Henry: Nozick and Rawls on Property Rights

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Nozick and Rawl's central disagreement seems to be related to their ideas about property rights.

For Nozick, "the central core notion of a property right in X... is the right to determine what shall be done with X" (Nozick 171). Nozick explains that this includes the right to transfer one's property to whomever one wishes. Nozick believes that the freedom to transfer one's property is a foundational human liberty. Nozick might say that the free use of one's property is entailed by Rawl's first principle of justice, equal liberty, and since Rawl's principles of justice are lexically ordered, property rights must trump any redistribution efforts. As Nozick puts it, resdistribution involves "the violation of people's rights" (Nozick 168). Rawls disagrees, writing in his response to Marx that property "is not a basic right" (Rawls 150). Rawls believes that his first principle does not entail absolute free use of one's property. Thus, Rawls is able to invoke his second principle to justify restrictions on the free use of one's property. Rawls argues that in order to preserve fair equality of opportunity (a subsidiary of his second principle), there must be "laws regulating bequest and inheritance of property" (Rawls 37).

Nozick invokes the Lockean conception of a property right (Nozick 174) as well as the Lockean proviso that there be "enough and as good left in common for others" (Nozick 175). As such, Nozick holds that any constraints on property are "internal to the theory of property itself" (Nozick 180). Nozick believes that property rights are legitimate only if they result "via specified types of processes" (Nozick 225). Nozick holds that as long as justice was upheld in the acquisition or transfer of a piece of property, a person possesses an entitlement to that piece of property (Nozick 151). Rawls retorts that even though individual transactions viewed in isolation may be just, they must be viewed in the context of the background institutions (Rawls 42). Rawls rejects Locke's framwork, arguing that Lockean limits and provisos "are not stringent enough to insure that fair background conditions are maintained" (Rawls 42). In lieu of the Lockean provisos, Rawls proposes his two principles of justice as a framework for regulating the just acquisition and transfer of property (Rawls 57). 

Rawls believes that "it is background institutions that provide the setting for fair competition within which entitlements arise" (Rawls 37). Nozick, like Rawls, believes that his theory is workable only "if background institutions exist to ensure the satisfaction of certain conditions on distributive shares" (Nozick 162). But Nozick and Rawls understand the proper extent of these background institutions differently. Unlike Rawls, Nozick does not "assume any background institutions more extensive than those of the minimal night-watchman state" (Nozick 162). Rawls, on the other hand, seems more willing to allow for government intervention to ensure fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle.

Thus, it seems that Nozick and Rawls's key disagreement seems to center around the degree to which property rights are fundamental.

Comments

  1. Paul HurleyMarch 9, 2023 at 12:14 PM

    Cool post. Notice, though, how difficult it would be for Nozick actually to endorse Rawls' first principle, since is secures a system of liberties, including political liberties. For Nozick, it all is about one right or liberty, the right of liberty to own property. Notice, also, that as Nozick allows, the Lockean proviso constrains legitimate acquisition, and shadows legitimate transfer. If we accept this argument, but interpret the proviso as restricting each person to those holdings such that there is enough and as good left in common for each other person, e.g. so that I am only entitled to 1 8 billionth of the property in the world, wouldn't justice require a central authority, and a highly invasive on at that? And wouldn't such a libertarianism be much more egalitarian than Rawls' own?

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