Liberalism and paternalism are often seen as incompatible on the grounds that liberalism recognizes autonomy as the highest value, while paternalism limits autonomy for the sake of more valuable goods such as health and safety. This article offers an argument for the compatibility of liberalism and paternalism. At the heart of the argument is the philosophical distinction between having autonomy and exercising autonomy. The second way of defending autonomy is indeed incompatible with paternalism, but the first justifies paternalism when its (...) purpose is to limit choices that reduce one’s autonomy. A modified version of John Rawls’s veil of ignorance is presented to justify the preference for having autonomy over exercising autonomy. The practical consequences of this form of liberal paternalism are then examined and analyzed using three examples: voluntary sale of oneself into slavery, addiction to opioid drugs, and compliance with road safety measures (seat belt, motorcycle helmet). The argument presented provides a justification for liberal paternalism that does not rely on any controversial or perfectionist conception of the good, and is therefore compatible with the classical interpretation of liberal neutrality. It concludes by considering the compatibility of the proposed argument with other versions of liberal paternalism, including perfectionist, respectful, Kantian, libertarian, and left-libertarian paternalism. The conclusion is that all versions except the left-libertarian one is compatible with the justification described, while Peter Vallentyne’s left-libertarian paternalism suffers from internal inconsistency. (shrink)

Contemporary debates about sexual ethics are dominated by a consent-oriented approach—consensualism. This position well explains the immorality of such acts as rape, pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia. However, consensualism faces difficulties when it comes to adultery or HIV transmission. This article analyzes such unacquired moral obligations not to engage in consensual sex. A new natural law approach is proposed to explain and justify these obligations. This position places central importance in the evaluation of sexual acts on whether they are aimed at (...) achieving some common good and whether they harm some other good. As will be shown, the new natural law overcomes the difficulties of consensualism and grounds unacquired obligations in sexual ethics. And if this approach is combined with a pluralistic view of the goods that are realized in sex, then the new natural law does not allow the conservative conclusions about sexual morality inherent in the old natural law theory. (shrink)

The case for reparations for grievous acts of historical injustice has been getting a lot of attention lately. But I aim to broaden the discussion in two ways. First, I am not only going to talk about reparations as a means of rectifying the injuries inflicted by slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples, the theft of their land, and the ongoing ripple effects of these historic wrongs. I am also going to talk about reparations for a wider variety of (...) historical injustices, including, most importantly, the long-term economic oppression of women, and the historical exploitation of labor. Second, I am not going to base my argument on the principle of equality, as most people currently do, but on the principle of liberty, as it is understood by libertarians on both the right and the left, at least as long as they believe what they say they believe. Not because I think that egalitarian demands for reparations are wrong. Rather, my point is that the principle of liberty, which is often raised as a defense to claims based on the principle of equality, actually leads to exactly the same place. Finally, I will discuss one possible form of reparations that has largely been ignored, but which has a special connection to libertarian principles, and I will show how it can provide some real relief without provoking the opposition that society-wide redistributive remedies usually face. (shrink)

Libertarianism is a theory of justice that places significant moral weight on exclusive property rights. On this basis, many libertarian philosophers, from Robert Nozick to Michael Huemer, criticize any form of income redistribution. Ironically, some libertarians, following Philippe Van Parijs, Matt Zwolinski, and Charles Murray, have supported the introduction of an unconditional basic income. This essay seeks to prove that this support is not just a political compromise. By contrast, libertarian justice advocates have a strong moral basis for supporting income (...) redistribution in the form of unconditional cash payments. This essay explores one such reason, the Lockean proviso. The Lockean proviso is a moral requirement for the appropriation of unowned resources to leave “enough and as good” for others. There are many interpretations of the Lockean proviso, but the most ambitious are the egalitarian proviso and the sufficiency proviso. Each of them, but for different reasons, requires the introduction of a basic income. The egalitarian proviso establishes the equal rights of all people to natural resources, and therefore requires that all benefits from the ownership of natural resources be shared egalitarianly — in the form of unconditional equal payments. The sufficiency proviso establishes some threshold of sufficiency, and then imposes a restriction on exclusive property rights so that they can’t prevent redistribution in order to raise all people to the threshold of sufficiency. However, while both provisos require a basic income, they diverge on three important dimensions in assessing this basic income: applicability, taxable base, and amount of cash payments. (shrink)

