Everything Robert Nozick says in Anarchy, State, and Utopia about the principle of "rectification" to repair past injustices. One would think this would be a very important topic, given that there is not a single square inch of earth (outside of Antarctica) where title is not claimed at least partially by right of conquest: through force and violence. One would think that any advocacy of a capitalist libertarian minimal state would have at its core a long exploration of how to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear--how to arrive at a current "just" distribution of resources considering that everything I own, at least, is the fruit of at least three poisoned trees: William the Bastard's conquest of England in 1066, the overthrow of the Stuart dynasty in 1688, and the American attack on Mexico in 1846-8. But not so: Nozick's asides on "rectification" are sparse and scattered:
Posted by DeLong at July 17, 2003 12:32 PM | TrackBackpp. 152-3: "Not all actual situations are generated in accordance with the two principles of justice in holdings: the principle of justice in acquisition and the principle of justice in transfer. Some people steal... defraud... enslave.... The existence of past injustice... raises the third major topic under justice in holdings: the rectification of injustice.... I do not know of a thorough or theoretically sophisticated treatment of such issues. Idealizing greatly, let us suppose theoretical investigation will produce a principle of rectification. This principle uses historical information about previous situations and injustices... and informatio about the actual course of events that flowed from these injustices.... The principle of rectification presumably will make use of its best estimate of... what would have occurred... if the injustice had not taken place. If the actual description of holdings turns out not to be one of the descriptions yielded by the principle, then one of the descriptions must be realized..."
p. 173: "...whatever difficulties he has in applying the principle of rectification to persons who did not themselves violate the first two principles are difficulties in balancing the conflicting considerations so as to correctly formulate the comnplex principle of rectification itself..."
pp. 230-1: "...the principles of acquisition and transfer.... If... these principles are violated, the principle of rectification comes into play. Parhaps it is best to view... distributive justice as rough rules of thumb... approximat[ing]... rectification of injustice.... [T]hose from the least well-off group... have the highest probabilities of being the (descendants of) vicitms of the most serous injustice who are owed compensation by those who benefited from the injustices.... [A] rough rule of thumb for rectifying injustices might... be... maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society.... [A]n important question for each society will be... what operable rule of thumb best approximates... a detailed application... of the principle of rectification. The issues are very complex and are best left to a full treatment of the principle of rectification. In the absence of such a treatment... one cannot use the analysis and theory presented here to condemn any particular scheme of transfer payments.... Although to introduce socialism as the punishment for our sins would be to go too far, past injustices might be so great as to make necessary in the short run a more extensive state in order to rectify them..."
Robert Nozick (1974), Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books: 0465097200).
I don't undertand what Nozick is saying.
Take a simple case. Suppose my grandfather swindled your grandfather out of his farm. Are we to track back and figure out how the lives of their descendants would have been different had this not happened, and make the appropriate adjustments?
Or should we simply figure out the value that was taken and refund it, with appropriate interest?
And may I ask a more general question? Does the presence or absence of features of society that tend to reduce the correlation of one's economic well-being with that of one's grandfather - estate taxes for example, or strong public education systems - affect the case for rectification?
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov on July 17, 2003 04:00 PMI don't undertand what Nozick is saying.
Take a simple case. Suppose my grandfather swindled your grandfather out of his farm. Are we to track back and figure out how the lives of their descendants would have been different had this not happened, and make the appropriate adjustments?
Or should we simply figure out the value that was taken and refund it, with appropriate interest?
And may I ask a more general question? Does the presence or absence of features of society that tend to reduce the correlation of one's economic well-being with that of one's grandfather - estate taxes for example, or strong public education systems - affect the case for rectification?
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov on July 17, 2003 04:05 PMBernard--Nozick doesn't have a specific answer at al. He's saying, "Gosh, we have to do something."
I've never understood how Nozick can say these things--except on J.L. Austin's principle that "There's the part where you say it, and the part where you take it back."
(I'm not a Nozick expert at all, I should say--I read most of this stuff once or twice years ago, and there are large parts of ASU I haven't read at all.)
As I understand most of his argument, he says that justice in acquisition and trade is all. We can't impose anything beyond a minimal state, no matter how much we'd like to or how much it would improve our lives, because it involves unjustly taking someone's property. Taxes to pay for public schools (or whatever) are theft, even if it's well-intentioned theft.
But, as Brad points out, in the real world nobody actually owns any justly acquired property. (Brad and I don't have to go back to 1848 to find injustice in our acquisition--we work for public universities, and Brad worked for the [gasp!] government.) That said, I don't see why society should be bothered at all about installing any regime we choose.
Socialism, I agree, is a bad idea--only because it doesn't work. But installing socialism would not, in fact, involve stealing any justly acquired property from anyone. So why shouldn't we introduce whatever property regime we like, since all property rights are created de novo? Why not make the new, just granting of property rights part of a contract--you might call it a social contract--in which those who receive property agree to obey any laws, including tax laws, that the government might pass?
I have never understood why anyone thinks that Nozick's positions have anything to say to actually existing governments.
Posted by: Matt Weiner on July 18, 2003 07:18 AMThanks, Matt.
I've seen this "taxation is theft" idea around, but doesn't the whole notion of a social contract refute it? The argument seems to be that we pay taxes only under threat of unpleasant action by the government, just as we hand the robber our wallet under similar threat.
But isn't that true of individual transactions as well? If you build me a house, under contract, and I refuse to pay for no good reason you can sue and the government will similarly coerce payment. That's surely not theft.
In fact, coercion may be necessary to enforce a contract for any transaction in which the exchange is not exactly simultaneous.
So if we collectively agree to a process for determining what the government can spend money on, and how the cost allocation method, i.e., the tax system, is to be determined, how can taxes be theft?
This is probably far from an original objection, but it does seem to be an obvious one.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov on July 18, 2003 09:04 AMBernard--
I wasn't too clear--sorry. "Taxation is theft" is my caricature of Nozick. And I do think that the idea of the social contract refutes it. (I am not at all sympathetic to Nozick; those who are more sympathetic may have better answers.)
As far as I know, Nozick doesn't believe in an implicit social contract; the only binding contracts are explicit ones. Furthermore, any social contract that is set up must not violate the rights of anyone around. That would mean that no governmental institution has the right to take away the justly owned property of anyone, unless that person consents to have it taken away. Collective agreements don't work here; the only kind of agreements are individual agreements.[/my reading of Nozick]
The problem I was raising is: What if no one justly owns any property? Then the constraint on governmental action is null. No matter what kind of government is set up, it won't be taking away anyone's rightful property, 'cause there's no such thing.
In other words, property rights don't stand in the way of a social contract. And, as you rightly point out, if there's a social contract, there's no reason to say that taxes are theft.
As I typed this, I realized that Nozick would probably still protest against the idea of a social contract. Even if I don't have any rightful property, it's a violation of my rights to force me into a social contract unless I explicitly consent. But if Nozick wants to make this argument, you'd want him to say more about how we get from the current situation to a situation where property is justly owned--what Brad calls making the silk purse out of the sow's ear. It would be a big mess to start original appropriation from scratch right now....
Posted by: Matt Weiner on July 18, 2003 02:22 PM