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"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. How much room
do individual rights leave for the state?... "Our main conclusions
about the state are that a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of
protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is
justified; that any, more extensive state will violate persons rights not to be
ordered to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is
inspiring as well as right." Has it really been fifteen years since those words appeared on the opening page of a major work in political philosophy? Indeed it has! The year was 1974, and a young, thirty-five-year-old professor of philosophy at Harvard University--all but unknown to the general reading public--published a book that was quickly to become a legend in its own time. As philosophy books go, it became a runaway bestseller, and its author an instant international celebrity. The book, of course, was Anarchy,
State, and Utopia--its author was Robert Nozick. Why
Such Impact? What was--and is--so special about the book and its author, and why have they had such an impact? To begin with, the young Robert Nozick was already known in the philosophy world as one of the most brilliant of American philosophers; largely on the basis of a handful of technical essays, he had become the youngest tenured professor (at age thirty) in the history of Harvard's Department of Philosophy. His mind was razor-sharp, he was ambitious, audacious, and fully in command of the tools of his profession, and those of others, such as economics, as well. He was a risk-taker, something of a philosophical swashbuckler, and he had the reputation for being able to make mincemeat of his opponents' arguments. It didn't hurt that he was charismatic as hell, either, or that he was startlingly handsome and utterly prepossessing, to boot. As for Anarchy, State, and
Utopia itself, it was a dazzling work. A few years before it was
published, political philosophy had been declared all but dead. Then Nozick's
Harvard colleague John Rawls published his magnum opus A Theory of Justice,
to wide acclaim. Seen as a modern treatise in the grand tradition, it was
perceived to be a theoretical underpinning for modern liberalism and the welfare
state. Yet what was important about it was that it seemed to open the door to
normative academic political theory once more. And when Anarchy, State,
and Utopia was published a few short years later, what had been a trickle
turned into a flood. Today, both books are given credit, side by side, for
having reinvigorated political theory. That's no small accomplishment for a
young man in his thirties. Technical
Work That's Fun to Read Then there is the way the book was
written. Even today, it's not like any other book you've ever read. In content
alone it's enough to startle: a technical work that's fun to read, a defense of
individualism, property rights, the justice of capitalism and the justification
for limited government--all coming out of the halls of Harvard! But its style!
Rather than describe it myself, let me quote a paragraph from a long profile of
Nozick that appeared in The New York Times Magazine: "For one thing, its range is unusual: Apart
from its main ideas, there are clever asides on intricate questions of
economics, incisive remarks on the historical character of love, frugal
embroideries on the psychology of envy, timely maxims about drugs and sex. Then
there is the distinctive style in which it is written: First-person, jocose,
carelessly zigzagging from point to point, welcoming every opportunity for
fireworks, it is utterly different from the pulseless treatises of philosophy's
dead giants. And if it lacks the glittering prose of a Bertrand Russell or the
exquisite logical brevities of a W.V.O. Quine, its style nevertheless grows on
you, as Rawls's, for example, does not. When Nozick builds a cobweb of
questions, jokes and hypotheses around some pedestrian assumption, suggesting
unlimited complications beneath its surface, one sometimes feels one is directly
experiencing an expansion of philosophical territory. Philosophical writing
often seems like an awkwardly dubbed film: tentative thoughts squeezed into the
tone of what Ludwig Wittgenstein once called 'wisdom out of the icebox.' But
with Nozick, philosophical activity, with all its turbulent starts and stops,
seems displayed rather than reported. For reasons of style alone, political
philosophy might not have been a malaria district for so long had Nozick been
around earlier." Sharks
and Lifepreservers The book and its author were
plastered all over the American media, from this profile in the NYT
Magazine, to a full-page in Newsweek, to full-length, often
lead, reviews in every major theoretical and public affairs journal--and not
just in the U.S., either. The Left set upon it like sharks tasting blood; the
Right, often misunderstanding the book, grabbed for it as a theoretical life
preserver. It reached bestseller status above ground and below--below, in the
underground in Poland, East Germany, other parts of Eastern Europe, China, and
the U.S.S.R. itself. The daily Times took the unusual step of
publishing a review nearly a year after the book's initial publication. It's
leading reviewer, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, wrote, astonishingly, that
