Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice

Roderick T. Long
Auburn University
[email protected]
http://praxeology.net | http://aaeblog.com | http://all-left.net

Abstract:

A frequent objection to the “historical” (in Nozick’s sense) approach to distributive justice is that it serves to
legitimate existing massive inequalities of wealth. I shall argue that, on the contrary, the historical approach,
thanks to its fit with the libertarian theory of class conflict, represents a far more effective tool for challenging
these inequalities than do relatively end-oriented approaches such as utilitarianism and Rawlsianism.

1. Historical vs. End-State

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick famously distinguishes between two
approaches to distributive justice (or, to use his preferred terminology, justice in holdings): a
present-oriented or end-oriented approach that looks at how resources are currently
distributed without taking the past into account, and an historical approach that assesses the
justice of present-day distributions by looking to the causal process by which they arose.
(Nozick 1974, ch. 7)
Of course that’s a somewhat oversimplified characterisation of the distinctions, plural,
that Nozick is making in that section. Readers of Nozick often conflate the approaches he
dubs end-state, patterned, and current-time-slice; yet Nozick explicitly notes, first, that not all end-
state theories are current-time-slice theories, and second, that some patterned theories are
actually historical theories (as opposed to being either end-state or current-time-slice
theories). (Nozick 1874, pp. 155-156; cf. Schmidtz 2005, p. 159) We should also avoid
conflating historical theories in general with the narrower class of entitlement theories and the
still narrower specifically neo-Lockean theory that Nozick defends. And it is a still further
mistake to assume that, e.g., utilitarian and Rawlsian approaches – to mention two of
Nozick’s chief targets – automatically count as end-state approaches; after all, a utilitarian
will happily take historical considerations into account if doing so tends to maximise social
welfare, and the Rawlsian will as happily take historical considerations into account if doing
so tends to maximise the welfare of the least advantaged. (Indeed, just this is arguably the
point of Rawls’ defense of the difference principle.)
But, having pointed out these complexities, I now propose to ignore them – because
there is still a useful, broad distinction between approaches to distributive justice that

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 1

emphasise final patterns of holdings (a description that often applies – albeit, as we’ve seen,
contingently – to actual utilitarian and Rawlsian theorising), and those that emphasise the
process by which such patterns arise; and for the thesis I propose to defend, broad
differences in emphasis are more important than the precise details of particular theories and
principles. In particular, my present concern is less with what a given principle directly
entails and more with what role it plays in people’s way of conceptualising their social
environment.
A frequent objection to – and for others, perhaps, an attractive feature of – the historical
approach is that it serves to legitimate existing massive inequalities of wealth. I shall argue
that, on the contrary, the historical approach – thanks to its fit with the libertarian theory of
class conflict – represents a far more effective tool for challenging these inequalities than do
relatively end-oriented approaches such as utilitarianism and Rawlsianism, even when the latter
approaches would condemn the inequalities just as much as the historical approach does.
I will proceed in two stages. First, I will show how, in the light of libertarian class
theory, an historical approach condemns the inequalities rather than legitimating them.
Second, I will argue that its condemnation is more effective – in a sense of “more effective”
to be explained – than that of its end-oriented rivals.

II. Libertarian Class Theory

Let’s first consider the charge that the historical approach serves to legitimate existing
massive inequalities of wealth. It is true, of course, that the historical approach would
legitimate these inequalities, if they had emerged by a series of just transfers from just
original appropriations (or else from a series of transfers and appropriations whose injustices
had all been properly rectified). But then it is equally true that the utilitarian and Rawlsian
approaches would legitimate such inequalities, if the inequalities promoted social advantage
(aggregate or mutual, respectively). So why is this hypothetical urged more strongly against
the historical approach than against the utilitarian and Rawlsian approaches – especially since
few people believe that the antecedent is satisfied in any of the three cases?
I suspect it is because of the widespread assumption that the historical approach, if
strictly adhered to, would be likely to eventuate in a distribution of holdings broadly comparable
to existing inequalities (even if the specific holdings would in many cases belong to different

