Nozick, “The Minimal State”

I. Introduction. Many social contract theories of legitimacy begin with the mythical state of nature – a presocietal state that is the alternative to life under a state. The state of nature offers none of the benefits of society: no technology, no art, no communion with other people, no family. Life in the state of nature is typically characterized in Hobbesian terms as a “war of all against all” and hence as “nasty, brutal, and short.” Since life in the state of nature is so bad, social contract theories infer that people either explicitly or impliedly consent to the authority of the state as a means of avoiding such a bad life. Since any social arrangement (and hence any state) is preferable to the state of nature, the state can be presumed legitimate as something to which citizens consent or would consent.

QUESTIONS: (1) Nozick believes there are at least two problems with this strategy. What are they?

(2) Instead, Nozick wants to begin from a more modest assumption. What is it?

(3) Explain Nozick’s invisible-hand strategy for justifying the state.

II. The State of Nature. As we have seen, Locke takes the view that there are certain natural rights that must be respected even in a pre-social state of nature in which none of the benefits of society are available; on Locke’s view, the laws of nature assert that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions” (20). In consequence, it is permissible for people to (1) defend themselves and others from violations of these natural rights; (2) recover compensation for harms suffered as a result of such violations; and (3) punish transgressors proportionately. But disproportionate punishment is itself a violation of the natural law and hence of a person’s natural rights.

QUESTION: The state of nature is, on Locke’s view, unstable for a couple of reasons. What are they?

III. Protective Associations. One way of dealing with this difficulty is to form groups devoted to mutual protection of all its members. On Locke’s view, this is permissible under the natural law since people have a right to form consensual associations and also have the right to defend themselves and other persons.

IV. The Dominant Protective Association. Problems are likely to arise as a number of protective associations arise in the same region and members of different protective associations begin to have conflicts.

As Nozick describes the situation: “In each of those cases, almost all the persons in a geographical area are under some common system that judges between their competing claims and enforces their rights. Out of anarchy, pressed by spontaneous groupings, mutual-protection associations, divisions of labor, market pressures, economies of scale, and rational self-interest there arises something very much resembling a minimal state or a group of geographically distinct minimal states” (25).

V. Significant Transitions. Up to now, there is no question, on Nozick’s view, about the moral permissibility of the various steps in forming protective associations. These are all consensual associations that involve, if natural law is respected, no breaches of natural rights. But there are two transitions left – and each will raise moral issues.

A. The Dominant Protective Association as Ultraminimal State. The first is the move to an association that claims a monopoly on the use of force – with the exception of self-defense – within its territory. The ultraminimal state remains wholly consensual with respect to those who are protected: only people who voluntarily pay into the association will be protected. But the ultraminimal state claims a monopoly over force in the region and hence punishes people who privately use force to address their grievances. Thus, while the ultraminimal state claims a monopoly over force in a region and prohibits any private person from using force against any other person, it will defend and protect only payers into the system.

This raise the moral issue of how the ultraminimal state can be morally justified in forbidding others from using force – particularly those who have not paid in and are not protected by the state: “The state grants that under some circumstances it is legitimate to punish persons who violate the rights of others, for it itself does so. How then does it arrogate to itself the right to forbid private exaction of justice by other nonaggressive individuals whose rights have been violated? What right does the private exacter of justice violate that is not violated also by the state when it punishes? When a group of person constitute themselves as the state and begin to punish, and forbid others form doing likewise, is there some right that others would violate that they themselves do not? By what right, then, can the state and its officials claim a unique right … with regard to force and enforce this monopoly” (27)?

B. From Ultraminimal to Minimal State. The transition to the minimal state creates another moral difficult, as the minimal state involves a redistributive measure: while some persons pay into the association, all persons within the region remain protected and defended. As Nozick describes it, “the minimal (night-watchman) state is equivalent to the ultraminimal state conjoined with a … Friedmanesque voucher plan, financed from tax revenues. Under this plan all people, or some (for example, those in need), are given tax-funded vouchers that can be used only for their purchase of a protection policy from the ultraminimal state” (26).

QUESTION: Why is there a problem here?

Thus, while all the steps from the transition from the state of nature to protective associations are clearly morally permissible, the transitions to the ultraminimal and minimal states raise additional issues.

VI. A Partial Justification of the Monopoly of the Police Power.

QUESTIONS: (1) Nozick observes that “everyone may defend himself against unknown or unreliable procedures and may punish those who use or attempt to use such procedures against him” (28). What does this have to do with anything?

(2) How does the above passage fall short as a justification?

VII. The Justification of the Minimal State. As it turns out, Nozick believes the prohibition of violence among non-members and the subsidy of protective services to non-members must be justified together; thus, the ultraminimal state, which claims a complete monopoly on force with respect to members and non-members but does not protect non-members, is morally unjustified and hence morally obligated to transition to the minimal state.

The problem that arises in connection with the justification of the minimal state is why valuable services must in effect be redistributed to non-members. Nozick’s answer is as follows: “According to our principle of compensation …, those persons promulgating and benefiting from the prohibition must compensate those disadvantaged by it. The clients of the protective agency, then, must compensate the independents for the disadvantages imposed upon them by being prohibited self-help enforcement of their own rights against the agency’s claims. Undoubtedly the least expensive way to compensate the independents would be to supply them with protective services…” (30).

Nozick concludes that “the moral objections of the individualist anarchist to the minimal state are overcome. It is not an un-just imposition of a monopoly; the de facto monopoly grows by an invisible-hand process and by morally permissible means, without anyone’s rights being violated and without any claims being made to a special right that others do not possess. And requiring the clients of the de facto monopoly to pay for the protection of those they prohibit from self-help enforcement against them, far form being immoral, is morally required by the principle of compensation” (33).

VIII. An Objection.