The individualist denies that anybody other than the individual has a rightful say in how the individual conducts himself.

Typically, the first line of attack by the collectivist is an attempt to reduce the theory to absurdity by suggesting that it implies that the collective cannot prohibit the individual from killing or otherwise doing harm to others. If this charge were true, then it would indeed contradict itself.

But note that the theory of individualism sets up its own boundaries by applying itself to all individuals. If individualism is true, it doesn’t only prohibit others from coercing me to act in accordance with their wishes; it also prohibits me from coercing others to act according to my wishes.

A popular line of attack against the libertarian – and individualist – concept of self ownership is that the freedom it implies would allow people to act immorally. This is particularly true of egalitarians who believe that their right to use force against individuals to bring about material equality is overriding.

To invoke egalitarian morality as overriding of individual consent necessarily involves the denial of self ownership. That is perhaps by egalitarians are necessarily collectivists.

But when an individual denies self-ownership, it would appear that he denies the all rights over his self, including the right to assert collectivism.

“I deny self-ownership. The collective has the right to govern me.”

He is attempting to invoke self-ownership for the purpose of assigning his sovereignty to the collective. This seems to involve a performative contradiction, does it not? If he is not claiming self ownership in order to assign his sovereignty to the collective, then he is in fact denying his own right to assign his sovereignty to anybody.

Slap a collectivist. What does he say? Does he accuse you of violating his sovereignty, or the collective sovereignty? If he accuses you of violating the collective sovereignty, you can simply insist that you are part of the collective and as such hold sovereignty over him to slap as you please. It is more likely that he will claim that you violated his “rights” (i.e., sovereignty), at which time he is in fact asserting individual sovereignty.

Anyhow, if the collective is indeed the rightful claimant to sovereignty over individuals, then all this talk by collectivists about individual rights would seem to be nonsense.

It is remarkable that both libertarians and defenders of totalitarian government start from the common premise that an individual should be free.

The bifurcation occurs in the 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 envirnmentalists who advocate coercive population control measures.

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.

This is a response to Hugh LaFollette’s essay entitled “Why Libertarianism Is Mistaken” which appears in an anthology, Justice and Economic Distribution.

The argument LaFollette presents is based upon a misrepresentation of libertarian theory. How he arrives there is, however, enlightening. He starts out:

“The problem with libertarianism can be seen once we recognize the limitations that negative rights (libertarian constraints) themselves place on individual liberty. Suppose, for example, that I am the biggest and strongest guy on the block. My size is a natural asset, a physical trait I inherited and then developed. But can I use my strength and size any way I please? No! At least not morally. Though I am physically capable of pummeling the peasants, pillaging property, and ravishing women, I am not morally justified in doing so. My freedom is restricted without my consent.”

No, your freedom is not restricted without your consent, Hugh. You may rape those women, or kill them and eat them for all I care. And you can be killed and eaten as well.

However, if you enter the social contract you then consent to not invade the sovereignty of others in exchange for a similar pledge from others.

“Consequently, everyone’s life is not, given the presence of negative general rights and negative general duties, free from the interference of others.”

In the state of nature no, but in the sentence above LaFollette specifies “the presence of negative rights.” If negative rights – individual sovereignty – is present in play, then any interference in the sovereign realm of others is specifically prohibited.

It appears that LaFollette wants to argue another point though, in a somewhat disorganized manner. He is arguing that individual sovereignty restricts freedom instead of extending it. Thus his next sentence is:

“For example, in the previously described case I could have all of the goods I wanted; I could take what I wanted, when I wanted.”

We all must agree with LaFollette here. Negative liberty does restrict liberty. In the example he provided, the big man could rape or kill or steal all he wanted. But individual sovereignty restricts his freedom. He can no longer exercise sovereignty over other individuals. I hardly feel the need to apologize for this restriction of freedom. But the point he is making is valid – if libertarians think that liberty is the highest moral good, they should be anarchists, not libertarians.

“To say that such actions are morally or legally impermissible significantly limits my freedom, and my “happiness,” without my consent. Of course I am not saying these restrictions are bad. Obviously they aren’t. But it does show that the libertarian fails to achieve his major objective, namely, to insure that an individual’s freedom cannot be limited without his consent. The libertarian’s own moral constraints limit each person’s freedom without consent.”

Here again LaFollette appears confused. The libertarian negative rights do not arrive unbidden or without consent. If the big man chooses not to consent to the social contract, that is his choice. As a party to the contract, he would be in possession of the rights provided by the contract, and he would also be bound by the terms of the contract; namely, he would be restricted from violating the sovereignty of others. If he chooses to not become a party to the contract, he is not bound by the restrictions, nor is he in possession of any rights.

Thus LaFollette’s primary objection to the libertarian social contract – that it hypocritically restricts freedom without consent – fails.

Also note how LaFollette attempts to frame the argument by saying, “the libertarian’s own moral constraints limit each person’s freedom without consent.” Libertarianism is social contractarian. It is not a moral doctrine, although some libertarians argue for it on moral grounds. Libertarianism effectively precludes the legislation of morality.

By framing libertarianism as a moral doctrine, he is setting up the argument so that later on he may deny that consent is meaningful, and suggest that, as long as we are impose our morality on people, by why impose liberalism on them?

The next example provided by LaFollette is even more confused.