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 2

people from those they currently belong to) – whereas such an assumption is less commonly
made concerning utilitarianism, and still less commonly concerning Rawlsianism.
Even Nozick himself seems to think of his arguments as legitimating an economic
landscape broadly comparable to our own; for while he insists (pp. 230-231) that applying
his historical principles of justice would probably require a radical redistribution of existing
holdings – a point seldom stressed by either his defenders or his critics – he does not appear
to envision its entailing any radical change in the overall structure of wealth distribution. For
example, he takes for granted (pp. 250-253) that the implementation of his neo-Lockean
entitlement theory will involve the dominance of traditional “capitalist”1 firms (as opposed
to, say, workers’ cooperatives). More on this anon.
Kevin Carson has coined the terms “vulgar libertarianism” and “vulgar liberalism” for
the tendencies, respectively, to treat the benefits of the free market as though they
legitimated various dubious features of actually existing “capitalist” society (vulgar
libertarianism), and to treat the drawbacks of actually existing “capitalist” society as though
they constituted an objection to the free market (vulgar liberalism).2 Vulgar libertarianism
and vulgar liberalism share a common assumption: that the present (or, sometimes, the past)
economic realities of western “capitalist” countries constitute at least an approximate stand-
in for a genuine free market, so that the two stand or fall as a package; but vulgar
libertarianism and vulgar liberalism are opposed in their evaluations, one endorsing and the
other rejecting the package in question.
By contrast, left-libertarianism denies the shared assumption, holding instead that the
differences between actually-existing “capitalism” and a genuine free market are so great that
a defense of the latter provides not a legitimation but rather a radical condemnation of the
basic structure of the former.
By left-libertarianism I mean the position that Carson has described as agreeing “with the
Greens and other left-wing decentralists on the evils to which they object in current society
and on their general view of a good society,” but “with free market libertarians on their

1 For my reasons for placing the terms “capitalist” and “capitalism” (in their ideological sense) in scare-
quotes throughout, see Long 2006, where I argue that the term as ordinarily used essentially presupposes an
identification of free markets with corporate privilege, and so cannot coherently be used (except in scare-quotes
or with some other qualifier) by those who deny this presupposition.

2 See Carson’s blog, http://mutualist.blogspot.com, passim.

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 3

analysis of the cause of such evils and how to get from here to there,” or in summary form,
“green ends with libertarian means.” (Carson 2009a, pp. 1-2) Or, in historical terms, I mean
the movement that, while having its roots in the individualist anarchism of the 19th century
(particularly such figures as Thomas Hodgskin, Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and
Voltairine de Cleyre), emerged or re-emerged in the 1960s through the rapprochement
between libertarianism and the New Left (as represented by Murray Rothbard’s journal Left
& Right, as well as the early years, at least, of its successor Libertarian Forum), was continued
in the 1970s by Samuel Konkin’s “Movement of the Libertarian Left,” and broadened in
recent years into the Alliance of the Libertarian Left. Left-libertarianism in this sense should
not be confused with the more recent use of the term to describe the neo-Georgist position
of such theorists as Peter Vallentyne, Hillel Steiner, and Michael Otsuka (though overlap
between these two forms of left-libertarianism is certainly possible).
Left-libertarianism relies on what has come to be called libertarian class theory.3 This
theory originates with the circle of liberal French social theorists – most notably Charles
Dunoyer, Charles Comte (son in-law of Jean-Baptiste Say), and Augustin Thierry – who
published in the journal Le Censeur (1814-1815) and its successor Le Censeur Européen (1817-
1819). When Marx wrote, “No credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in
modern society or the struggle between them; long before me, bourgeois historians had
described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the
economic anatomy of the classes,”4 it was primarily to the Censeur group that he was
referring. The theory received further development by the English economist Thomas
Hodgskin (most notably in his 1832 essay The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted)
and, still later, by the contributors to Liberty, Benjamin Tucker’s 1881-1908 American journal
of individualist anarchism.5 Unlike later and more familiar theories that identify classes in
terms of their possession of economic resources (e.g., control, or lack of control, over the

3 For the historical origins of libertarian class theory, see especially Hart 1994, but also Liggio 1977; Raico
1977, 2006; Stedman-Jones [n.d.]; Weinburg 1978; Long 2008e; and Hart 1979. For more recent treatments see
Conger 2006; Carson 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009a; Grinder and Hagel 1977; Hoppe 1990; Long 1998, 2007, 2008a,
2008b; and Richman 2006.

