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                     A Critique of Libertarianism
                     ============================
                        By James A. Hammerton
                        =====================

                             Introduction
                             ------------
The subject of this essay, is a political philosophy which has appeared in
the last 20-30 years, known as 'libertarianism'. This is the political 
philosophy which has been at the heart of the so called 'New Right', which
influenced the Thatcher/Reagan administration of the 1980s. This philosophy 
owes much to classical liberalism, and asserts that the ultimate value is
liberty, and that in order to protect liberty, a society must have
strong private property rights, a free market, and minimal government. 

The rest of this essay consists of the following sections:

        1. Libertarian Thought.
             This section briefly describes the two main varieties of
             libertarianism, rights-based libertarianism and Hayekian
             libertarianism. 

        2. Libertarian Theory: A Critique.
             This section looks at the fundamentals of libertarian
             thought in a critical manner.

        3. Conclusions.
             This will summarise the main points of the essay, and
             discuss why I have written it.

                     Part 1: Libertarian Thought
                     ---------------------------
Rights-based libertarianism 
--------------------------- 
This version of libertarianism holds that everyone has the rights to life,
liberty and property, where these are rights of non-interference, rather
entitlement to resources. For example the right to life simply imposes the
obligation on others not to kill you and the right to property imposes the
obligation on others not to use any property you justly acquire without your
permission. Leading on from this, libertarians hold that the only legitimate
functions of the state are the enforcement of such rights and  defence of
the country from invasion. Taxation is outlawed on the grounds that it
violates the right to property, and laws and regulations should only
be there to enforce the rights. Thus, libertarianism advocates a minimal
state which does nothing to interfere with the workings of a free market
economy, save to protect people's rights. Regulations protecting the health
and safety of workers, for example, would be repealed on the grounds that
they are a violation of the freedom of contract. The welfare state would
be dismantled and nationalised industries privatised by libertarians. Some
libertarians hold that even a minimal state is inimical to natural rights
and would abolish the state, and have private competing law agencies for
the protection of people's rights. 

Hayekian Libertarianism
----------------------- 
Hayek proposed that the rules of conduct in a society are evolving, that
they survive because they are useful and help that society survive. The
market, he believed, had survived the test of time, in that most successful
societies were market based in some way. The market is superior to other
economic systems since it handles human ignorance by passing information in
coded form through the price mechanism, which indicates areas where profits
could be made and resources efficiently used. It does all this and allocates
resources, without being predicated on any specific goals or assuming what
the goals of people were. It also facilitates freedom, in that for it to
work there needs to be rules demarcating 'protected domains' for each
person, where no other has the right to interfere. This of course is
referring to private property rights. Hayek viewed strong property rights
and the free market as the best way of protecting liberty, although this did
not lead to as strong an anti-state stance as with Nozick and other
libertarians. Indeed Hayek did not argue for the total abolishment of tax,
or even that it should be restricted to law enforcement and defence, he
thought taxes could be used for welfare, or to provide certain goods which
the market might fail to adequately supply. However, in practice Hayek
believed it would hardly ever be necessary to use taxes in this way, that
the market would do the job better, and thus in practical terms Hayek
position is libertarian. 

Claims made for a libertarian society
-------------------------------------
The foremost claim that libertarians make for their model of society is
that it respects and promotes individual liberty, and allows people to
pursue their own lives, in their own way, without the interference of
others. Further they argue that other non-libertarian political
ideologies, and personal beliefs, can be accommodated. Those who wish
to be socialist, in a libertarian society, can band together, buy a
parcel of land to live on and then set up a socialist society there,
free from the interference of others. Likewise for religious groups
and people with other beliefs. 

Since most libertarians would ultimately abolish state welfare, one
might ask how the poor, weak and disabled would survive. The
libertarians argue that since people have been relieved of the burden
of taxation, most people will be able to support themselves, and that
only a small number won't be able to. These would be supported by
charities, which would get more money in the prosperous society
libertarians believe would result from their proposals, and would be
able to do the job previously done by the welfare state. Indeed many
libertarians believe that a free market solution is at least almost
always better than a coercive state solution to these problems, by
being a more efficient, voluntary solution.

                Part 2: Libertarian Theory: A Critique*
                --------------------------------------
Liberty and the free market
---------------------------
Libertarians claim that the only economic order that respects
individual freedom, is the free market. To them the free market is an
exemplar of freedom in action. At the heart of the free market, is the
voluntary bilateral exchange. If two parties exchange some goods,
voluntarily, or make some contract voluntarily, then so long as this
does not involve the violation of another's rights, no one has the
right to interfere in it. According to libertarians the free market is
the sum of the voluntary exchanges, and contracts going on in a
society, nothing more and nothing less. Any distribution that occurs
in the operation of a free market, is therefore just since at no stage
has anyone's rights been violated, and all the exchanges were
voluntary. 