Distributive justice is one of the central questions of contemporary moral and political philosophy. Discussions on this topic are often presented as a confrontation between two groups of thinkers: libertarians and luck egalitarians. The former emphasize the dependence of the existing distribution on the individual choice and personal responsibility of people, and therefore are skeptical about various redistribution programs. The latter, on the contrary, emphasize the influence of morally arbitrary luck on the economic situation of people, and therefore welcome redistributive (...) measures to compensate for this brute luck. Left-libertarian claims to reconcile these two types of moral considerations. The classical left-libertarian point of view seeks to offset the influence of brute luck through an egalitarian distribution of the benefits of owning natural resources that are independent of anyone’s choice and responsibility. However, this position does not sufficiently take into account the influence of other factors of brute luck and, in particular, genetic endowments on the distribution of economic wealth. This article discusses three approaches that allow left-libertarians to take into account the factor of genetic luck in interpersonal distribution. First, it is Hillel Steiner’s proposal to attribute genetic information to natural resources, the benefits of which are subject to egalitarian redistribution. Second, it is the concept of equal opportunity for welfare by Peter Vallentyne, Michael Otsuka and Eric Roark. Third, it is the universal dominance criterion of Philippe Van Parijs and Kasper Ossenblok. The first two approaches face a number of moral and practical difficulties, but the third approach is able to overcome them. Thus, the universal dominance criterion is the most promising way to reconcile left-libertarianism and justice in the distribution of genetic endowments. (shrink)

Freedom is among the central values in political philosophy. Freedom also features heavily in normative arguments in ethics, politics, and law. Yet different sides often invoke freedom to establish very different conclusions. Some argue that freedom imposes strict constraints on state power. For example, when promoting public health, there is a limit on how far the state can interfere with individual freedom. Others, in contrast, argue that freedom is not just a constraint but also an important goal of state power (...) and collective action. Good public health policy, for example, promotes people’s freedom. Of course, different arguments often draw on different theories of freedom. So, to evaluate such arguments, we need to analyze these different theories and their implications and assess their plausibility. -/- The broadly liberal tradition views freedom as being about external options. Such theories typically start with an account of when someone has a specific freedom or unfreedom to do something. For example, some argue that only a narrow set of interpersonal interferences count as constraints on freedom. Others argue that a far broader set of factors, including ill health and natural constraints, can reduce one’s freedom. -/- Since the 1980s and 1990s, scholarship has increasingly recognized that to use liberal freedom in normative arguments, one must move beyond specific freedom and unfreedom. Most laws and policies both subtract and add specific freedoms. What matters is how a person’s freedom is affected overall. Philosophers and economists have thus engaged in intricate debates about how to measure overall freedom. Moreover, policies and law affect not only one person at one point in time but also multiple persons across time. So, liberal freedom-based arguments also require distributive criteria for intertemporal and interpersonal distributions of freedom. -/- In the early 21st century, republicanism has developed into a prominent alternative to liberal theories. Republicans argue that being a free person is not just, or not even primarily, about liberal option-freedom. Freedom requires being free from dominating power. Republicans and liberals have engaged in a lively debate on who offers the better theory. In developing the republican ideal, republicans also engage in intramural debates. For example, is domination primarily an interpersonal or structural phenomenon? And what economic institutions does republicanism imply? -/- Theorizing around freedom has become richer and moved from narrower questions regarding specific freedom and unfreedom to overall freedom and to republican theories of nondomination. But recent theorizing also seeks to extend its focus and scope. Historically, theorizing started with the freedom of able-bodied male citizens within nation states. Recent theorizing shifts the focus to include issues around gender, disability, freedom at the international level, and the freedom of nonhuman animals and future generations. Beyond fascinating implications of existing theories, a more inclusive focus is likely to also yield important lessons on how current theories can be improved. (shrink)