4 Letter to J. Weydemeyer, 5 March 1952.

5 One can find similar ideas in John Calhoun’s 1849 Disquisition on Government – though this is somewhat
ironic, as Calhoun was a proponent of slavery, whereas virtually every adherent of this theory other than
Calhoun took it to entail a straightforward condemnation of slavery.

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 4

means of production), the libertarian theory identifies classes in terms of their means of
acquiring such resources – so an historical element is built in from the start.
In its primordial formulation, libertarian class theory distinguishes two principal classes.
One is the productive or “industrial” class, composed of those who earn their living through
production and voluntary exchange; this traditionally included both workers and capitalists,
though different versions of the theory would emphasise one or the other according to the
radicalism or conservatism of the author. The other is the parasitic (or as Herbert Spencer
would later call it, the “militant”) class, those who earn their living by plundering the
producers; while this class includes freelance criminals such as highway robbers, it finds its
primary embodiment in the holders and beneficiaries of political power. The core of this
class was originally the military aristocracy, who simply continued the practices of their
bandit ancestors under colour of law; but in the eyes of libertarian class theorists the passing
of political authority from nobles to commoners did not change the fundamental nature of
the state as an engine for advancing the interests of the politically favoured at the expense of
the general populace. When Marx called the July Monarchy “a joint-stock company for the
exploitation of France’s national wealth” on behalf of the bourgeois elite and at the expense
of production and commerce,6 he was only echoing what proponents of libertarian class
theory had been saying for decades.7
Early versions of the theory vacillated as to whether the criterion of membership in the
parasitic class was living by forcibly expropriating others’ labour or simply living off others’ labour, thus
leaving ambiguous the status of people who live off voluntary charity; the French liberals in
particular sometimes assigned beggars and priests (whether state-funded or not) to the
parasitic class. But modern versions of libertarian class theory generally distinguish the two
classes according to Franz Oppenheimer’s distinction between economic and political
means:

6 Class Struggles in France, I.

7 The relation of the Marxist theory of classes to its libertarian predecessor is complex. The official Marxist
doctrine – at least according to Engels in Anti-Dühring – is that a private-property economy is sufficient to
generate a capitalist ruling class without the need for state intervention. Yet Marx’s own account of “primitive
accumulation” (Capital I.vi.26) stresses the role of state violence in establishing the power of the bourgeoisie, just as
his own case studies of contemporary class conflict (in, e.g., Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire)
stress the role of state violence in maintaining it – thus giving Marx’s theory an historical/causal, state-oriented
dimension that brings it more closely into alignment with the libertarian one. For Engels’ implicit disagreement
with Marx on these points, see Carson 2004.

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 5

 There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring
sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his
desires. These are work and robbery, one’s own labor and the forcible
appropriation of the labor of others. ... I propose ... to call one’s own labor
and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others, the
“economic means” for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited
appropriation of the labor of others will be called the “political means.”
(Oppenheimer 1975 [1905], ch. 1)

