It is remarkable that both libertarians and defenders of totalitarian government start from the common premise that an individual should be free. John Stuart Mill writes thus:

That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

The bifurcation occurs in a second premise – i.e., the premise which delimits the realm of freedom. The libertarian argues that the individual is rightly free to act so long as he doesn’t pose an imminent threat to others, whereas the totalitarian argues that the individual should only be free so long as his actions do not affect others.

Of course, there is very little a human can do which cannot be construed as affecting others. The very state of being alive is considered a first order threat to environmentalists who advocate coercive population control measures.

While the text above, written by John Stuart Mill in 1859 (not 1869 as commonly cited), aimed at individual liberty, it also provided the enemies of individual liberty the grounds upon which they would attack it. In the paragraphs following the cited text, Mill argues that the freedom he speaks of cannot be applied to children.

He then argues that entire societies are unfit and ought to be viewed as children. He spoke of “backwards states of society in which the [human] race itself may be considered as in its nonage.”

So all one has to do to defeat Mill’s individualism on its own terms is to argue that adulthood is a myth, that all men are in fact no different from children. That is the argument employed by L T Hobhouse in his Liberalism (1911) and by adherents of social determinism theory and genetic determinism theory.

Loren Lomasky, in his Persons, Rights and the Moral Community sets out a rather libertarian theory of rights.

He makes a curious assertion in regard to the formulation of an essentially individualistic social contract. He writes:

Therefore, it is a mistake to commence political analysis with a state-of-nature scenario in which each individual is entirely consumed by his own conceptions of value-for-himself and regards others as only obstacles to his own designs. Hobbsian egoism… is logically precluded from initiating relations of sociality.

Lomasky’s argument here (starting on page 69) is that individuals who act solely on the basis of self-interest would not consent to a social contract.

I entirely disagree. Purely egoistic motivation does not preclude acts of giving. I could give a cow food every day for several years, and it would not qualify as altruism. Altruism is defined as unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. It may appear altruistic, but my motives are purely egoistic. I want meat, so I feed the cow well.

Likewise, the individualistic social contract requires me to refrain from interfering in the freedom of others. It may appear altruistic when we consider all the fun I could have violating his freedom, subjecting him to slavery, stealing his wealth, etc. But it is motivated purely by self-interest. I am not concerned so much with the freedom I offer him as I am concerned with the protection of my own freedom which I am gaining.

Richard Chappell doesn’t know what individualism is.

I’ve noticed that ideological libertarians tend to denounce utilitarian interventions (e.g. redistributive taxation) as “collectivist”, or favouring “the group” over “the individual”. I can’t make the slightest sense of this charge. Can anyone help me out?

I’d be glad to.

There’s nothing obviously anti-individualistic about harming one individual in order to benefit many other individuals.

It’s inherently anti-individual to deny the individual his sovereignty.

Put it this way: a consequentialist might think it right to give one person a papercut in order to save another from starvation or torture. The libertarian opposes this — it violates the first guy’s rights. But there’s only one individual on either side. There is no meaningful sense in which the utilitarian here is “anti-individual”, nor the libertarian “pro-individual”. They’re each for and against different individuals, is all.

Um, no. It’s not about who benefits. Individuals pay the bills, and individuals reap the benefits of other individuals paying the bills. Nobody is asking who benefits. The words “individualism” and “collectivism” refer to who is vested with the authority to make the choice.

Another way to define the terms is as answers to the question, “who is sovereign?”

If the collective is vested with that authority, my consent is not needed and my sovereignty is appropriated by the collective.

If the individual is sovereign, nobody but I can decide what I do for other individuals.

Richard Chappell continues:

Rawls famously complained that “Utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons.” The idea is that, just as we think that later benefits can compensate harms to an individual, so utilitarians believe that benefits to one person can somehow make up for harms to another. But there is no super-person who receives this compensation. Utilitarianism is “thus” grounded on an illusion.

This strikes me as a pretty poor argument. The problem, of course, is that utilitarianism does not assume that any such super-person exists. Rather, the theory rests on other grounds – namely, the notion that each person’s interests matter equally.