There are many different kinds of libertarianism. The first is right libertarianism, which received its most powerful expression in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), a book that still sets the baseline for discussions of libertarianism today. The second, I will call faux libertarianism. For reasons I will explain in this paper, most ‘man-on-the-street’ libertarians and most politicians who claim to be libertarians are actually this kind of libertarian. And third, there is left libertarianism, which is what I shall (...) spend most of this paper explicating. But I will not simply be surveying the views of those who identify as left libertarians and put this forth as if I were engaged in an exegetical exercise. Instead, what I shall set forth is a kind of manifesto, a statement of why I consider myself a left libertarian, one that takes this approach to political morality well beyond where it was left around the end of the last century by the previous generation of left libertarians. My hope is to provide those who find certain left libertarian ideas attractive a guide by which they can explain and harmonise their own views, recognise left libertarianism as a distinct comprehensive political doctrine, and feel more open to identify themselves as left libertarian too. (shrink)

We set out longtermist political philosophy as a research field by exploring the case for, and the implications of, ‘institutional longtermism’: the view that, when evaluating institutions, we should give significant weight to their very long-term effects. We begin by arguing that the standard case for longtermism may be more robust when applied to institutions than to individual actions or policies, both because institutions have large, broad, and long-term effects, and because institutional longtermism can plausibly sidestep various objections to individual (...) longtermism. We then address points of contact between longtermism and some central values of mainstream political philosophy, focusing on justice, equality, freedom, legitimacy, and democracy. While each value initially seems to conflict with institutional longtermism, we find that these conflicts are less clear-cut upon closer inspection, and that some political values might even provide independent support for institutional longtermism. We end with a grab bag of related questions that we lack space to explore here. (shrink)

This book develops a novel approach to distributive justice by building a theory based on a concept of desert. As a work of applied political theory, it presents a simple but powerful theoretical argument and a detailed proposal to eliminate unmerited inequality, poverty, and economic immobility, speaking to the underlying moral principles of both progressives who already support egalitarian measures and also conservatives who have previously rejected egalitarianism on the grounds of individual freedom, personal responsibility, hard work, or economic efficiency. (...) By using an agnostic, flexible, data-driven approach to isolate luck and ultimately measure desert, this proposal makes equal opportunity initiatives both more accurate and effective as it adapts to a changing economy. It grants to each individual the freedom to genuinely choose their place in the distribution. It provides two policy variations that are perfectly economically efficient, and two others that are conditionally so. It straightforwardly aligns outcomes with widely shared, fundamental moral intuitions. Lastly, it demonstrates much of the above by modeling four policy variations using 40 years of survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. (shrink)

The present paper investigates the question of whether right-libertarians must accept easements by necessity. Since easements by necessity limit the property rights of the owner of the servient tenement, they apparently conflict with the libertarian homestead principle, according to which the person who first mixes his labor with the unowned land acquires absolute ownership thereof. As we demonstrate in the paper, however, the homestead principle understood in such an absolutist way generates contradictions within the set of rights distributed on its (...) basis. In order to avoid such contradictions, easements by necessity must be incorporated into the libertarian theory of property rights and the homestead principle must be truncated accordingly. (shrink)

This article examines John Stuart Mill’s influential proposal of how to tax wealth transfers. According to Mill, every person should be free to bequeath but not to receive bequest. Mill proposed an upper limit on how much each person could receive from wealth transfers. We discuss three objections against this proposal. The nonseparability objection holds that it is not possible to separate the freedom to give from the freedom to receive. The objection from private property holds that private property includes (...) an unlimited right to dispose of one’s assets and that this right is violated under Mill’s scheme. The objection from incentives holds that Mill’s scheme would have negative effects on people’s willingness to work and save. We argue that these objections can be met and that taxing bequeathed wealth according to Mill’s scheme is more just and more efficient compared to systems that rely less on wealth transfer taxation. (shrink)