Hence the industrial class lives by the economic means and the parasitic class by the political.
By Oppenheimer’s definitions, charity recipients would not count as belonging to either
class; but if one defines the economic means more broadly as the method of voluntary
transactions, then charity recipients would belong to the industrial class. Recipients of tax-
funded welfare won’t be assigned to the parasitic class either, so long as the extent to which
they benefit from governmental handouts is exceeded – as left-libertarians think it generally
is – by the extent to which they are immiserated by governmental regulations.
Marx claimed that the chief advance of his version of class theory over that of the
“bourgeois economists” was that he foresaw an end to class conflict;8 but in fact he was
anticipated here too. Unlike Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte,9 sometime fellow travellers of
the Censeur group, who proposed maintaining a powerful state apparatus but with a change
of personnel (kicking out the nobility and replacing them with representatives of the
industrial class), the main Censeur contributors rejected the state apparatus itself as a
fundamentally militant or parasitic institution incompatible with industrial life, and one that
was destined to be eroded by economic forces and ultimately replaced by a society without
privilege – a stateless, classless, free-market utopia.
Dunoyer, for example, described states as “monstrous aggregations ... formed and made
necessary by the spirit of domination,” and prophesied that the “spirit of industry will
dissolve them” and thereby “municipalize the world,” as “centers of actions ... multiply”
until the entire human race constitutes “a single people composed of an infinite number of
homogeneous groups bound together without confusion and without violence by ... the

8 Letter to Weydemeyer, op. cit.

9 This more famous Comte does not appear to have been related to Charles Comte of the Censeur; at any
rate John Stuart Mill, writing to Auguste Comte (26 April 1845), refers to Charles Comte as “your homonym”
rather than, e.g., “your kinsman.”

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 6

most peaceful and the most profitable of relationships.” (Industry and Morals pp. 366-67)
This vision of the militant mode of social organisation yielding to the industrial would
inspire both Molinari’s phrase “the diffusion of the state within society”10 and Proudhon’s
phrase “the dissolution of the state within the economic organism.”11
In its modern form, libertarian class theory identifies the ruling class in western
democracies as a partnership between the state on the one hand and the private, mostly
corporate, beneficiaries of state privilege on the other – big government and big business, or
statocrats and plutocrats – and the dominant form of economic and political organization as
one of corporatism. Given the concentrated character of corporate interests and the
dispersed character of the broader public interest, corporatism is regarded as a virtually
inevitable result of democratic institutions, as per Butler Shaffer’s definition of democracy as
“the illusion that my wife and I, combined, have twice the political influence of David
Rockefeller.”12 (Hence libertarian class theorists’ skepticism toward all forms of monopoly
government, not just undemocratic ones.) Vast inequalities of wealth are difficult to achieve
or maintain in a free market, since successful ventures are quickly imitated; competition
serves as a levelling factor. But such inequalities can most definitely be achieved and
maintained when competition is restricted by regulation.13
Like the alliance between church and state in the Middle Ages, the parties to the present
ruling alliance do not have identical interests, and there is some jockeying for power as each
side strives to become the dominant partner (with political parties of the establishment “left”
and establishment “right” tending to promote the economic interests of statocracy and
plutocracy respectively); hence the appearance of conflict between government and business
is not wholly illusory.
Nevertheless, again as with church and state, the partners’ commitment to the longterm
success of the partnership – i.e., to maintaining power – ordinarily takes precedence over

10 Political Evolution and the Revolution, p. 393.

11 General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century, passim.

12 http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/32987.html

13 One way of legally blocking imitators is the mechanism of “intellectual property.” For arguments that
intellectual property constitutes a form of plutocratic privilege incompatible with free-market principles (and of
no great benefit to intellectual innovators themselves), see Kinsella 2008; Boldrin and Levine 2008; Carson
2007, 2009a; and Long 2008d.

