The right of self-determination, despite the stirring rhetoric of its advocates, is profoundly illiberal. It is not a right against a state but a right to a state. It is unconcerned with the legal and moral rights of individuals but with asserting a new sphere of political power –often more oppressive than the one left behind. It masks the ambitions of political entrepreneurs who claim to represent the “people” regardless of whether or not they have been properly elected, and regardless of the views of minorities and individuals who do not want to secede or be autonomous.

But the tension between self-determination and liberal principles runs deeper. The idea that collective entities have the right to determine themselves is so rooted in the political imagination and in international law that it may sound farfetched to deny it. Yet, if the right of self-determination means the right of some to forcibly enroll others in their projects, then I want to deny it.

Many people think that just as individual autonomy is a value, so group autonomy is a value; just as persons pursue individual projects, so groups pursue collective projects; just as persons seek the private good, so groups seek the collective good. But this analogy does not hold in a straightforward way. Surely groups can have great value for their members. Groups can facilitate the achievement of goals that cannot be achieved individually. But this moral value of groups holds as long as they are voluntary. Groups are importantly disanalogous to individuals. An individual has a mind that makes plans and weighs options, alternatives, values, and goals. She may err, of course, but her error will be the result of her considered judgment about how she desires to pursue her personal project, how to lead her life in her own terms. Groups, on the contrary, do not have minds. They are collections of individuals where some cooperate but others dominate, exploit, and prey on others. When an individual forms a life plan she acts freely (with the usual caveats and exceptions.). When a ruler devises a plan for society he coercively enrolls others in his projects, whether his projects are shared by many or few.

I do not dispute the claim that it is possible to say that groups have ends, interests, or projects that are not conceptually reducible to individual ends, interests, or projects. But it does not follow that the group leaders can coercively impose those ends on the dissenters within the group. This is quite obvious in the cases of non-democratic governance, but is also often true where majority rules. Most of the time an individual is the best judge of her interest and welfare; conversely, most of the time group rulers are not the best judges of the interests of its members.  This means that non–voluntary collective self-determination, that is, a collectively coerced decision about the political status, or the cultural identity, or the economic system of a group, is morally suspect.  The realization of human ends, including those that can be realized collectively, should in the last analysis be the result of voluntary interaction among free individuals. There are no non-consensual goods for collectives, nations, or tribes (over and above the goods of persons who comprise the collectivity) that group leaders can permissibly enforce. My claim is normative, not conceptual: the only morally valuable projects are (1) individual projects; and (2) voluntary group projects.