Recently, Eric Mack, Edward Feser, and Daniel Russell have argued that self-ownership justifies a constraint on the use of property such that an owner’s use of property may not severely negate the ability of others to interact with the world. Mack has labeled this constraint the self-ownership proviso. Adopting this proviso promises right-libertarians a way of avoiding the extreme implications of a no-proviso view, while maintaining a consistent and cohesive position. Nevertheless, I argue that self-ownership cannot ground the constraint on (...) property use that Mack, Feser, and Russell think that it can. (shrink)

:Following Locke, philosophical discussion of private property has tended to focus on the acquisition of natural resources as central. In this paper I first pursue the idea that the resource paradigm doesn't apply to most developed economies, and show how this creates problems for many accounts of property. My second ambition is to draw a normative conclusion by showing that redistribution of wealth generated in the context of services is more difficult to justify compared with the natural resource paradigm philosophers (...) have often focused on. (shrink)

Leistungssportlerinnen, die in populären Sportarten erfolgreich sind, kommen in den Genuss hoher Einkommen und großen sozialen Ansehens. Gleichzeitig ist ihr Erfolg von Voraussetzungen abhängig, die zu einem signifikanten Teil von ihrem Genotyp bestimmt werden. Diesen Sportlern werden also durch gesellschaftliche Prozesse substantielle Vorteile aufgrund von Eigenschaften zuteil, auf deren Vorhandensein sie keinen Einfluss haben. Wir untersuchen, wie wir vor dem Hintergrund verschiedener Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen mit diesem Phänomen umgehen sollten. Wir argumentieren, dass die konsistente Berücksichtigung von Intuitionen zur gerechten Güterverteilung an Wettkämpferinnen (...) eine deutliche Ausweitung des Einsatzes von Wettkampfklassen erfordert. Die bestehenden Ungleichverteilungen lassen sich nicht allein mit Verweis auf ein Recht auf Selbsteigentum rechtfertigen. Sie verursachen auch keine Verbesserungen der Lage von besonders schlecht gestellten Individuen im Wirkungsbereich des Leistungssports, auf die zugunsten ihres Weiterbestehens verwiesen werden könnte. Trotz des erheblichen Aufwandes und der deutlichen Veränderungen im Charakter des Leistungssports, die mit der vorgeschlagenen Differenzierung von Wettkampfklassen einhergingen, ist diese Maßnahme geboten. (shrink)

The self-ownership thesis asserts, roughly, that agents own their minds and bodies in the same way that they can own extra-personal property. One common strategy for defending the self-ownership thesis is to show that it accords with our intuitions about the wrongness of various acts involving the expropriation of body parts. We challenge this line of defense. We argue that disgust explains our resistance to these sorts of cases and present results from an original psychological experiment in support of this (...) hypothesis. We argue further that learning that disgust is responsible for pro-self-ownership intuitions should reduce our confidence in those intuitions. After considering and rejecting some prominent “debunking” arguments predicated on disgust’s evolutionary history, we provide alternative reasons for thinking that disgust is not a reliable source of moral judgments. Rejecting the reliability of disgust as a mechanism for producing moral beliefs coheres with our considered judgments about the general kinds of considerations that are morally relevant and a range of particular moral problems. (shrink)

I argue that all rights exist by convention. According to my definition, a right exists by convention just in case its justification appeals to the rules of a socially shared pattern of acting. I show that our usual justifications for rights are circular, that a right fulfills my criterion if all possible justifications for it are circular, and that all existing philosophical justifications for rights are circular or fail. We find three non-circular alternatives in the literature, viz. justifications of rights (...) by consequences, by autonomy or by divine commands. I show that all three alternatives fail, and I conclude that all rights exist by convention. This ontological result has a surprising and beneficial consequence. A common argument against conventionalism is that it implies cultural relativism. I finish by showing that the suggested conventionalism is incompatible with cultural relativism. (shrink)

