Undergraduate 2013/14

Formative Essay Feedback

Student ID
Student Name
Module Name / PO301 Issues in Political Theory
Seminar Tutor / Adam Swift
Essay title / Is Nozick right to think that redistributive taxation is a violation of individual rights?
Comments
See 9 comments embedded in the essay.
The essay has good focus, is well structured, and sustains a clear line of argument well. The writing is generally excellent, expressing precise thoughts in a lucid and sophisticated way. There is good use of quotation. There is the essence of what could have been a First Class essay here if the argument had been a bit more careful and nuanced.
Essay Mark / 65
Areas for Improvement
It’s a perfectly good strategy to make just one argument, and try to build and sustain it across the essay as a whole. You do that well and the essay has a nice coherence and gives a clear sense that you have thought it through in a serious way. But if you do make just one argument then it has to be done really well and carefully to get a top mark. Your conclusions are overstated and are stronger than you need to answer the question. Redistributive taxation, for certain reasons, in certain contexts, might not violate individual rights, and for the reasons you give about illegitimacy of acquisition, without its being the case that nobody has any rights over any property. I am surprised that you continued with those strong and unsupported claims despite our discussing them when you came to see me.
I’m also not sure whether your claim is (i) that redistributive taxation here and now does not violate anybody’s rights, because here and now nobody has justly acquired property in the way needed to ground absolute property rights or (ii) that nobody could ever acquire property in such a way as to ground those rights. I think it’s the former, but it would have helped to have this clearer.
Don’t put in your bibliography works that are not cited or show no sign of influencing the essay.
Seminar Contributions
No. attended / No. absent / No. condoned
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Is Nozick right to think that redistributive taxation is a violation of individual rights?

Ayla Varvarina

1121750

Prof Adam Swift

Issues in Political Theory

Formative Essay 1

Word count: 1,480

Is Nozick right to think that redistributive taxation is a violation of individual rights?

Introduction

In his work ‘Anarchy, State and Utopia’ [1]Robert Nozick explains his argument of how redistributive taxation violates absolute rights over property by forcing the wealthy to give up what is rightfully theirs. He argues that given justice in acquisition, individuals have an absolute right over their property. Therefore, they have a right to choose and do what they desire with their belongings. Taking the Wilt Chamberlain example, Nozick illustrates that it is just to freely transfer one’s goods (that one has absolute rights over) according to the market mechanism if one so chooses and the result of the distribution is also just if the individuals were entitled to their goods or money before the transfer. Those third parties who did not participate in the transfer do not have a right to the new distribution because they did have a right to other’s goods before the transfer. In this way, redistributive taxation would disturb this pattern and violate ownership rights over one’s income.

Critics of Nozick have pointed out that this argument rests on a flawed assumption about justice in acquisition and that no such concept exists, therefore, an individual does not have any rights over their property. Thus, all property ownership is illegitimate and any action involving the further transfer of goods is also illegitimate. One does not have a right over one’s income and thus redistributive taxation does not violate any such rights.

Nozick’s argument: how redistributive taxation violates ownership rights

Nozick’s argument that redistributive taxation violates ownership rights rests on his principle of ‘justice in transfer’[2] – whatever is justly acquired can be freely transferred and the result will also be just. He illustrates this with the Wilt Chamberlain example. He describes how Wilt Chamberlain, a talented and popular basketball player, has agreed with his team that every home game 25 cents of the ticket price will go directly to him. Every time a spectator enters the stadium they will drop 25 cents into a box with Chamberlain’s name on it to watch him play. They attend his games voluntary. If 1 million people have attended his games, Chamberlain will take away $250,000[3]. This is a new distribution that was brought about by voluntary actions of people who, we assume, were entitled to their money in the first place.

If the initial distribution (before the transfer) was just, and people adopted the new distribution by choice, this makes the latter distribution also just (Nozick’s ‘justice in transfer’). After a person transfers some goods to Chamberlain voluntarily, third parties (not the givers or receivers of this transfer) still have their original, legitimate shares. Nozick asks “by what process could such a transfer among two persons give rise to a legitimate claim of distributive justice on a portion of what was transferred, by a third party, who has no claim of justice on any holdings of the others before the transfer”[4]. The Wilt Chamberlain example has proven the solidity of justice in transfer – if I choose to give away what I am entitled to to someone else, a third party is not entitled to any of the value transferred. If they were not entitled to my goods before the transfer, it would be illogical to say that they would be entitled to any goods after the transfer. Following this argument, redistributive taxation (that would take away some on Wilt’s income and be transferred to the third party) would violate an individual’s right to his income or other goods similarly acquired.