It seems to me that the above view ignores an important fact. The people
involved in a free market must accept the rules of its operation, namely the
rules that forbid attacks on others, using another's property without their
consent, trespass, and fraud. This means that the free market has to include
the mechanisms for deterring crimes, and mechanisms for compensation and
punishment should such crimes be committed. The amount of coercion required
to prevent such crimes, depends on the level of acquiescence of the
population to the free market rules. In other words, the market is in fact
the exchanges that go on as mentioned above, plus the policing, arbitration
and legislating mechanisms required to ensure its operation. Hence, like the
state, the market is a social institution, and the distributions of goods
that result from its operation are therefore the distributions sanctioned by
a libertarian society.

The question of whether an individual is free, in a libertarian
society will now be considered. Libertarians usually describe liberty as
being the absence of coercion. The libertarian claim that the free market
either does not violate liberty, or is better than any other system at
respecting it will now be looked at in the light of each of the above 
definition. The first thing to note, is that if one takes this definition
then it is not the case that the free market is free of coercion, as some 
libertarians would have you believe. At this point a libertarian who 
conceded the point would respond that even so, the free market is better at
minimising the use of coercion than other systems. I will now attempt to
demonstrate that a free market is not characterised by the absence of
coercion, and further it is debatable whether a free market will require
less coercion than any other system. 

Libertarians are unanimous in viewing coercion as a violation of
liberty, thus if you are forced to give money to the government to
provide welfare, then you are being coerced and your liberty violated.
The only legitimate use of coercion, according to libertarians is in
enforcing people's rights. Libertarians legitimise coercion in these
circumstances, and the amount of coercion required to enforce these rights
depends on how willing people are to respect them. Hence it cannot be the 
case that a free market is free from coercion, unless everyone voluntarily 
respects these rights and abides by the law. For a libertarian to claim 
that a libertarian society is totally free in this sense, and justify it by 
saying that they expect everyone to respect property rights in this way, is
on a par with a socialist claiming that a socialist society is free from 
coercion, because they expect everyone to be willing to accept the socialist's
laws. Arguing that the free market they depict is an ideal that is free of 
coercion, but the practice requires some coercion to prevent people from 
violating rights, doesn't help either - the socialist can argue the
equivalent point in defence of their position! A libertarian may concede
that coercion is required to protect rights, but that other than that, the
free market is free of coercion, and will be freer of coercion than a
non-libertarian society. However, as I said before, the amount of coercion
required depends on how willing the citizens are to accept a free market
order. If the citizens of a society do not want a libertarian order, it may
require a lot of coercion to impose it, likewise if the citizens want
socialism it won't require as much coercion to get it. In other words, what
determines the amount of coercion required in a society, is the extent to
which people are willing to accept the rules imposed on them, and this is as
true of a libertarian, society as it is of any other. Thus, it is debatable
that a libertarian society would have less coercion in it than a
non-libertarian one. The libertarian can argue that at least the use of
coercion is legitimised only in explicit circumstances where rights have
been violated, but then a non-libertarian could argue the same for their
proposed model of society too.

I will now discuss a consequence of the `freedom as absence of coercion' 
position which makes it sit uneasily with libertarian ideology. If we
take this definition of freedom then the amount of freedom a person has is
the extent to which they can act without being coerced to do(or not to do)
something against their will. In a libertarian society you cannot 
(legitimately) do anything with another's property if they don't want you to,
so your only _guaranteed_ freedom is determined by the amount of property you
have. This has the consequence that someone with no property has no 
guaranteed freedom, and that the more property you have, the greater your 
guaranteed freedom. In other words a distribution of property is a 
distribution of freedom, as the libertarians _themselves_ define it. 
Thus, taking this definition of freedom, and a belief in the free market
together, the libertarians are saying that the best way of promoting freedom
is to allow some people to have more of it than others, even when this leads
to some having very little or even none(as I believe is quite likely in a
free market). I don't think that this is what libertarians want, I think
they want everyone to have a sphere of equal guaranteed freedom, but a free
market does not give everyone such a sphere, and does not guarantee anyone
any freedom at all. This view of freedom would at least suggest some sort
of minimum income for people, as an entitlement, to ensure that they have a
minimum level of guaranteed freedom, if not an altogether more egalitarian
society, both of which libertarians wish to avoid. At this point a
libertarian might respond that there is a sense in which this argument
reinforces their viewpoint; taking property from someone and giving it to
another, is depriving the original owner of some freedom in order to
increase the freedom of another. However likewise depriving a non-owner
access to some property is depriving them of freedom in order to increase
the freedom of the owner. Also, it strikes me that an ideology that claims
it is committed to promoting freedom has little ground on which to argue
that some people should be more free than others, and that people born into
wealthy families should be more free than people born into poorer families,
as would almost certainly be the case in a libertarian system. I agree that
according to my argument above, taking property from someone restricts their
freedom, but ALL societies restrict people's freedom in some way, and
libertarians themselves accept some restrictions on freedom - such as the
restriction of not violating other people's property rights. The issue is
then what are acceptable incursions on people's freedom and what are not. I
say it is acceptable to tax the wealthy in order to prevent the poor from
starving, since the resulting restriction of freedom on the wealthy can be
very small indeed it may not prevent them going about their lives at all,
whilst the lack of freedom of the poor starving man is considerable - even
under the 'freedom as absence of coercion' position. Libertarians need a way
of defining freedom in such a manner as to make the distribution of property
irrelevant to it, since they argue that the distributions that arise in a
free market are just and respect freedom. Robert Nozick proposed a theory of
distributive justice that condemns redistribution as being unjust and a
violation of people's liberty, which I will deal with lower down. For now
I'll point out that if one takes liberty as being the absence of coercion,
then by the arguments above, this already weakens Nozick's theory. 

