) in order to develop what we call a moral economy of security. We then use this theoretical resource to conduct an anatomy of the modes of ambivalence and unease that the trade in security generates. Three categories organize the analysis: blocked exchange; corrosive exchange; and intangible exchange. In conclusion, we briefly spell out the wider significance of our claim that the buying and selling of security is a morally charged and contested practice of governance.

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