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 7

their commitment to the issues that divide them. Big government needs big business – as a
source of financial backing. And big business needs big government – to protect it from
market competition. As libertarian and New Left historians alike have documented, most of
the major regulatory interventions in U.S. history, including those most trumpeted and/or
vilified as “anti-business” – most notably those of the “Progressive Era” and the “New
Deal”14 – were not only welcomed by, but vigorously lobbied for and in many cases actually
drafted by, the corporate elite as a means of eliminating smaller competitors (who were less
able to handle the regulatory burdens) or as a means of regimenting workers and
consumers.15
It should thus be no surprise that Philip Morris has embraced restrictions on cigarette
advertising, or that Walmart has embraced government-funded healthcare, to pick two
examples from today’s news; both laws will have a greater impact on these firms’ smaller
competitors than on the firms themselves. Big business is no fan of free market
competition, which tends to exert downward pressure on prices and upward pressure on
salaries; hence it actively lobbies for, and generally gets, government privileges.16 Sometimes
these are direct and overt, taking the form of subsidies, bailouts, protectionist tariffs, grants
of monopoly privilege, and seizures of private property for corporate use via eminent
domain – as well, of course, as military interventions to protect corporate interests. But
many of the business lobby’s greatest government privileges are much less direct. Regulatory
imposition of uniform quality standards, for example, relieves firms from having to compete
in quality, thus granting them the benefits of cartelisation without the costs of policing the
cartel agreement or the risk of having the cartel undermined by upstart competitors. (And
when the quality standards thus imposed are high, lower-quality but cheaper competitors are
priced out of the market – an additional boon to the beneficiaries.) Inflationary monetary
policies on the part of central banks also tend to benefit those businesses that receive the

14 This doesn’t mean that, e.g., business hostility to FDR was illusory; but what hostility there was concerned
much smaller stakes than is ordinarily assumed. FDR was giving the corporate elite cartelisation on the state’s
terms rather than cartelisation on their own; still, the recipients vastly preferred either mode of cartelisation to
the free-market alternative.

15 Kolko 1963, 1965; Weinstein 1976; Shaffer 1997; Childs 1971; Grinder and Hagel 1977; Radosh and
Rothbard 1972; Stromberg 1972; Ruwart 2003; Johnson 2004, 2005; Buhle 1999.

16 For some of the ways that Walmart, for example, owes its success to government privilege rather than
market competition, see Mattera and Purinton 2004.

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 8

newly created money first in the form of loans and investments, when they are still facing the
old, lower prices, while those to whom the new money trickles down later, only after they
have already begun facing higher prices, systematically lose out.
The widespread assumption that big business and big government are fundamentally at
odds, and that big business supports a free market, serves to maintain the ruling partnership
in power; indeed, “vulgar liberalism” and “vulgar libertarianism” (in Carson’s sense)
represent the dominant ideologies of the establishment left and establishment right,
respectively. The establishment left disguises its government intervention on behalf of the
rich as government intervention on behalf of the poor, while the right disguises its
government intervention on behalf of the rich as an opposition to government intervention
per se – and each side has an interest in maintaining the myth propagated by its nominal
opponent. For those who are repelled by the realities of corporate capitalism are lured into
becoming opponents of the free market and foot soldiers for the left wing of the ruling class;
while those who are attracted by free-market ideals are lured into becoming defenders of
corporate capitalism and foot soldiers for the right wing of the ruling class. Either way, the
partnership as a whole has its power reinforced.
Thus, for example, in the current debate over health care, both sides benefit by
portraying the choice as one between a free-market status quo and a proposal for government
intervention (as opposed to what it really is, a debate between two different styles of equally
intrusive government intervention – the “right-wing” status quo of massive government
intervention on behalf of insurance companies and the medical establishment, versus a “left-
wing” scheme to shift the balance of power a few notches away from the plutocracy and
toward the statocracy). This renders invisible and inaudible any proposal for an actual free-
market healthcare program, such as the turn-of-the-century mutual-aid system that was
beginning to put working-class patients in charge of their own healthcare decisions before
government regulators and the A.M.A. joined forces to dismantle it. This also explains why
the establishment right has been so weak in challenging the establishment left’s factually
ludicrous claim that the policies that led to the recent economic crisis were ones of laissez-
faire and “too little regulation”; the only way the right could rebut this charge is by admitting
that they had been pursuing a thoroughgoing campaign of monetary manipulation on behalf