Another definition of liberty which I have seen used by libertarians is
freedom as the absence of the initiation of force. This definition does not
help though. Force can be initiated in order to protect property rights, and
property rights can be violated without initiating force(e.g. copyright
violations).  Libertarians who use this definition cannot claim, as they
would like to, that they are always opposed to the initiation of force. They
could say that you are allowed to act within your rights without anyone
initiating force against you, however this leads us back to the consequence
of your property rights determining the extent of your guaranteed freedom. 

Is there a definition of freedom that would allow a libertarian to claim that
their system defends and promotes it? The answer to this question is, in fact,
yes. The libertarian could say that freedom is the absence of the violation
of your rights. Indeed one notable libertarian, Murray Rothbard, goes as far
as saying exactly that:

        "We are now in a position to see how the libertarian defines the
         concept of 'freedom' or 'liberty'. Freedom is a condition in which
         a person's ownership rights in his body and his legitimate material
         property rights are not invaded, are not aggressed against... 
         ... Freedom and unrestricted property right go hand in hand."
         [Rothbard-73, page 41].

On this view of freedom, the free market respects everyone's equal freedom to
act within their rights. However the result is that freedom is no longer a 
fundamental, independent concept against which to judge the libertarian 
ideology. What determines freedom on this view, is what the legitimate rights 
of an individual are. The libertarian claims that these are the rights 
mentioned earlier. Given that the right to property is absolute, then freedom 
and property become one and the same. In my view, it suggests an alternative, 
more accurate name for libertarianism: Propertarianism. Of course we don't 
have to accept the libertarian view of what legitimate rights are, and the 
free market may not protect a different set of rights.

Freedom and Natural Rights
--------------------------
Some libertarians argue that we are born with a set of rights which must be
respected. They then argue that those are the rights to life, liberty and 
property. But why these rights and not others? The libertarian's answer is 
that they are essential to allow people to lead their own lives, that they 
reflect the imperative to treat people as ends in themselves, and not merely 
as a means to your ends and that they recognise the separateness of
individuals. Hence, allowing the taking of their property without their 
permission violates the imperative to treat people as ends in
themselves, and makes it difficult, if not impossible for them to plan
their life and achieve their goals, since they can't rely on being
able to keep the necessary resources for executing their plans. 

The above doesn't however answer the question of why these rights are
'natural', indeed the considerations given which lead to these rights
are moral considerations, which reflect the beliefs of the libertarians. I 
see no reason to believe that the rights are natural pre-existing rights 
independent of the laws of a society. Nevertheless the considerations given 
for supporting those rights in seem worthy. Few would disagree that treating
others as ends in themselves is good. One can also feel some force in the 
argument about people not being able to plan ahead effectively if they can't 
rely on being able to keep their possessions. However one can also argue that 
providing people with the necessary resources for survival is also consistent
with respect for others, and allowing them to plan ahead. If you are in a 
position where you have no shelter, no job, no money, then you cannot plan 
effectively since you are subject to the decisions of others to the extent 
that you cannot even be certain of survival. Hence giving you enough 
resources to lift yourself out of the predicament helps on both the count of
treating you as an end in yourself and in enabling you to plan effectively. 
Obtaining the resources can be done through taxes, which when they are low 
enough and stable enough to be predictable do not diminish the taxpayer's 
ability to plan ahead. The libertarian will retort that doing this will 
require you to tax people, and therefore take away their property, thus 
violating the respect for others as ends in themselves, however this is not 
entirely clear. If you don't do this, and let the poor go hungry you are also
violating the principle, and claiming in effect that allowing people to
keep every last penny of their money is more important than preventing
someone from starving. The simple point is that in a libertarian society 
those without any property are unfree - they cannot act without other people 
helping them and allowing them to use their property - unless you view 
freedom as the freedom to act within your rights. However since it is the 
rights themselves being discussed here, the libertarian cannot fall back on 
this view of freedom to defend those rights. In short, I see no reason to 
accept the libertarian view of what legitimate rights are. 

