Present Payments, Past Wrongs: Correcting Impressions from Nozick on Restitution by Jan Narveson (University of Waterloo)
Abstract: It is widely thought that Robert Nozick’s views on rectification of past injustices are of critical importance to his theory of distributive justice, even perhaps justifying wholesale redistributive taxes in the present because of the undoubted injustices that have pervaded much past history. This essay undertakes to correct this impression – not mostly by disagreeing with Nozick’s claims, but nevertheless proceeding on basic libertarian theory. Of enormous importance is the role of putative innocents, who are defrauded by miscreants carefully covering their tracks so that these recipients have no reason to think they are buying stolen property. But of equal importance is simply that the duty to rectify past injustices is not comparable to the original duty to respect property rights in the first place.
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As Kevin Carson has shown, there are those like Navenson which support the whole structure of state-capitalism by working for the forces of capital to prevent the wholesale transfer of capital back to the working class. Shame on Mises.org for posting this!
If you are going to knock a fantastic philosopher like Jan Narveson then at least learn how to spell the mans name correctly.
A very simple but powerful point by Narveson. Who requires justice? Who is required to provide justice to other people? Who has a right to something that has to be provided by someone else?
I’ve often thought that correcting past injustices may be difficult or impossible, but Narveson really cuts to the heart of the matter: who has the duty or obligation to correct past injustices? Only the transgressors themselves.
Instead of saying shame, I say thanks to Mises.org for making this wonderful but short paper available.
StopCapitalismNow,
You are continuing to use Mises.org as an advertisement for your own personal blog and website, despite being asked not to do so in the past.
Because your links are nothing more than advertisement, and are not topical to this post, I’ve removed them (as someone with moderator permissions). Please stay on topic, and don’t use Mises.org for advertisement.
Sincerely,
David J. Heinrich
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