Each person’s interests matter equally to whom, the person whose freedom is being violated? The person who is benefiting from that violation of freedom? No, neither. Then who? The super-person. The administrator of the collective who has collected all resources, all reality, into one and then takes it upon himself to distribute benefits and burdens amongst the individuals as he sees fit.

It’s pretty amazing that a liberal would criticize Rawls for being too individualistic. Rawls left very little for the individual. Compare Rawls, who called himself a liberal, with Hobhouse, who called himself a liberal socialist, and Hobhouse is a radical right-winger by comparison. Richard Chappell might as well criticize Marx for being too individualistic.

An obvious case of a benefit factually outweighing a burden would be if everyone would prefer to have both rather than neither, i.e. if they were willing to undergo the burden for the sake of the benefit…Now, it’s just plain silly to deny that we can make interpersonal comparisons here.

No, it’s not silly at all. If you want to make an argument for burdens factually outweighing benefits, you are appealing to an individual. For me, the benefits of working may not outweigh the burden. The opposite may be true for another. When you attempt to transplant burdens from one person to another, the benefits immediately become irrelevant and the calculations are meaningless.

If I get a papercut and you get your head chopped off, it is absurd to deny that you have suffered a (factually) greater harm.

Agreed.

And it is similarly absurd to deny the moral counterpart, that it is more important to save your head than my finger.

Only if it is absurd to deny the Fairy Tooth counterpart as well. Moral statements are not truth-apt. To deny or assert the “moral counterpart” would be meaningless. Notice the part of the statement which gives it away:

that it is more important to save your head than my finger

Is it? According to whom? To say that something is more important is to express a subjective statement of value or priority. If the head happens to be attached to a socialist, no, it’s not important to save his head. In fact, I’d be willing to suffer a papercut if it would guarantee his head came off. Then, perhaps, socialists would learn to stop abusing individuals.

A lot of people are dying every day, and Richard Chappell obviously doesn’t believe those lives are worth his time. Is he on a flight to Somalia? Is he spending every waking hour saving lives?

Surely, by his own argument, we should allow the interpersonal comparison. Then we can ask, which is more important, to attend Princeton, or avoid starvation? If those were Chappell’s choices, I am sure he would choose to live. But since they are interpersonal, Chappell chooses to stay in Princeton. By refusing to submit to collective morality, he demonstrates his choice to be individualism. Probably a smart choice, too, because collective judgment hasn’t been all that stellar, what with the Gulag, the Holocaust and slavery and all.

The positive liberty versus negative liberty debate gets old, and it isn’t particularly productive.

If we hold that liberty, usually referred to as individual liberty or personal liberty or negative liberty is the highest moral good, we’re simply setting ourselves up for a number of criticisms.

The first type of criticism centers around the definition of liberty. This is the positive versus negative liberty debate.

Are the security guards at the Waldorf Astoria interfering with my liberty when they remove me from the premises as a trespasser? Is my daughter interfering with my liberty when she refuses to play chess with me? Is an employer interfering with my liberty when he refuses to hire me?

All those questions could be avoided by replacing “liberty” with “individual sovereignty”; surely nobody is suggesting that I am sovereign over the Waldorf Astoria, my daughter, or the employer. And it would be unjust to advocate a liberty which comes at the cost of unjust violation of an individual’s sovereignty.

The second type of criticism precipitated by defining liberty as the highest moral good, as Jan Narverson appears to do in The Libertarian Idea, is the kind which suggests that liberalism does a better job of providing liberty.

In a certain way, they probably could, if they weren’t so horribly inept at running the government. For instance, let’s say they took Bill Gates money. All of it. He does have a net worth of $58 billion.Take that money and redistribute it all to the libertarian bloggers, and we would have a lot more effective liberty than we had before.

I don’t have the liberty to go live in Paris for a year. With the money that previously belonged to Bill Gates in my wallet, I’d have that liberty.

But we do not want that kind of liberty, because it collectivizes sovereignty. Today it’s Bill Gates money, tomorrow it’s my money, and my house, my kids, and my employment.

So stop saying “liberty” when you mean individual sovereignty. And stop framing libertarianism as a moral theory. It should be contractarian and entirely morality neutral.