At this point, the libertarian might point out that because libertarian 
rights are rights to non-interference, they do not require the forcible 
redistribution of resources from one group in society to another. This would 
seem to strengthen the position on rights, if you view it to be the case that 
such redistribution is _always_ morally wrong. However, I believe that the 
libertarians are wrong in thinking that their rights involve no 
redistribution. Implicit in all libertarian discussions of rights,
and sometimes it's there explicitly, is the point that if your rights are
violated, you have a right to punish the violator or exact compensation from
them. This, since it is a right, is (or should be) regardless of how rich or 
poor you are, consequently libertarian rights imply that the necessary 
resources for bringing a violator of rights to court should be available to 
all. This, if the libertarians are being consistent, implies that someone 
unable to finance a court case, should be given resources that did not 
originally belong to them. Furthermore, forcible redistribution _will_ occur 
if the claimant wins a case for compensation. Here we have two situations 
where a libertarian firstly might be compelled to redistribute resources, and
secondly actively endorses a redistribution. So even libertarianism does not 
avoid redistribution altogether. The libertarian might retort that in this 
situation, the redistribution is being done to right a wrong - however one 
could equally argue that redistribution to prevent starvation is righting a 
wrong as well. The libertarian could still retort that in their case, 
someone's rights have been violated and a legitimate distribution of
resources upset. Here again though, the question of what legitimate rights
are raises its head, and the argument that they are legitimate only if they
do not require redistribution of resources does not support the libertarian
position. They could however contend that their set of rights minimises the
forcible redistribution of resources that goes on in a society. This
assumes that the levels of crime would be low enough in a libertarian
society, and that reducing the amount of redistribution is more important
than preventing starvation, ensuring everyone gets an adequate education
and that everyone who needs it will get medical care. It also raises the
question of what a legitimate distribution of resources is in the first
place. It is to this issue that I now turn.
              
Distributive Justice: Nozick's Entitlement Theory
-------------------------------------------------
In "Anarchy, State and Utopia", Robert Nozick presents a theory of 
distributive justice that backs up the libertarian belief in the free market.
Nozick claims that if the world was just then the following would hold:

          (1) A person who acquires property in accordance with the principle
              of justice in acquisition is entitled to that property. 

          (2) A person who acquires property in accordance with the principle
              of justice in transfer is entitled to that property.

          (3) No one is entitled to any property except that acquired
              through (1) and (2).

The principle of justice in acquisition tells us how something can go from
being unowned to being owned. The principle of justice in transfer tells us 
how property can be justly transferred from its rightful owner to another
person. Since the world is not wholly just, a principle of justice in 
rectification is also needed in addition to the above, to deal with cases of
theft and other crimes. This theory when fleshed out can support the 
libertarian position. The questions are then what are the principles of 
justice in acquisition, transfer and rectification, and why those particular 
principles and not others? 