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 9

of the financial elite, thus blowing their cover as free-market advocates. I assume that’s why
they’ve been focusing their energies on the healthcare debate instead.17
It is often assumed that the domination of the economic landscape by large firms is to be
explained simply by their successful exploitation of economies of scale. But as Carson has
stressed, in addition to economies of scale there are diseconomies of scale, which beyond a
certain point will offset the economies and put a limit to the firm’s growth – unless the firm
can make use of governmental privilege.
For example, the augmentation of productive capacity associated with larger size requires
a wider area of distribution for the increased product; thus as production costs fall,
distribution costs rise, until the latter overtake the former. But this check on firm growth
can be overcome once the government enables the firm to socialise its distribution costs. At
the extreme, such socialisation can take the form of opening foreign markets via gunboat;
but its many milder forms include public funding for highways. As is well known, long-
distance shipping via heavy trucks is responsible for the vast majority of wear and tear on the
public highways; yet firms that rely on such shipping do not bear a proportionate share of
the tax burden for building and maintaining highways. Hence such firms are able to grow
beyond their natural size by getting the taxpayers to pick up the tab for their transportation
costs – while the more economical alternative of local production for local use is rendered
artificially expensive, inasmuch as it is compelled to subsidise its competition.18
Moreover, as firms grow larger and more hierarchical, the separation between those who
give the orders and those who do the work increases, thus making it harder for any of the
firm’s participants to know what is actually going on; moreover, the increasing insulation of
decisions from market feedback not only makes information harder to obtain but also lowers
the cost of abusive or inane behaviour by managers, thus giving us the corporate wonderland
familiar to readers of the comic strip Dilbert. Thus the lowering of transaction costs
associated with firm centralisation is offset by the costs of the growing informational chaos
within, rendering such firms unable to compete against smaller, flatter rivals – unless
competition from such rivals can be curtailed, as it quite effectively is, by government

17 On healthcare see Long 1994, 2008a; Beito 1999. On the causes of the economic crisis see Long 2008a,
Woods 2009.

18 For further details see Carson 2007, 2009a.

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 10

regulations such as licensing fees, zoning, uniform quality standards, capitalisation
requirements, and so on, all of which place a disproportionate burden on smaller companies
and independent entrepreneurs.19 In particular, the establishment of workers’ cooperatives,
as an alternative to the hierarchical firm, has been rendered artificially difficult both by these
regulations and by ostensibly pro-union regulations whose real – and successful – intent was
to divert the labour movement’s goals away from worker control of industry and toward the
mere pottage of higher wages within the existing “capitalist” framework.20
In his arguments against workers’ cooperatives, Nozick himself seems to slide into a bit
of vulgar libertarianism, taking their scarcity on the prevailing corporatist market as evidence
of their inefficiency – as though the prevailing corporatist market were a reasonable proxy
for laissez-faire. Nozick discusses some genuine incentival problems faced by worker-owned
firms (1974, pp. 250-253), but does not address the incentival (and informational) problems
faced by traditional hierarchical firms. If worker-owned firms are efficient, he asks, why
don’t we see more of them? He seems not to consider one obvious answer: as Carson
reminds us, “The state subsidizes the large, hierarchical, capitalist enterprises against which
cooperatives compete, thus rendering them artificially profitable and competitive against
alternative forms of organization.” (Carson 2009a, p. 518)
Konkin, by contrast, was of the opinion that “the whole concept of ‘worker-boss’ is a
holdover from feudalism” rather than a natural outgrowth of the free market, and speculated
that “independent contractors” might replace “wage workers” for “all steps of production”
(Konkin 1983, p. 25, n. 8), an idea that goes back to Herbert Spencer (Principles of Sociology
(1896), Book VIII, Ch. 20). David Friedman, though not usually considered a left-libertarian,
has expressed similar sentiments. (Friedman 1989, pp. 144-145) More recently, Carson has
devoted two lengthy books (2007, 2009a) to an attempt to show that workers’ cooperatives
would tend to displace traditional “capitalist” firms under a free market. Moreover, both
Rothbard (during his left-libertarian phase) and Karl Hess have argued that by strict neo-
Lockean standards of land ownership, most of the property claims of the corporate elite are
illegitimate and might justifiably be homesteaded by their employees to form workers’

