Critical evaluation of Nozick's theory of justice and its relevance

Introduction

Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia offers a theory of justice based on individual rights and entitlement, written as a libertarian reply to the distributive theory of Rawls.

Nozick's entitlement theory of justice

Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) sets out an entitlement theory of justice as a libertarian reply to Rawls's distributive theory, and it draws on John Locke. NCERT does not name Nozick, but it records the free-market side of the debate his theory belongs to.

Core ideas. (1) Rights come first. Each person has a moral right to act as he or she chooses, on terms freely agreed with others, so long as this does not harm people who have not consented in ways that violate their rights; libertarians start from the idea that each person fully owns himself or herself. (2) Entitlement, judged historically. What a person is entitled to depends on past actions: a holding is just if it came about through fair acquisition or fair transfer, and private property is justified so long as it was acquired by just means. (3) A procedural, not a patterned, view. IGNOU classes Nozick's theory as procedural: it rests on individual rights, lets individuals' own choices settle entitlements, and so favours individualism and the market; redistributing property to reach a fairer distribution is, for Nozick, a breach of individuals' natural rights. (4) Taxation. Taking from some to give to others gives the state no better title than a thief would have, so redistributive taxation for welfare policies is wrong in itself. (5) The state. Nozick finds it hard to see how the state can rightly coerce people without their consent even to keep minimal public order, and he defends market freedom against the welfare state.

Criticisms. (a) Rawlsians reply that what people hold reflects natural endowments and social starting points that no one deserves, so past entitlements cannot settle what is just. (b) It ignores need and the unequal start from which people compete, which NCERT treats as the heart of social justice. (c) It lets market luck decide life chances and, as NCERT says of free markets generally, markets tend to work in favour of the strong and wealthy where basic goods are concerned. (d) Even within libertarianism, left-libertarians accept self-ownership but hold natural resources in common, so that anyone who appropriates them owes the others their value.

Critical evaluation

Strengths. It takes individual rights seriously and warns that distributive schemes which override free choice carry a cost; and it explains the intuition that what people come to hold through fair acquisition or transfer is theirs. These points are echoed in the defence of free markets which NCERT records: people should be free to own property and enter contracts, and markets reward merit and talent.

Weaknesses. (1) It treats past entitlements as decisive, though much of what people hold reflects natural endowments and family and social circumstances that no one deserves, which is Rawls's reason for keeping desert out of distributive justice. (2) It disregards need and the unfair start of people competing: NCERT explains that justice also means recognising special needs and ensuring basic conditions of life. (3) Free markets tend to go where business is most profitable and eventually work in the interest of the strong and wealthy, denying opportunities to the weak; many basic goods, like schooling in remote areas, would not be provided by private agencies unless it is profitable. (4) A state barred from redistributive taxation would not provide those minimum conditions of life which NCERT regards as a responsibility of a democratic government.

Relevance in society

Nozick's ideas are relevant to debates about the extent of the state: his defence of market freedom and his case against welfare policies paid for by redistributive taxation state the libertarian side of a debate that NCERT records in India. The NCERT account shows that the question is live: "a debate is currently going on in our society" about whether open competition through free markets is the best way of helping the disadvantaged or whether the state must provide a basic minimum, even through redistribution. For India, where many social and economic inequalities persist, his rejection of redistribution is hard to accept as a full theory of justice, but his stress on rights and on the limits of coercion remains a necessary corrective.

Conclusion

Nozick's theory is a serious and challenging theory of justice, valuable as a critique of redistribution and a defence of liberty, but incomplete as a theory of social justice because it ignores need and unequal starting points.