I will tackle the principle of justice in transfer first. Nozick claims that
the only just transfer of goods is a voluntary transfer from the rightful
owner to another person. He argues therefore that if you have a distribution
of goods, D1, and through a series of voluntary transfers you arrive at
another distribution of goods, D2, then if D1 was just, D2 is also just. 
The point is that the socialist who wants to maintain an equal or roughly
equal distribution of goods, will have to find a way of nullifying the
voluntary transfers. This it is claimed will be an unacceptable infringement
of liberty. Likewise anyone wishing to finance something through taxation
is infringing people's liberty and violating the principle of justice in
transfer. The questions to be addressed here are (1) Are all voluntary 
transactions just? (2) Are only voluntary transactions just? (3) Does 
redistribution inevitably require unacceptable violations of liberty? 
Initially one might think that it goes without saying that the answer to (1) 
is yes. If I voluntarily give my jumper to a friend it seems that no one has 
been harmed by this action, and nothing wrong has been done. However things 
are not always that simple. One has to ask what counts as a voluntary
action, and many people would feel that someone who is working for low pay
in dangerous conditions is not doing so voluntarily if the only other
option was to starve to death. However Nozick argues that whether a
person's actions are valid or not depends on what it is that limits their
options. If it is the facts of nature, then their actions are voluntary. If
it is the result of people acting within their natural rights, then their
actions are voluntary. Only if your rights are violated, and this causes you
to act in a particular way, is that action involuntary. Nozick's notion of
voluntary action is decidedly non-intuitive. If you take Nozick's notion as
true, then if I trip on some stairs and fall and break my neck, this action
is voluntary! Of course being non-intuitive does not in and of itself
discount the notion as being valid. I will deal with what counts as
voluntary action later, for now I'll deal with the question of whether all
voluntary exchanges are just. The point is that not all of them are. The
reason is that a voluntary exchange, or a set of voluntary exchanges, can
have consequences on third parties, who might not have consented to the
exchange. In a capitalist economy, the exchanges that occur can determine
whether entire towns, or even countries prosper or decline, and thus
determine whether people live full active lives, or spend their time in
poverty. If someone buys up a large amount of resources and denies others
access to those resources, this in and of itself causes those others either
to find an alternative supplier or abandon use of those resources. Which of
these they can do will depend on their wealth, their friends and whether
other suppliers exist. This is not to say that every voluntary transaction
should be subject to the views of those it will affect, however if the
consequences are serious, such as lots of people being laid off due to a
company failing(or these days making `efficiency' improvements) then I think
there is a case either for some sort of safety net to be put in place or in
certain circumstances for resources essential to everyone's survival being
subject to public control. Furthermore if one views freedom as being the
absence of coercion, then by my earlier arguments, the voluntary transactions
can end up diminishing third parties' freedom, since your freedom to act
without being coerced is determined by the amount of property you have, and
if your employer loses business to someone else, it may mean that he will
make you redundant, and your freedom will diminish, since without an income
you may have to sell off property to survive. What about the answer to
question (2) above then? I would say the answer is no, since voluntary
transfers can lead to third parties being made worse off. This leaves us
with question (3), does redistribution always involve unacceptable
incursions on people's liberty? I think my earlier discussion of freedom
shows that the answer is unclear - by taxing people you may well increase
the freedom of others whilst doing little to diminish the freedom of the
taxpayer, if freedom is the absence of coercion. Alternatively, if one takes
the view that liberty is the freedom to act within one's libertarian rights,
and that the right to property is paramount, then obviously the answer is
yes, however I see no reason to take that position, and if one does then we
are, in effect, assuming the answer to the question anyway and freedom is no
longer the most fundamental value which we wish to promote. 

I will now briefly discuss the principle of justice in acquisition. Even if 
one could demonstrate that all voluntary transfers are just, if some property
was Initially unjustly taken from the unowned realm this would suggest that
rectification was needed. Also, consider a case where some piece of land is 
unowned. Everyone is free to walk on it without being coerced before 
ownership is claimed, thus when someone makes a claim of ownership and
denies everyone else access to it, he is reducing their freedom to act 
without being coerced. Justifying this initial stage of acquisition is
therefore crucial to libertarian theory. So what is the principle of justice 
in acquisition then? Incredibly enough, as Jonathan Wolff [Wolff-91, page
106] points out Nozick does not formulate the principle anywhere in his
works. He discusses Locke on the issue as a starting point, although one
which I don't think Nozick can accept(Locke brings in theology to justify
natural rights for example, which is fine unless you don't believe in a god)
without revision. For further details of this argument I refer the reader to
Wolff's discussion of entitlement theory and some attempts to try and come
up with a plausible principle which Nozick might have endorsed. However this
is without success and since the principle of justice in transfer is also
suspect, as I argued above, this point is academic. 

Finally for this section we come to the principle of justice in rectification.
Given that Nozick views property rights as inviolable(as do many libertarians)
one might expect that this means all violations should be compensated for. 
The implications of this in the real world mean that everyone who has ever
benefited from state payments should compensate those who have paid for
them, a truly mind-boggling requirement. Furthermore, most lands have
been taken by force several times, and many peoples displaced, how is this
to be dealt with? These issues could cause severe problems if a libertarian
society was instituted, and one might suggest that we should let bygones
be bygones, and start from the present patterns of ownership - this might
be pragmatic but it would not be in line with libertarian theory. However
since the other two principles have been shown to be unformulated in the
case of acquisition, and suspect in the case of transfer this can be safely
ignored for the moment. As Jonathan Wolff puts it "Libertarian property rights
remain substantially undefended." [Wolff-91, page 117]. Again the reader
is referred to Wolff's book for a more detailed discussion of this issue. 