19 Long 2008a, 2008c; Carson 2007, 2009a.

20 Johnson 2004, 2005.

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 11

cooperatives.21 In any case, the historical approach to justice in holdings leads naturally
toward a presumption in favour of worker control of industry; as Schmidtz (2005, p. 170)
puts it: “Nozickians tend to see rewards (i.e., products) as created by workers, and thus as
presumptively belonging to workers.”22
What is distinctive about historical theories of a broadly Nozickian sort is not so much
that they focus on the past as that they focus on means of acquisition, including not just past
but ongoing acquisition. Given the extensive involvement of state violence in the process by
which the corporate elite not only achieved its wealth in the past but continues to maintain
and augment it in the present, it is clear that the massive inequalities of wealth that
characterise present-day “capitalist” society are radically inconsistent with any approach to
justice in holdings that is even remotely remotely Nozickian. The charge that Nozick-style
historical theories serve to legitimate the existing pattern of wealth distribution is thus shown
to be even more baseless than Nozick himself was prepared to realise.

III. Historical vs. End-State, Revisited

But the claim that I have undertaken to defend is not merely that such inequalities can be
challenged using an historical approach, but that the historical approach represents a more
effective tool for challenging them than do relatively end-oriented approaches such as
utilitarianism and Rawlsianism. Yet of course such inequalities can presumably be
challenged on utilitarian and Rawlsian grounds too. So in what do I take the greater
effectiveness of the historical critique to consist?
The historical critique might be judged superior on the grounds that it is correct while its
end-oriented rivals are mistaken. In fact I do regard the historical approach to justice as
correct, on independent, mostly non-consequentialist grounds; but I’m not making that
argument here. For those who regard the results of voluntary interaction as a proxy for
either aggregate or mutual advantage or both,23 the fact that present distribution fails the

21 Hess 1969; Rothbard 1965, 1969a, 1969b; 1998, chs. 9-11. For those left-libertarians (e.g., Carson) whose
views on land ownership are neo-Proudhonian rather than neo-Lockean, the extent to which existing corporate
property claims are illegitimate is of course still greater.

22 I don’t mean to suggest that Schmidtz himself, in this passage, was intending to draw a connection to
worker control of industry.

23 For an argument for so taking it (one I do not necessarily endorse), see Rothbard 1956.

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice – p. 12

historical test might be taken as evidence that it fails the utilitarian or Rawlsian tests as well; but
that’s not my argument either.
Rather, the advantage, as I see it, of the historical challenge to existing inequalities is that
it lays bear the class structure of society, and the roots of such inequalities in state violence.
Merely pointing to the fact that some people have a lot more than others is less compelling
as a critique; it invites the response “So what? Those who have more aren’t hurting anybody;
you’re just appealing to envy.” By contrast, being able to show that those who enjoy a
higher socioeconomic status have to a considerable extent achieved and maintained that
status by forcibly expropriating and oppressing the less affluent provides for a far more
effective indictment.
I don’t mean to be claiming merely that appeal to the historical approach is more
rhetorically effective; that would be a weak defense, since strategies can after all be rhetorically
effective for all sorts of dubious reasons. I’m aiming at a stronger claim than one of greater
rhetorical effectiveness – yet at a weaker claim than one of simply being the correct theory.
My point is that the historical critique correctly identifies what is surely a morally relevant
fact, and one that end-oriented critiques tend to ignore: namely, that in many, many cases
those who have more are getting it at the expense of those who have less. Now of course
utilitarian and Rawlsian approaches may also make the claim that, in some sense, those who
have more have it at the expense of those who have less; but in order to substantiate that
claim without appealing to historical (i.e. causal) considerations, they have to defend a
baseline of equality. My present argument is not that such a defense is impossible, but only
that the need to defend it places an additional and somewhat recondite burden on end-
oriented challenges to inequalities – whereas the historical challenge, by identifying past and
ongoing acts of violent expropriation rather than merely pointing to the existence of
differential shares, provides a much more straightforward, intuitive, and unambiguous basis
for condemning the present structure of wealth distribution in “capitalist” society.

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