"This is a book that simply must be read. Perhaps more than any other
nonfiction work that has been published in the last few years. So if this review
amounts to nothing else, it is a plea that everyone do so." And those
weren't the only strong words from the opposition camp. Legitimizing
Libertarianism And as if all that were not enough, Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia single-handedly established the legitimacy of libertarianism as a political theory in the world of academia. Indeed, it is not too much to say that without Nozick's book, there might not be a vital and growing academic libertarian movement today, making its way from university to university, from discipline to discipline, from nation to nation. Milton Friedman and his associates in the Chicago School had broken through in the field of economics before AS&U was published. But what else was there? Ayn Rand had an enormous impact--but not in the academic world. Mises had an academic impact in Europe between the wars, but in the U.S. the impact of the Austrian School was minuscule. Murray Rothbard's libertarian following was almost entirely outside academia. And while a few scholars were taking F.A. Hayek seriously, his magisterial treatise The Constitution of Liberty (1960) had largely been ignored and the "Hayek revival" was just beginning to get off the ground. John Hospers had an acknowledged academic status, but not in political philosophy, and his own Libertarianism (1971) seemed to do him more harm than good. As for the younger philosophers--Machan, Mack, the Pauls, Rasmussen, Den Uyl, Miller, etc.--they needed Nozick's success to give them a boost into visibility. No, it was Anarchy, State, and Utopia that did the trick. Needless to say, all of the
conditions for such phenomenal success don't come along very often--perhaps a
few times in a century. But still, it was no accident. Nozick had worked long
and hard for success, and when he got it, he deserved it. Legacy
of Greatness It is part of the legacy of a truly great work that it changes discourse in its field forever, that it affects a thousand issues in both broad and subtle ways that no one can foresee. Such is the nature of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Political theory will never be the same again. The hegemony of the principle of equality has been shattered irrevocably, and individual liberty brought back as a First Principle deserving of primary concern. In establishing "The Entitlement Theory of Justice," Nozick codified a bundle of loose propositions into a powerful and engaging theory that will, in time, form the focus of a whole School of Thought in the theory of justice. And who will ever forget the witty defense of "capitalist acts between consenting adults?" With a single turn of phrase, Nozick helped put capitalism back on the historic offensive, where it belongs, if we are to have true progress. For me, Anarchy, State, and
Utopia will always be one of those "desert island" books, on
that tiny list of books you'd take with you if you were cut off from everything
else. I'd take Ayn Rand's Atlas
Shrugged, and Mises's Human
Action, and probably either The Constitution of Liberty
or Law, Legislation and Liberty, by F.A. Hayek, too. There would be
a few others. But Anarchy, State, and Utopia would be near the top.
So far, it has changed the world for the better, and it's only fifteen years
old. Reading
Anarchy,
State, and Utopia: If you haven't yet read Anarchy,
State, and Utopia, chances are that you're among those who have heard
that the book is difficult, and you've been unnecessarily intimidated. Fear not!
Here is a guide to help in a first reading. Part I of the book is an attempt to provide an "invisible hand" justification for the State, and it is the most difficult section of the book. What to do? Simply skip it the first time through--you can come back to it later, when you're used to Nozick's approach. The important thing is where Nozick ends up here: he defends a limited government or minimal state not all that different from that of Ayn Rand or Leonard Read. There's more dazzle, but that can wait. Part II is an answer to those who want a bigger state, and it's much easier going. Chapter 7 does several things: it sets up the Entitlement Theory of Justice in broad outline, crushes simpler forms of egalitarianism, and refutes the key points in John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Only the Rawls discussion gets difficult, and you won't miss that much if you skim the tough sections first time through. You'll get the general idea. Then Nozick gives us pure dessert: an answer to the "young" Marx and other fallacy-spinners, on issues like equality of opportunity, self-esteem and envy, alienation, "meaningful work," workers' control, exploitation, etc. This is all great stuff. Finally, Part III deals with various "utopian" issues, and shows how a free society is as utopian as we can get; in fact it's "A Framework for Utopia." Here again the book isn't difficult at all. Two final things to remember: This
is a book of many parts, and you can usually skip a section without harm,
returning to it later. Finally, Nozick sometimes retreats into math and other
modes of argument that are beyond me. I always skip this stuff and I've never
had a single sleepless night over it. Roy A Childs April 1989 |
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