Natural and Market Forces
-------------------------
If one accepts the above arguments, there seems to be little more that needs
to be said against libertarianism. However I wish to carry on and consider a
notion which some libertarians use to bolster their position, and in the
next section to deal with the Hayekian variant of libertarianism which is
immune to _some_ of the criticisms I've made. Some libertarians argue that
the operation of the free market is somehow 'natural' and thus when people
are deprived of resources in its operation this is an act of nature. This
point is implicit when libertarians make the analogy from being unable to
fly to being unable to afford something. The conclusion that they seem to
want from this is that it is silly to describe a lack of resources as a lack
of freedom, since it is silly to describe other natural inabilities as lack
of freedom either. They also claim that where one's actions are the result
of natural forces, they are voluntary even though you would not have
performed them in other circumstances. Likewise the starving man's
acceptance of a poorly paid job in dangerous conditions when there is no
alternative, is considered to be voluntary. It should be clear by earlier
arguments, that I do not regard the operation of free market as being
natural - indeed it requires some _social_ rules to be respected and
enforced to work at all. As I pointed out, a libertarian society
effectively sanctions whatever distributions result from the operation of a
free market, and I hold that if this ever leads to people starving when food
would be available if we could tax people to pay for it, then libertarians
are in effect sanctioning it. The free market is just as much a construction
of human society as the state is. Only if you believe that libertarian
rights are somehow themselves 'natural' and preexisting rights which humans
'naturally' observe, can you then argue otherwise. I don't believe this and
see no reason to either. Consequently, I do not view the starving man's
choice above as totally voluntary - a choice between a miserable life on one
hand and death on the other is no choice at all. The opportunity of living a
full life is not one I think should be denied to people. In a libertarian
society, if you have no property, then this opportunity will be denied. 

Libertarians, even if they accept the above, might retort that the free
market is a self regulating mechanism, and that Adam Smith's "invisible
hand" will work to ensure that no-one does starve, and no-one will suffer
extreme poverty, and that therefore a welfare state is unnecessary, the free
market does the job anyway, and does it better. This is a claim which is
difficult to support or refute conclusively, it would require a free market
to be instituted in a fully libertarian manner, something which hasn't yet
been done(even Smith, and Hayek, have argued that some sort of state
intervention may be justifiable). History doesn't seem to give the idea much
support, Victorian Britain was much closer to the free market model than
modern Britain, yet it still had problems with poverty, lack of hygiene and
ill health. This was amidst material plenty, and at a time when private
charities were well supported. Also in the 20th century two attempts to
impose, first classical, and then neo-classical economic theory lead to high
unemployment and recession. I am referring to the abandonment of the gold
standard in the 1920s, and the monetarist  experiment of the Thatcher
government in the early 1980s(for a detailed  and revealing critique of the
latter see [Gilmour-92]). Of course the libertarian can respond that even if
these were steps in the right direction, they did not fully move to a
libertarian society. However I think they give good cause to be sceptical of
the claims they make for the self regulation of free markets. Furthermore,
since the libertarian rights rule out state intervention to end a recession,
the libertarians are saying in effect that even if they are wrong about the
self regulating nature of the market, they still rule out action to deal
with its failures. The Hayekian variant of libertarianism does not rule out
such failures however, or the use of state intervention to alleviate them,
and it is to this that I now turn. 

Hayek and the Spontaneous Order
-------------------------------
I will now briefly tackle Hayek's version of libertarianism. Firstly I'll
present a quotation which casts doubt on Hayek's libertarian credentials:
    
      "I am the last person to deny that increased wealth and the increased
       density of population have enlarged the number of collective needs
       which government can and should satisfy" [Hayek-78, page 111]

One could easily cast this as a justification for a welfare state, which
provides subsistence when unemployed, education and medical care to its
citizens, which is precisely the kind of thing libertarians want to abolish.
However Hayek says a lot more than this, he believes that the circumstances
in which the state needs to intervene in this manner are few and far between,
and comes out strongly in defence of private property and enterprise. From
this it's clear that Hayek essentially advocates a libertarian state - 
although perhaps not as strongly constrained as Nozick's state - and he also
believes that his theory of society entails his position. 

Hayek's thesis is that the rules of conduct in a society are learned, and
evolve over time. Part of his thesis regarding the free market, is that
it is an institution that has survived the test of time, and that other
arrangements have lost in the evolution of societies - most industrialised
countries are market based, and the former USSR has abandoned its 
centralised planning system, after decades of economic failure. However
Hayek has a lot more to say about the market. In a society which wishes to
allow people to live their own lives, with their own goals, the market
facilitates this. It handles human ignorance well - information is conveyed
by the price mechanism which indicates where resources can be use profitably
and efficiently. All this is achieved without presupposing that everyone has
a particular goal or set of goals in mind. In contrast, other economic
systems have usually been designed with a specific goal in mind, but the
amount of information they require to be given to one person or organisation
makes them inefficient. The point is though, that as yet there is no
compelling reason to think that the market will always work, and even Hayek
agrees that there are circumstances where the market may perform
inadequately. This position though does not logically entail libertarianism,
unless Hayek can show that his belief that state intervention is hardly ever
required follows from his thesis, _and_ that the rules of conduct learned
and required in the market coincide with the Nozickian natural rights.
Without doing so, then libertarianism and social democracy  can be both
covered by his thesis. All it says about the market is that it is a
mechanism which should be treated respect, it doesn't say that it should be 
the mechanism used to deal with everything, which the libertarian is in
effect saying. Hayek tries to show that his thesis logically entails
something closer to libertarianism than social democracy by arguing that
society evolves rules of just conduct which give everyone a private domain
in which they can act without interference from others. These domains need
to be more or less the same domains that result from Nozickian rights to
property if Hayek's argument is to hold. However there is nothing to say
that these rules will guaranteeably converge with those of libertarian
property rights - indeed this hasn't happened in any society as yet - it is
quite possible to have a market based society which still has a state
providing welfare for it's citizens, and for there to be 'protected domains'
in such a society. Thus Hayek's theory, although an imaginative description
of how a society might evolve its rules of just conduct, and of how a market
can provide many needs, does not logically entail(or for that matter deny)
libertarianism. A more detailed discussion of Hayek's theory, and a more
detailed argument along the above lines can be found in [Haworth-94, Chapter
11]. 

