Robert Nozick (1938–2002), along with John Rawls, did more than anyone else to re-create and revive political theory in the Western post-war world. Like Rawls he based his approach on liberalism and a trenchant defence of inalienable rights which governments may not take away just because to do so might be for the aggregate public good (see natural rights). Also like Rawls, and inevitably for someone who takes this position, he was a vehement opponent of utilitarianism and its subdued but definite acceptance by nearly all political actors in the West.
Nozick, however, was very much more firm than Rawls in holding these positions and, because of the particular rights he holds most dear, was much more critical of the legitimacy of modern government and of typical Western welfare state/mixed economy policy. His main work, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), is still hotly debated and much written about. Nozick’s theory had three main strands to it. The first was that it was totally individual-based, rejecting any idea that societies, states or collectives of any form could be the bearers of rights or owe duties; these could be legitimate only in so far that they were voluntary aggregations of individuals, and not just because they may, as a matter of fact, have made most or all members better off. The second, consequent on the first strand, was its approach to the political system, which was semi-anarchist in that Nozick regarded as legitimate only the very minimum state power necessary to uphold the prior existing rights of the individual citizens.
The state should, for Nozick, be not much more than a police force, and he did, indeed, go to some length to explain why even this was necessary, and why private enterprise policing was not enough, in a society of free individuals. The third main strand was that Nozick’s prime human right was the right to property; not only did he take an absolute line on the inviolability of property rights, but his actual theory of how they arose was a strict and limited one. Nozick’s theory of property is often taken to be a reworking of John Locke’s theory, without, as it were, God, because Locke used a theological justification in part. For Nozick, if somebody has a right to property, this can have come about in two ways: the property may have been acquired legitimately as an original act, or it may have been transferred by a legitimate process from someone else who had a legitimate entitlement. As long as any distribution of property is entirely covered by such rules, then the distribution is just, however inegalitarian it may be. Nozick stressed that the justice in a particular distribution of property rights arises from the historical processes that have given people entitlements, not from the consequences of monetary distribution.
One of the principal features of Nozick’s theories was their rejection of most elements of the modern welfare state, on the basis that they contravened his belief in the absolute nature of property rights, no matter how inegalitarian. Nozick regarded the taxation inherent in redistributive societies, that is, any taxation above that needed to pay for the minimal state, as a form of forced labour. Perhaps few people outside of radical libertarians actually agreed with Nozick, but his arguments were mounted with such massive skill, and his analyses are so penetrating, that he commanded enormous influence and respect in the development of modern political theory, and he was certainly the foremost modern exponent of the libertarian position.
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