“This is even more vividly seen when we look at an actual historical occurrence. In the nineteenth century American slaveholders were finally legally coerced into doing what they were already morally required to do: free their slaves. In many cases this led to the slave owners’ financial and social ruin: they lost their farms, their money, and their power. Of course they didn’t agree to their personal ruin; they didn’t agree to this restriction on their freedom. Morally they didn’t have to consent; it was a remedy long overdue. Even the libertarian would agree. The slave holders’ freedom was justifiably restricted by the presence of other people; the fact that there were other persons limited their acceptable alter natives. But that is exactly what the libertarian denies. Freedom, he claims, cannot be justifiably restricted without consent.”

Take note of the statement, “The slave holders’ freedom was justifiably restricted by the presence of other people.” This is libertarian individualism. We assert that the freedom to hold ownership of others is unjustifiable, and abolish of such freedom is not only justifiable, but a contractual obligation.

This makes his next sentence a bit beyond absurd.

“But that is exactly what the libertarian denies.”

What? Libertarians deny that any freedom, including the freedom to hold slaves, may be denied without the consent of the slaveholder?

Absurd!

Let’s make LaFollette’s straw man argument explicit: Libertarians deny that freedom may be denied without consent.

This is a straw man argument because libertarians hold no such belief. We assert that individuals are sovereign and no man may violate the sovereignty of another without his consent.

Slaveholding would obviously be violation of the principle, so the slaves or other libertarians would be justified in employing non-consensual violence against the slaveholder in order to restore the individual sovereignty of the slaves.

To suggest that individual sovereignty, i.e., libertarian liberty – includes the right to hold slaves demonstrates a gross and perhaps intentional ignorance of libertarian principles.

“In short, the difficulty in this: the libertarian talks as if there can be no legitimate non-consensual limitations on freedom, yet his very theory involves just such limitations.”

Libertarians do not “talk as if” there can be no legitimate non-consensual limitation of freedom. We say very clearly that if you attempt to non-consensually violate the liberty of an individual, we will non-consensually violate your skull with a bullet.

“This theoretical difficulty is extremely important. First, the libertarian objections against redistribution programs (like those practiced in the welfare state) are weakened, if not totally disarmed. His ever-present objection to these programs has always been that they are unjust because they are non-consensual limitations on freedom. However, as I have shown, libertarian constraints themselves demand such limitations. Therefore, that cannot be a compelling reason for rejecting welfare statism unless it is also a compelling reason for rejecting libertarianism.”

The argument up until now has been one, not against liberty per se, but against the idea of consensual society. The thrust of the argument is that consensual society is impossible and the idea should be dismissed.

Perhaps if I paraphrased the argument it would make better sense;

Libertarians think that a consensual society is possible, but then they restrict the freedom of rapists and of slaveholders without consent, so they should admit that society cannot be operated consensually, and drop their objections to nonconsensual government programs like welfare.

Again, a clarification. Libertarians do not suppose that society may be conducted without force. There are rapists and murders and socialists and others who would attempt to violate the sovereignty of the individual. If they had previously consented to the social contract, the force we use against them – including deadly force – is consensual.

It’s called enforcement of a contract.

If the rapist, murderer or socialist in question never consented to the social contract, then he has no claim of wrong doing against us. It would be difficult to violate his rights when he had none to begin with. Only parties to a contract enjoy the rights created by the contract. And insofar as we only retaliated when he initiated violence, any claim he could attempt to mount would be self-incrimination.

“You violated my individual freedom by arresting me,” he might say, but what does this amount to? It presupposes individual sovereignty, the very violation of which lead to his arrest in the first place. That’s the beauty of individual sovereignty. An individual does not need to consent to the social contract to enjoy the freedom afforded by an individualist government. And any attempt to mount a claim against an individualist government fails precisely because the claim itself would necessarily presuppose individual sovereignty.

Don’t believe me? Go ahead and try it. Make a claim without assuming individual sovereignty. The nature of a claim is “you did x to me, which you had no right to do”.

Either you assume individualism in order to assume individual sovereignty, or you don’t and your claim that we violated your individual sovereignty is left meaningless. We cannot be accused of violating your individual sovereignty if you did not have individual sovereignty to begin with.

To directly respond to the charge that libertarians advocate consensual society while resorting to nonconsensual violence against offenders – yes, we do advocate nonconsensual violence against those who violate consensual society. And it is entirely consistent to do so.

Libertarianism is not founded upon the assumption that consent is all that society needs to afford each man his liberty. Libertarianism is founded upon the belief that no individual, or group of individuals, own another individual. We are all sovereign individuals. Just as the UN’s job is to prevent armies from crossing borders, the individualist government exists primarily in order to exert nonconsensual force against violators of individual sovereignty.

LaFollette entirely misses misrepresents the libertarian ideology, and after attacking a straw man concludes that:

“There seems to be no reason, for example, for concluding that X’s freedom to make $l million should not be restricted to aid other people, e.g., to give some workers enough funds to help them escape the de facto slavery in which they find themselves.”

Consensual society is impossible so he opts to grant the collective unlimited sovereignty to dispose of individuals and their resources as the collective sees fit.

If collectivism, and not individual sovereignty, is the solution to the problem of anarchy, the problem would appear more appealing than the solution. Anarchy would at least afford me some freedom, albeit freedom bought and paid for with gunpowder.

Before concluding, I think we should ask ourselves if LaFollette was sincere in his criticism. There is one telling omission. It is generally agreed that theoretical libertarianism is summed as “it is wrong to initiate violence.”

Notice the keyword there – initiate. LaFollette never once mentioned this principle. He then frames a straw man argument around a non-existent libertarian prohibition of violence. If he had begun his essay with the actual principle and that ever so important word “initiate,” his argument would have been transparently misrepresentative of libertarianism. It is difficult for me to believe that this omission was due to mere sloppiness.