This article formulates a deterrence theory of punishment based on Lockean premises. Following authors such as Warren Quinn and Daniel Farrell, it is claimed that a justification for the right to punish must be built upon the recognition of the importance of a right to issue retaliatory threats. Contrary to those authors, however, the articulation of such recognition is made within a Lockean theory of individual rights. This allows us to appreciate the specific role deterrence has in a plausible conception (...) of punishment, and thus address certain objections that have been formulated recently, especially by David Boonin. (shrink)

This article presents the most important strands of the philosophical debate about markets. It offers some distinctions between the concept of markets and related concepts, as well as a brief outline of historical positions vis-à-vis markets. The main focus is on presenting the most common arguments for and against markets, and on analyzing the ways in which markets are related to other social institutions. In the concluding section questions about markets are connected to two related themes, methodological questions in economics (...) and the topics of business ethics and corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

Murray N. Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe build their libertarian theory of justice on two axioms concerning self-ownership and homesteading, which are bolstered by two key arguments: reductio ad absurdum and performative contradiction. Each of these arguments is designed to demonstrate that libertarianism is the only theory of justice that can be justified. If either of these arguments were valid, it would prove the libertarian claim that the state is an unjust political arrangement. Giving due weight to the importance of the (...) libertarian anarchist claim, this article exposes and criticizes the arguments that substantiate it. (shrink)

Liberalism generally holds that legitimate political power is limited and is to be impartially exercised, only for the public good. Liberals accordingly assign political priority to maintaining certain basic liberties and equality of opportunities; they advocate an essential role for markets in economic activity, and they recognize government's crucial role in correcting market breakdowns and providing public goods. Classical liberalism and what I call “the high liberal tradition” are two main branches of liberalism. Classical liberalism evolved from the works of (...) Adam Smith and the classical utilitarian economists; its major 20th century representatives include Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The high liberal tradition developed from John Stuart Mill's works, and its major philosophical representatives in the 20th century are John Dewey and, later, John Rawls. This paper discusses the main distinguishing features of the classical and the high liberal traditions and their respective positions regarding capitalism as an economic and social system. Classical liberals, unlike high liberals, regard economic liberties and rights of private property in productive resources to be nearly as important as basic liberties. They conceive of equality of opportunity in more formal terms, and regard capitalist markets and the price system as essential not only to the allocation of production resources, but also as the fundamental criterion for the just distribution of income, wealth, and economic powers. High liberals, by contrast, regard the economic liberties as subordinate to the exercise of personal and civic liberties. They are prepared to regulate and restrict economic liberties to achieve greater equality of opportunities, reduce inequalities of economic powers, and promote a broader conception of the public good. And while high liberals endorse markets and the price system as essential to allocation of productive resources, they do not regard markets as the fundamental criterion for assessing just distributions of income, wealth, and economic powers and positions of responsibility. The paper concludes with some reflections upon the essential role that dissimilar conceptions of persons and society play in grounding the different positions on economic justice that classical and high liberals advocate. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: La notion de propriété de soi présuppose la définition des droits de propriété sur les ressources externes que le libertarisme de gauche limite habituellement aux ressources naturelles. Or, dans une économie spécialisée, la propriété de soi doitégalement être complétée par une définition des droits de propriété sur le surplus coopératif. S'il est cohérent, pour un libertarien de gauche, de considérer le surplus coopératif comme ressource externe et de le distribuer d'une manière égale, on doit en outre observer qu'une théorie (...) de la justice doit se prononcer sur les questions distributives dans plusieurs contextes. Articuler les différences entre ces contextes nous permet de préciser la relation que le libertarisme de gauche entretient avec d'autres théories de la justice.ABSTRACT: Any substantive notion of self-ownership presupposes well-defined property rights over external resources. Left-libertarians usually limit this category to natural resources. I argue that in a specialized economy, substantive self-ownership equally needs to be complemented by a definition of property rights to the cooperative surplus. The natural way for left-libertarianism to provide such a definition is to view the cooperative surplus as an external resource and to distribute it equally. The second part of the article makes the general point that a complete theory of justice needs to take a stance on distribution in various contexts. Articulating the differences between these contexts allows us to gain a better understanding of how left-libertarianism relates to other theories of justice. (shrink)

Rights dominate most modern understandings of what actions are proper and which institutions are just. Rights structure the forms of our governments, the contents of our laws, and the shape of morality as we perceive it. To accept a set of rights is to approve a distribution of freedom and authority, and so to endorse a certain view of what may, must, and must not be done.