Nozick’s assumption: justice in acquisition

Nozick’s principle of justice in transfer rests on his ‘entitlement theory’[5], an element of which is the ‘original theory of holdings’. This is an account of “how unheld things came to be held”[6], how goods became property that could be transferred. He explains how property can undergo initial acquisition that is just. This account is the foundation of his argument of how redistributive taxation is a violation of ownership rights. We must evaluate Nozick’s idea of justice in acquisition in order to assess the validity of the argument that follows from it.

Nozick’s idea of justice in acquisition is an extension of Locke’s proviso[7]. To paraphrase, before the world was divided and conquered, individuals could appropriate whatever they liked, and whatever they took began to belong to them and they had absolute rights over it, as long as they left enough for others that was as good as what they kept for themselves. Locke defends this view by stating that long ago resources were in abundance, so every individual had enough[8]. This ambiguous statement is the core behind Locke and Nozick’s theory of how ownership rights were established.

Nozick builds on Locke’s proviso, introducing his third principle of the ‘rectifications of justice in holdings’[9]. This recognizes that if an individual initially acquired goods through use of force or usurped other’s goods there is an injustice.

This is the crux of the argument. If initial acquisition was in fact ‘just’ then all individuals are entitled to their property and have absolute rights over it. Then it is just to freely trade on the market what is yours. Whatever results from unrestricted trade is then also just (justice in transfer) and after each transaction the parties involved are entitled to what they receive. Thus, taking any goods away from those parties is unjust – redistributive taxation is a violation of their rights.

However, if critics were to prove that initial acquisition is never just, then that would prove that no individual ever had absolute rights over their initial share of the goods. Furthermore, transfers of those goods would be illegitimate, as individuals have no right to trade what is not rightfully theirs, therefore redistributive taxation on the results of those transfers would not violate any rights as no individual had any rights to any goods in the first place.

No justice in acquisition

“The historical answer is often that natural resources came to be someone’s property by force” argues Kymlicka[10]. One cannot even begin to estimate how many times the world’s land has been usurped by empires, kingdoms, warlords and individuals. However, unless the individual perpetrator is brought to justice, he is not prevented from transferring his usurped goods to others. This conflicts with the principle of justice in transfer, making that transaction (and the resulting distribution of it) unjust. Again, unless that action is undone, more unjust transfers will occur, resulting in more illegitimate ownership. After how illegitimate transactions can we say that the damage is irreversible?

Even though Nozick does concede the flaw in his argument and seeks to solve the issue by suggesting “we could rectify the illegitimacy of existing title by a one-time general redistribution of resources in accordance with Rawl’s difference principle”[11] . This is Nozick’s best attempt at fulfilling the rectifications of justice in holdings principle. But how to prevent and reverse all these illegitimate acts from occurring in practice? “I do not know of a thorough or theoretically sophisticated treatment of such issues” states Nozick[12].

Conclusion

To conclude, we analyse Nozick’s principles. The principle of justice in transfer is sound. If I were to give my friend Lucy $10 for walking my dog, Jessica has no right to take $2 from that amount. Jessica was not entitled to my $10 in the first place; therefore she has to entitlement to it after the transfer. Redistributive taxation that would grant Jessica those $2 would be unjust. But was I entitled to my $10 in the first place?

The principle of justice in transfer rests on the assumption that before each transfer individuals have a right to their goods. If they acquired their goods by illegitimate means, they would have no rights over them and every transaction that they make from then on would be illegitimate. Thus, we must trace all transactions back to initial acquisition.

Nozick’s principle of justice in acquisition is questionable. As most property that we now use to produce goods from was historically usurped many times (and Nozick’s principle of rectifications of justice in holdings does not always return the situation to its just state), there is no such thing as just initial acquisition. Moreover, all transactions that occurred concerning those goods afterwards are illegitimate and no one has any rights over those goods. Thus, redistributive taxation does not violate an individual’s right of ownership because that individual did not have that right in the first place.

Word count: 1,480

Bibliography

Cohen, G. A., ‘Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995

Kymlicka W., ‘Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction’, Oxford University Press, 2002

Locke J., ‘Second Treatise of Government’, edited by Macpherson C. B., (1690, 1980)

Nozick, R., ‘Distributive Justice’ from ‘Anarchy, State and Utopia’, reprinted in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 3 (1973), 45-126.

Varden H., ‘The Lockean ‘Enough-and-as-Good’ Proviso: An Internal Critique’ Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2012) 410–442

27/01/2014

[1] ‘Distributive Justice’ from Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick (1973)

[2] Nozick (1973) ‘Distributive Justice’ p47

[3] Ibid p57-58

[4] Ibid p58

[5] Nozick (1973) ‘Distributive Justice’ p46

[6] Ibid p46

[7] Locke’s proviso from ‘Second Treatise of Government’ (1980), chapter V

[8] Ibid

[9] Nozick (1973) ‘Distributive Justice’ p48

[10]Kymlicka (2002) Contemporary Political Philosophy p111

[11] Ibid p112

[12] Nozick (1973) ‘Distributive Justice’ p49