The Online Library of Liberty

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• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographic Essay: Forrest Mcdonald, a Founding Father's Library
• Bibliographic Essay: Murray N. Rothbard, Modern Historians Confront the American Revolution
• I: Paradigms of Freedom
• Conflicting Paradigms
• Paradigms As Procrustes' Bed
• Interest and Ambition
• Thesis and Antithesis
• Freedom and Authority
• Sin and Society
• Autonomy and Authority
• Virtue and Status
• Utility and Progress
• Diversity and Equality
• II: Nonspontaneous Order
• State Vs Society
• The Therapeutic State
• Order and Elites
• Order and Virtue
• Self-perfection
• Socialism and Freedom
• Market Socialism
• Centralism Vs Decentralism
• Voluntary Servitude
• Authority and Obedience
• Social Control
• Power and Ideology
• Hegemony
• III: Spontaneous Order
• Freedom and Knowledge
• The Case For Government
• The Case Against Government
• Community Vs. State
• State and Morality
• Freedom and Creativity
• Order Without State
• IV: Individual and Social Good
• The Right to Privacy
• Autonomy and Psychiatry
• Personal Choice
• Individuals, Groups, and States
• Social Dynamics
• Social Engineering
• Individuals and Groups
• Personal Vs. Social Goods
• Individual Rationality
• Self-interest and Social Good
• Self-interest Vs. Slavery
• Art and Autonomy
• Radical Individualism
• V: Ethics, Rights, and Freedom
• Objective Values
• Natural Law
• Preambles to Freedom
• Social Sciences and Values
• Reason and Change
• Reason and Choice
• Economics and Values
• Legal Naturalism
• Justice As Restitution
• Justice As Punishment
• Rights and Contract
• Virtue In the Market
• Justice Under Capitalism
• Profits and Choice
• Social Framework and Prosperity
• Ecology and Rights
• Business' Social Ethics
• VI: Equality
• Problems With Inequality
• Equality, Power, and Values
• Unequal Income
• Equal Opportunity
• Equal Liberty
• Equality of Condition
• The Egalitarian State
• Sexual Equality
• VII: Power
• Empire, Equality, and Envy
• Imperial Presidency
• Empire and Inflation
• Watergate As a Symptom of Empire
• The Pragmatic Presidency
• “absolute Power” and Corruption
• VIII: Planning Vs. Choice
• Origins of Planning
• Bureaucratic Growth
• Prediction and Control
• Government Planning
• Government Experts
• Useless Usury Laws
• Wartime Regulation
• Government Inflation
• Neomercantilism
• Compulsory Schooling
• Planning In Nonprofit Agencies
• Private Capital and Education
• Choice and Spontaneous Order

The Case Against Government

Holmes, Robert L.

• University of Rochester

“Nozick on Anarchism.” Political Theory (USA), 5 (1977): 247–256.

Robert Nozick's attempt to refute anarchism in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) is invalid and fails to justify the state's coercive monopoly of force in a given territory. Nozick creates bogus “rights” when he invokes “procedural rights” (each person's right to resist, in self-defense, if others try to apply to him an unreliable, unfair, or risky procedure of justice). But even if such “rights” were valid, they would not justify the state monopolizing the protection of these “rights.” In fact, individuals could claim “procedural rights” and apply them to judge the state's “risky” procedures. This would seem to bolster the anarchist case.

Nozick's justification of the state attempts to derive the state through a natural and moral evolution by an “invisible hand” process. This process, in outline, occurs in four states. First, individuals living in a state of nature and possessing Locke an natural rights would naturally evolve protection associations. In a non coercive society, these would take the form of free market services, which would ward off immoral attacks on their rights by criminals. The second stage sees the many associations giving rise to one association of preeminent power in an area. In the third stage, the one preeminent association evolves into an ultraminimal state which “sells” its protection as an economic good but also exercises a monopoly on force. The fourth and final stage of Nozick's evolution of the state sees the ultraminimal state turning into an identically functioning minimal state which makes a “redistribution” of protection to certain independents (nonclients of the ultraminimum state) at cost to the clients.

The crucial and fallacious stage is the third; the transition from the preeminent association to the ultraminimum state. Nozick fails to show how the latter can acquire its monopoly on force without violating individuals' rights. The ultraminimum state claims the right to intervene and prohibit victims from privately enforcing justice claims against its clients because of the above described “procedural rights.”

Nozick contends that one may have a right (to self-defense), but does wrong to exercise it in the absence of nonrisky procedures guaranteeing fairness (i.e., procedural rights). First, however, even if procedural rights are valid rights, they hardly justify the state monopoly. For if it can punish violators of procedural rights, why cannot independent individuals also judge whether the state itself may violate procedural rights? What independent criterion guarantees that the state alone will follow nonrisky procedures?

But secondly, procedural rights are, in fact, a bogus concept which asserts rights to violate other rights or individuals. If individuals have the right of self-defense and have been injured, whether or not they follow “sound” procedures, they have a natural right to prosecute and punish an actually guilty party. To prohibit a victim from privately arresting and prosecuting his actual assailant is to violate an authentic right.