Libertarianism and the toleration of other beliefs
---------------------------------------------------
I will now consider a claim made by libertarians that libertarianism can 
provide a framework in which people can create their own private utopias 
organised along their own principles, and that it does not force beliefs on
others(a common criticism of non-libertarians, made by libertarians is that 
they would enforce some sort of order onto everyone whether they held the 
beliefs of that order or not). 

I think it is fairly trivial to show that the above claim is not _entirely_
true. If you held beliefs requiring the sacrifice of unwilling non-believing 
people to your god, then libertarianism would outlaw an activity that is a
central part of your beliefs, since murder is prohibited. The point is that
libertarianism itself is an order imposed on a society - it has rules which
if broken will lead to punishment of offenders. The criticism of other
beliefs on this basis is a red herring. Furthermore if the libertarian was
to make the weaker claim that a libertarian society will be more tolerant
and allow a wider diversity of lifestyles than a non-libertarian one, this
is unclear. It depends on the tolerance of the people in a libertarian
society. If you have a set of beliefs which other people resent, then they 
will not cooperate with you. If you also do not have the resources
with which to set up a community based on those beliefs then you won't
be able to. The libertarian could reply by saying that the government won't
disallow it so long as you respect people's rights, and that a non-libertarian
society might. However then the non-libertarian could respond by saying
that they have a different set of rights which they prefer and it is
difficult if not impossible to know which of the two sets of rights permits
more lifestyles. Personally I think it is _possible_ that a libertarian
society might be more diverse, but given the extent to which people in any
society have to cooperate to further each others ends, I think the more
important factor is the tolerance of the members of a society, rather than
the sort of government and laws they have. Of course laws can be wrong, but
it is their observance and enforcement that make them effective - a society
which does not wish to observe or enforce some law may as well not have it.
Also it is possible that a society based on a different set of rights
could also be more diverse. This claim is not something exclusive to 
libertarianism. 

* The arguments developed in this part of the essay owe much to Alan
Haworth's book "Anti-libertarianism: Philosophy, Market and Myths",1994.
Haworth thinks libertarianism does not in fact defend liberty, even as
libertarians define it, and calls their ideology, instead,
"Anti-libertarianism", hence the title of his book. I agree it does not
defend liberty (as the absence of coercion) but instead defends property,
I would call the ideology propertarianism.

                         Part 3: Conclusions
                         -------------------
Summary
-------
I have argued that if we take liberty to be the freedom from coercion, then
this implies that the amount of property determines the amount of freedom
you have, something which libertarians would explicitly deny. It is therefore
questionable that the free market respects and promotes this form of liberty.
The freedom to act within your property rights is respected, but then
the property rights determine what freedom is, and there seems to be little
reason to accept the libertarian's account of what valid rights are. The
reasons sometimes given - respect for the individual as an end in themselves,
and avoidance of redistribution - can in the first case be used to justify
a different set of rights and redistribution, or in the second case does not
hold for libertarian rights and assumes that forcible redistribution is worse 
than ensuring people do not starve. The entitlement theory of justice 
overlooks the effects of voluntary transfers on third parties, and as yet has 
no principle for the just acquisition of unowned property. Hayek's theories 
do not logically entail libertarianism, though they do accommodate it. The 
claim that libertarianism does not force a set of beliefs upon people is
simply incorrect, and the weaker claim that it is more tolerant than other
ideologies is questionable. Tolerance of other beliefs depends more on the
attitudes of the society in question than on its system of government. 

