I’m going to blog my way through re-reading Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Sometimes I will defend it; sometimes I will criticize it. Sometimes I’ll cite secondary literature, but usually I won’t. Here’s the first post.

Anarchy, State, and Utopia (hereafter ASU) is divided into three parts. Part I argues that a minimal state is compatible with the strong libertarian rights certain anarcho-capitalist libertarians believe all people have. That is, part I tries to show that a commitment to a very strong view of rights does not lead to anarchism. Part II argues that a more-than-minimal state is not defensible. Part III argues that a minimal state can be inspiring—that it can be a kind of utopia.

Nozick begins ASU with, “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do.” (ix) In the next paragraph, Nozick says that his main conclusions will be that a minimal state can be justified, but a more-than-minimal state cannot. A more-than-minimal state will violate people’s rights. The state may not use coercion to get some citizens to aid others, nor may the state engage in any paternalistic activities. These opening paragraphs are misleading—they cause most readers to misunderstand Nozick’s argument in ASU.

Following Thomas Nagel, many readers complain that Anarchy, State, and Utopia lacks foundations. They complain that Nozick simply assumes—without argument—that people have very strong and extensive rights (including property rights) against coercive interference. Philosophers worry that this makes his argument against the more-than-minimal state too easy. If I have a nearly absolute right to my rightfully acquired property—a right that can be overridden only in order to prevent “catastrophic moral horror”—then of course I cannot be taxed to provide a social minimum or public education.

Nozick’s critics are correct that this argument would be too easy. But that’s the problem. If Nozick really did just assume we have such strong rights, and if his main beef with social democracy or the welfare state really were they violate libertarian rights, then it’s hard to explain why Part II of ASU is so long. If this were Nozick’s central argument or most important criticism of the more-than-minimal state, then Part II should have been only about 3 pages long, rather than 147 pages.

The first two paragraphs of ASU mislead critics. However, the remainder of the book, and especially the last paragraph on p. xi, should have made them realize their mistake. Here’s Nozick summarizing Part II again:

Part II contends that no more extensive state can be justified. I proceed by arguing that a diversity of reasons which purport to justify a more extensive state, don’t. [I criticize Rawls a bunch and develop a rival theory of justice to illustrate some problems with Rawls’s theory.] Other reasons that some might think justify a more extensive state are criticized, including equality, envy, workers’ control, and Marxian theories of exploitation. (xi)

For the most part, in Part II, Nozick does not assume that the libertarian theory of rights is correct. Instead, he works with a simple assumption—an assumption that most liberals, left and right, accept, and so he doesn’t bother argue for. He assumes—just as other liberals do—that all state power has to be justified, and that such power should be presumed illegitimate until a compelling justification has been provided. He then tries to show that the most common attempts to justify power beyond the minimal state fail. He doesn’t argue they fail because they violate libertarian rights. As we’ll see in later blog posts, he has a variety of complaints about these other justifications. Yes, it’s true that Nozick thinks a more-than-minimal state is incompatible with the strong libertarian rights he assumes in Part I. But this does very little work for him in the book.

Part I is addressed to a subset of libertarians. It assumes—without argument—that people have very strong rights against coercive interference. Nozick makes the assumption not on his own behalf, but on behalf of the people he wants to criticize! Anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard believe we have such strong rights and that these rights prohibit any sort of state. Nozick wants to show that at least a minimal state can be justified, even if Rothbard is correct that we have such strong rights. Nozick also wants to argue that a minimal state would arise naturally without violating anyone’s rights.

So, it’s not only legitimate, but good philosophy, for Nozick to assume in part I that everyone has strong libertarian rights. He’s making a classic philosophical move. Rothbard argues for X, and then argues that X implies Y. Nozick assumes X for the sake of argument but then argues that X does not imply Y. (Here X = strong libertarian rights, Y = anarchism.)

Part II is addressed to everyone. It argues that nothing more than a minimal state can be justified. It does this not by assuming we have rights and then showing the more-than-minimal state is incompatible with them, but by trying to show that the arguments for the more-than-minimal state are not well-founded.  Nozick criticizes Marx, Rawls, and others extensively. He also draws out what sees as the undesirable implications of the more than minimal state, arguing that it is incompatible with the liberal ideas espoused by Rawlsians and others.  Since Nozick (when writing ASU) believes that rights are self-alienable, he does, however, explain how a more-than-minimal state could arise without violating libertarian rights. However, this hypothetical history makes the more-than-minimal state look bad.