During the sixties, I thought that we might have a left libertarianism as well as a right libertarianism in the United States. Ayn Rand and Young Americans for Freedom, I suppose, stopped that tendency. There was a culture supportive of libertarian views and also laissez-faire capitalism at my university though I cannot say it was a dominant mode of thinking. I did not read deeply or widely in either vein. What shocked me to think about libertarianism and laissez-faire capitalism was the publication of Robert Nozick’s ANARCHY, STATE, AND UTOPIA (1974). I recall vividly browsing my new copy in a Kress & Company store on (I think) Third Street in Portland, Oregon. I picked up the overtones from both Hayek and Locke quickly. I was at the time reading critically and in a sustained way Marxist literature under the influence of the TELOS groups in Austin, Texas, St. Louis, and Toronto (I think). Nozick’s books interrupted my reading but not for long. Nozick at first seemed compelling but only if you assumed what he assumed that individuals have A VAST RANGE of inalienable rights, something I did not and do not assume. While individuals might have certain inalienable rights, our responsibilities are greater in number and in depth than our rights. Further, liberty defined as “the right to do what you have the right to do” makes no sense to me. That is blatant question begging by assuming the results you eventually claim by making them the assumption from which you argue. However, Nozick was a fine polemist and stylist. Further, I felt that Nozick argued to make points against a prevailing expression of liberal political theory rather than for a realised political policy. He misrepresented John Locke in this process and he took more extreme positions than Hayek took. He did not build straw man opponents as much as argued extreme counter positions. I ought not to have been surprised that libertarianism of some sort became powerful in our political speech but I was surprised. If you begin with the notion that what an individual wants, in general, tops every other consideration, you conclude something like Nozick’s view. I suppose for some people his views avoid nihilism, though they do not.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 03:49:23 +0000
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