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick made the argument that income redistribution violates the Kantian categorical imperative. Nozick’s retrospective enslavement argument is still used today in discussions about the moral justification of taxation. This article explicates four implicit premises of Nozick’s argument: the self-ownership principle, its fullness, the absence of restrictions on the appropriation of natural resources, and the absence of restrictions on the distribution of the fruits of cooperation. Without additional justification for each of these premises, Nozick’s argument (...) cannot show that income redistribution violates the categorical imperative. (shrink)

In this thesis I present a rights-based theory of exploitation. I argue that successful conceptions of exploitation should begin with the ordinary language claim that exploitation involves `taking unfair advantage'. Consequently, they must combine an account of what it means to take advantage of another with an account of when transactions are unfair. Existing conceptions of exploitation fail to provide adequate accounts of both aspects of exploitation. -/- Hillel Steiner and John Roemer provide convincing accounts of the unfairness involved in (...) exploitation, but because they fail to provide restrictive `advantage taking' conditions, their theories of exploitation include cases that we would not ordinarily describe as exploitations. Ruth Sample and Robert Goodin provide accounts that place a stronger emphasis on the attitudes involved in exploitation and the processes that bring it about. Unfortunately, these theories do not properly incorporate the unfairness aspect of exploitation. Consequently, they are either self-frustrating or incomplete. -/- I provide a conception of exploitation that combines both aspects. I claim that a bilateral, strictly Pareto improving, and voluntary transaction t between A and B is exploitative just in case (1) there exists an unrectified property rights violation at some point in the history of exchanges leading to t that (2) reduces B's bargaining power by altering her status quo point, and (3) the degree to which B's preferences are satisfied in t is less than it would be had B's bargaining power not been reduced (by the alteration of her status quo point). Further, (4a) A's egoistic preferences are better satisfied in t because B's bargaining power is limited, and (4b) if the previous conditions also hold for A, then the reduction in A's bargaining power is less than the reduction in B's bargaining power. Finally, (5) A truly believes the previous conditions hold. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 26 Is freedom a plausible political value for animals? If so, does this imply that animals are owed legal personhood rights or can animals be free but remain human property? Drawing on different conceptions of freedom, I will argue that while positive freedom, libertarian self-ownership, and republican freedom are not plausible political values for animals, liberal ‘option-freedom’ is. However, because such option-freedom is in principle compatible with different legal statuses, animal freedom does not conceptually imply a (...) right to legal self-ownership. Nonetheless, a concern for animal option-freedom means that humans do have a _pro tanto_ duty of non-interference. Arguments familiar from the liberal tradition moreover imply that such a duty speaks for drastic reforms of existing animal law. But it does not imply wholesale abolitionism: it neither rules out positive duties towards animals nor means that we should abandon all interactions with animals. (shrink)

According to a renowned left-libertarian, Michael Otsuka, a libertarian right of self-ownership can be so robust that one need not sacrifice the use of one's mind and body to help others. In this article, I demonstrate that Otsuka's way of reconciling this robust conception of self-ownership with equality is not appealing and, at best, would provide limited guidance in the face of real-life uncertainty.

Principles of distributive justice are normative principles designed to guide the allocation of the benefits and burdens of economic activity.