Libertarianism as Propertarianism
---------------------------------
As I mentioned earlier, I think a more apt name for libertarianism is 
propertarianism. Depending on how you view liberty, either property comes
out as more important than it, or it becomes the concept which determines
what liberty is, if you hold to libertarian ideology. Personally, I think
that property rights can be conducive to respecting liberty, but the full
unrestricted right to property - to do with it what you like so long as
you don't violate other people's rights - can lead to some losing their
liberty. The point is that without property, you are completely subject
to the whims/wishes of others, a state which I do not consider to be
one of freedom. 

Some pointers to freedom
------------------------
I will not offer a detailed account as to what I think freedom is. I will 
however say something as to what needs to be done to properly account for 
freedom. Two issues seem to be appropriate to it - firstly the range of 
opportunities available to people, and secondly the extent to which you can
say that your actions and decisions are your own. Libertarians seem to 
recognise the latter part when they define freedom as the absence of coercion.
If you are forced to do something, then the action is not something you are 
doing of your own free will, you are obeying someone elses will. However 
coercion is not the only way in which to get someone to do your bidding, you 
can deceive them into doing so(libertarians recognise this and prohibit fraud),
you can do a deal with them(so that they get something in return for doing
your will), or in the case of preventing them from doing something against
your will, you can outprice them in getting a job or buying something. The
dependence of people on others, I think, has to be recognised in a full
account of freedom - after all when we're born we are completely dependent
on others to survive and to learn about the society in which we live. This is
an inescapable part of the human condition, and we can rarely completely
eliminate dependence on others. Libertarianism says nothing about dependence
save that whatever patterns arise out of their proposed system should
not be interfered with, a position which I disagree with. Libertarianism
also either ignores the range of options open to people, or assumes that
whatever options are available in a free market should not be tampered with,
save to close off the options which violate other's libertarian rights. 
Whilst I agree that ensuring that everyone has exactly the same set of options
is unrealistic and probably involves a lot of interference in people's
lives, I do think that a minimum set of options should be available,
including the option of life. Libertarians would not allow the state to
provide that option through redistribution. Without being able to survive,
whatever other freedoms you have are worthless. 

Why I Wrote This Essay: The Influence of Libertarianism
-------------------------------------------------------
Currently, the only Libertarian Party I am aware of is in the USA. It claims
to be the third largest party there, but that does not say much, it is still
pretty small. One might wonder why I should write an essay attacking its
ideology when it seems to be so uninfluential. There are two reasons - first
I've always had an interest in political issues and I consider freedom
to be important, thus the libertarian ideology has held a certain fascination
for me since it purported to promote liberty yet lead to conclusions at odds
with my own beliefs. Secondly, I have grown up in a period where free market
ideology has dominated political discourse for the past 15-20 years. The
Reagan administration in the USA and Thatcher administration in the UK both 
used libertarian rhetoric, in their attacks on nationalised industries, state 
regulations, and to a lesser extent the welfare state in both countries. I
don't think it an exaggeration to say that libertarian thinking has a strong
influence on both the US Republicans and the UK Conservatives. Of course
the policies of the two administrations where by no means purely libertarian,
and in some cases were anti-libertarian, however on economic policy
and privatisation there was a strong libertarian influence and a libertarian
faith in the free market. I disagreed with many things that the Thatcher
administration did, and many of those were justified with libertarian
rhetoric. Thus this essay directly attacks the political theories which have
been used to justify the politics that guided a regime which I disagreed
with. 

Finally I think it is appropriate to finish with a quote from Jonathan Wolff 
on Robert Nozick's beliefs today:

      "In 'The Examined Life' Nozick briefly indicates that he has given up
       some of his earlier views, and he makes some suggestions about a
       just scheme of inheritance taxation. As Nozick there says, now he
       is no longer a libertarian." [Wolff-91, page 156]. 

Bibliography
------------
The following books provide detailed critiques of libertarianism:

[Haworth-94]: "Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy and Myth", by 
Alan Haworth, Routledge 1994. This book has influenced many of my
arguments here and to my mind comprehensively refutes the claim that 
libertarianism promotes liberty. 

[Wolff-91]: "Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State",
by Jonathan Wolff, Polity Press 1991. This book is a detailed critique of
Robert Nozick's libertarianism as expressed in "Anarchy, State and Utopia".
It does not deal with Hayek's beliefs, or take a look specifically at
free market thinking in the way that Haworth's book does. It does nevertheless
expose many flaws in libertarianism.

The following books are other works referred to in the essay:

[Gilmour-92]: "Dancing with Dogma, Britain Under Thatcherism", Ian Gilmour, 
Simon and Schuster 1992. Written by a former member of the Thatcher Cabinet,
this book demolishes the economic competence of the Thatcher regime.

[Hayek-78]: "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History
of Ideas" by F.A. Hayek, Routledge 1978.

[Rothbard-73]: "For a New Liberty", Murray Rothbard, MacMillan 1973. 

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