Left vs. Right Libertarianism: Property & Equality

Introduction

Welcome to our next lesson. In the past few sessions, we have explored the diverse landscape of libertarian thought, mapping out minarchism, anarcho-capitalism, left-libertarianism, and mutualism. You've seen that while all these philosophies share a passion for individual liberty, they arrive at very different conclusions about what a free society would look like.

Today, our goal is to get to the heart of the movement's deepest internal conflict: the debate between left-libertarians and right-libertarians. This lesson will identify their key disagreements on property and equality. We will find that while both sides stand on the common ground of self-ownership, they fundamentally diverge on one critical question: who owns the earth? Their answer to this question explains why they land on opposite sides of the economic spectrum and hold starkly different views on the justice of economic inequality.

The Common Ground and the Great Divide

All the libertarian thinkers we've encountered agree on the principle of self-ownership: every individual has absolute ownership over their own body, mind, and labor. This is their shared starting point. The disagreement arises when we move from owning ourselves to owning parts of the external world.

The central fault line in libertarianism is not about our rights over ourselves, but our rights to natural resources—the land, air, water, minerals, and other parts of the world that no one made. How should we handle the initial appropriation of these unowned resources? This is the question that splits the libertarian world in two.

Let's begin by reading a short text that frames this crucial distinction.

As the reading suggests, the entire debate can be distilled into two competing views on "world-ownership" that are bolted onto the shared principle of self-ownership.

The Right-Libertarian View: Unrestricted Appropriation and the Proviso

Right-libertarianism, which includes both the minarchism of Robert Nozick and the anarcho-capitalism of Murray Rothbard, generally holds that natural resources are initially unowned and available for private appropriation on a "first come, first served" basis.

The paper we are about to read, "Libertarianism, Left and Right" by Peter Vallentyne, provides a systematic breakdown of these positions. It will be our main guide for the rest of this lesson.

As you read, the most radical right-libertarian position, advocated by Rothbard, is that there are no moral restrictions on appropriation. The first person to find and "mix their labor with" a piece of unowned land, for example, becomes its legitimate, absolute owner, regardless of the consequences for others. The justification is that since no one owned it before, the first user's claim is the only valid one.

However, most right-libertarians, including Robert Nozick, soften this stance by incorporating the Lockean Proviso, which we first encountered in Module 2. The proviso states that an act of appropriation is legitimate only so long as "enough and as good" is left for others.

The debate then shifts to interpreting this proviso.

• Nozick's interpretation (Weak Proviso): You can appropriate a resource as long as your doing so does not make others worse off than they would have been if the resource had remained in the unowned "common-use state."
• The Critique: Critics point out that this is a very low bar. The common-use state is likely to be one of miserable subsistence. Therefore, one person could legitimately appropriate almost all the world's resources, as long as they pay everyone else a wage that is just slightly better than starving. This would lead to massive inequality, which seems to violate the spirit of leaving "enough and as good."

In essence, the right-libertarian position prioritizes the right of individuals to acquire and own property. Any resulting inequality is seen as a just and acceptable outcome of free individuals exercising their rights.

The Left-Libertarian View: The World is for Everyone

Left-libertarians find the right-libertarian conclusion—that vast inequalities arising from the private appropriation of nature are just—to be unacceptable. They argue that self-ownership can only be meaningful if everyone has access to a fair share of the world's resources.

They start from a different premise: natural resources are not simply unowned, but are jointly owned by all humanity in some egalitarian fashion. This leads to much stricter conditions on appropriation.

Let's return to the Vallentyne paper to explore the left-libertarian alternatives.

From this reading, we can identify two main left-libertarian positions, both based on stricter interpretations of the Lockean Proviso:

1. Equal Share Libertarianism (Hillel Steiner): This view interprets "enough and as good" to mean that each person is entitled to a share of natural resources of equal value. If you appropriate more than your per-capita share, you must pay compensation (like a tax) for the excess value you've taken. This payment would then be distributed to those who have appropriated less than their share. This prevents first-comers from getting an unfair advantage.

2. Equality of Opportunity Libertarianism (Michael Otsuka, Peter Vallentyne): This view goes even further. It argues that the distribution of natural resource value should be used to correct for unfair disadvantages in life, such as being born with a disability or into a poor environment. On this view, people who are "unfairly disadvantaged" have a greater moral claim to natural resources than the more fortunate. This would justify a more significant redistributive system, funded by resource taxes, to level the playing field and ensure everyone has a fair opportunity for a good life.

In short, left-libertarians argue that the value of the natural world is a common inheritance. Private ownership is permissible, but only if owners compensate society for the value of the resources they control. This compensation is then used to promote equality.

Synthesis: The Spectrum of Property Rights

The disagreement between left- and right-libertarians is not a simple binary but a spectrum of views on the conditions for just appropriation. We can summarize the key positions, moving from the most right-wing to the most left-wing:

1. Radical Right-Libertarianism (Rothbard): No restrictions on appropriation. First come, first served.
2. Moderate Right-Libertarianism (Nozick): Appropriation is allowed as long as no one is made worse off than they were in the state of nature (weak proviso).
3. Center/Left-Libertarianism (Steiner): Appropriation is allowed, but individuals must pay for the value of any resources they take beyond their equal per-capita share.
4. Egalitarian Left-Libertarianism (Otsuka, Vallentyne): The value of natural resources should be distributed to equalize opportunities for welfare, compensating for life's "brute luck."

This entire spectrum is beautifully summarized in a table within the Vallentyne paper.

The core of the debate, then, is this:

• Right-libertarians see property rights as emerging from individual action (discovery, use). They are primarily concerned with the procedural justice of acquisition. If the rules are followed, the resulting distribution, no matter how unequal, is just.
• Left-libertarians see property rights as constrained by a background principle of distributive justice. The initial distribution of the world's value matters. They argue that individual liberty is inseparable from the material conditions required to exercise it.

Conclusion

We have now dissected the central philosophical dispute that defines the left-right divide within libertarianism. It is a profound disagreement that stems from a single, foundational question about how humanity relates to the natural world.

Here are the key takeaways from our analysis:

• Shared Foundation, Different Superstructure: Both left- and right-libertarians build their theories on the foundation of self-ownership.
• The Point of Divergence: Their key disagreement is over the status of natural resources. Are they unowned and up for grabs, or are they the common property of all humanity?
• Right-Libertarianism on Property and Equality: Prioritizes the right of individuals to appropriate unowned resources, accepting that this can lead to significant economic inequality, which is viewed as a just outcome of free action.
• Left-Libertarianism on Property and Equality: Argues that all individuals have an egalitarian claim to the value of natural resources. This justifies systems of taxation and redistribution aimed at mitigating inequality and ensuring a fair starting point for all.

This fundamental difference in their theories of property naturally leads to very different visions of a just society. In our next and final lesson of this module, we will compare these visions directly, examining what the ideal society would look like according to each of the major branches of libertarianism we have studied.