From a left-libertarian perspective, it seems almost impossible for states to acquire political authority. For that reason, left-libertarians like Peter Vallentyne understandably hope that states without political authority could nonetheless implement left-libertarian justice. Vallentyne has argued that one can indeed assess a state’s justness without assessing its political authority. Against Vallentyne, I try to show that states without political authority have to be judged unjust even if they successfully promote justice. The reason is that institutions can be unjust independently from (...) what they achieve or do: they can be ‘intrinsically unjust’. Institutions, I argue, are intrinsically unjust when they have legal liberties and powers without having the corresponding moral liberties and powers. States without political authority are intrinsically unjust in that sense. Hence the issues of a state’s justness and a state’s political authority cannot be dealt with separately. This is a problem not only for left-libertarians but for ‘philosophical anarchism’ more generally. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen y John Rawls atribuyen a Karl Marx haberse adherido al principio libertarista de autopropiedad y una plena confianza en la abundancia ilimitada como solución a los defectos distributivos del socialismo. Asimismo, consideran que el comunismo marxiano está, en cierto sentido, más allá de la justicia. Contra estas posiciones, veremos que Marx rechaza la autopropiedad en términos normativos, que la predicción de plenitud material no es estrictamente marxiana, y que la doble valoración del comunismo —a la vez justo y (...) más allá de la justicia— no es totalmente consistente. (shrink)

Research Articles John Tomasi, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

Locke argues that the consent of market participants to the introduction of money justifies the economic inequalities resulting from monetarization. This paper shows that Locke’s argument fails to justify such inequalities. My critique proceeds in two parts. Regarding the consequences of the consent to money, neo-Lockeans wrongly take consent to justify inequalities in the original appropriation of land. In contrast, I defend the view that consent can only justify inequalities resulting directly from monetized commercial exchange. Secondly, regarding the nature of (...) consent, neo-Lockeans uncritically accept Locke’s account of money as a natural institution. In contrast, I argue that money is an irreducibly political institution and that monetary economies cannot develop in the state of nature. My political account of money has far-reaching implications for the normative analysis of the global monetary system and the justification of the economic inequalities consequent upon it. (shrink)

One of the central motifs of G. A. Cohen's work was his opposition to capitalism in the name of justice. This motif was fully in view in Cohen's work on Robert Nozick's libertarianism: Cohen carefully reconstructed and relentlessly criticized Nozick's apologetics of the free market, which, he thought, was internally coherent but unconvincing. This article suggests that Cohen's opposition to libertarianism did not, however, go far enough, and identifies two respects in which Cohen's position could and should have been more (...) critical of that philosophy. (shrink)

Various quantitative analyses have stressed the connection between lower socioeconomic status (SES) and low political participation. The general argument behind these studies was that since political participation is crucial for democracy, and since low SES compromises political participation, liberal democratic governments cannot afford such a compromise. This paper argues that presenting political participation as a democratic value, corresponding to a ‘positive’ right, places the implied argumentation of such studies in a potential conflict with classical liberalism and its contemporary ‘successors’, emphasizing (...) ‘negative’ rights alone. However, the tension can be reconciled by employing the political thought of John Locke, one of the forefathers of classical liberalism. Thus, the paper illuminates a strong bond in Locke’s thought between democratic political participation and liberal natural rights. In fact, I argue that it is precisely his advocacy of liberal rights that leads to a conception of political participation, converging with democratic theory and redistributive policies. (shrink)

Susan Moller Okin's critique of libertarianism in Justice, Gender, and the Family has received only slight attention in the libertarian literature. I find this neglect of Okin's argument surprising: The argument is straightforward and, if sound, it establishes a devastating conflict between the core libertarian notions of self-ownership and the acquisition of property through labour. In this paper, I first present a reconstruction of Okin's argument. In brief, she points out that mothers make children through their labour; thus it would (...) seem that mothers own their children; but this implies that the children are not self-owners. I then examine the two most common objections to this argument in the literature: mothers do not make children, and acquisition by labour includes an exception for persons. I give several replies to each objection, including an extension of Okin's argument that I call Okin's dilemma. This dilemma argues that the libertarian can avoid Okin's conclusion only by requiring an.. (shrink)