The idea that I own myself is central to my conception of me as an autonomous actor in the world; I can make choices and decisions about my actions that nobody else is, or should be, allowed to make. However, some argue that a lack of restriction on my right to do what I will with myself can result in massive inequalities, given that people are endowed with varying skills and there are finite resources in the world. In the face of such an argument, libertarians, such as Nozick, respond that nothing is more important than protecting my self-ownership, to the point that if either commitment is to be dropped, it should be that to equality. Others, such as Cohen, argue the opposite. What Christman has attempted to do, as we shall see, is to reconcile the two by distinguishing between different kinds of property rights.

In Anarchy, State and Utopia (Nozick 1974), Nozick argues against the legitimacy of taxation of earnings from labour, believing that it is “on a par with forced labour”. That is, if the state is willing to “intentionally intervene… to threaten force to limit the alternatives, in this case to paying taxes or (presumably the worse alternative) bare subsistence” then the taxation system is rendered “one of forced labour” (bare subsistence being the point before the taxation system kicks in).

Nozick illustrates his point by asking what the difference is between making someone work for a period of time for free – which most people would presumably oppose – and forcibly taking an amount of taxation equivalent to the same number of hours wages; if it is illegitimate to seize a person’s leisure time, why is it legitimate to seize their money?

He believes that there is no difference, that “seizing the results of someone’s labour is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities”. As “the central core of the notion of a property right in X… is the right to determine what shall be done with X”, the consequence of this process is that those directing you become “a part-owner of you; it gives them a property right in you”.

Therefore, attempts to secure equality by redistribution of resources “involve a shift from the classical liberals’ notion of self-ownership to a notion of (partial) property rights in other people”. This is not to say that self-ownership and equality are incompatible, but that self-ownership and redistribution in pursuit of equality cannot be reconciled.

This libertarian charge, that through redistribution in the pursuit of equality “you license slavery, you restrict human autonomy, and you endorse the treatment of people as mere means”, is answered by Cohen in Self-ownership, Freedom and Equality (Cohen 1995). It is worth noting that Cohen believes that the purpose of Nozick’s argument is to “convert non-believers in self-ownership by showing them that rejection of self-ownership is tantamount to endorsement of slavery”; that is, Nozick deliberately employs emotive language – such as ‘forced labour’ – and reasoning to achieve his desired effect. It can therefore be expected that Cohen will seek to refute Nozick in a similar manner, playing on the moral sensibilities of the reader to expose the latter’s argument as unsound.

This can be seen as Cohen admits that Nozick’s argument is valid and takes for his targets two of the latter’s premises, as he sees them: that if I am “non-contractually obliged” to do something for someone else then that person has disposal over my labour “of the sort that a slave-owner has”, and that “it is morally intolerable for anyone to be, in any degree, another’s slave”. However, Nozick does not use the term ’slave’ at any point during the passages in question, nor does he talk about non-contractual obligations. By employing the term ’slave’, Cohen attempts to ridicule Nozick’s argument, and thereby garner sympathy for his own position from those who would on a moral level abhor the comparison of slavery with taxation.

But what is more destructive in terms of clarity is his introduction of the term ‘obligation’, as demonstrated by an argument, attributed to Joseph Raz, that he employs to refute the first assumption laid out above: if I am obliged to look after my mother when she’s ill, she doesn’t have the same sort of disposal over me that a slave owner has as “she cannot tell me to do with my power whatever she happens to want me to do with it”. Even though Cohen pre-empts the objection that such an obligation is a moral one, as opposed to the legal obligations that Nozick is concerned with (what Cohen calls the ‘enforcement objection’), he has successfully muddied the waters with the use of a term that can have connotations of responsibility. As it is, in this case I have no objective responsibility to look after my mother, whatever another person may think – if any obligation exists it does so because I decide it does. In contrast, I have no legal choice over whether or not I pay tax – I am forced to on threat of penalty.

Cohen believes that Raz meets the enforcement objection by arguing that even if the state “imposes on me a legal obligation to serve my mother or the needy it does not constitute slave holder rights” because, as we saw before, it cannot dispose of my labour in the same way that a slave owner can.

“In sum, we could all have enforceable obligations to one another which imply no slave-owner-like rights of disposal in anyone over anyone’s labour. Indeed, such obligations form the normative substance of a redistributive state. In that state, there are no self-ownership rights with respect to certain dimensions of the capacity to assist, but there are also no slave-owner/slave relations.”

Cohen argues that in a redistributive state there are certain ways in which a person does not own their self, but that this does not constitute being enslaved. However, Nozick would presumably simply agree with the former claim, but argue that this constitutes (the still emotive but less so) forced labour.

Cohen questions “the liaison between self-ownership and autonomy”, accepts that self-ownership and redistribution in pursuit of equality are incompatible, and, in contrast to Nozick, drops the commitment to the former. He argues that self-ownership authorises self-seeking behaviour, which in turn “generates propertyless proletarians” whose lack of prospects restricts their autonomy. Therefore, “if everyone is to enjoy a reasonable degree of autonomy, it is necessary, at least in some circumstances, to impose restrictions on self-ownership”. In other words, everyone has a responsibility to ensure that everyone else enjoys a reasonable degree of autonomy, making the curtailment of self-ownership legitimate. But why should the libertarian accept such a responsibility?

Both Nozick and Cohen therefore conclude that self-ownership and redistribution in pursuit of equality are incompatible, Nozick dropping the commitment to the latter, and Cohen to self-ownership. Christman, however, believes that the two can be reconciled by distinguishing between different kinds of property rights.

Christman develops his distinction by referring to the ‘incidents’ that are suggested as a central core of elements that form the essence of ownership (Christman 1991), such as those identified by Honoré (Honoré 1987). Honoré defines ownership as “the greatest possible interest in a thing which a mature system of law recognises”, but accepts that the term has a greater meaning:

“Ownership, dominium, propriété, Eigentum and similar words stand not merely for the greatest interest in things in particular systems but for a type of interest with common features transcending particular systems.”

These features he lists as “the right to possess, the right to use, the right to manage, the right to the income of the thing, the right to the capital, the right to security, the rights or incidents of transmissibility and absence of term, the prohibition of harmful use, liability to execution, and the incident of residuarity”.

Christman argues that these can be placed into two distinct categories: rights to control assets and rights to the income from assets (Christman 1991). He charges most writers with having assumed that a justification of property rights is a justification of both control and income rights, but there is an important difference: the former are “not conditional on the consent of others”, relating as they do to the right to be “the final arbiter over what is to be done with a thing”, whereas the latter require the cooperation of other people

Whereas the justification of control rights requires reference only to “individualist interests such as liberty, autonomy and self-determination”, income rights are justified by “principles that govern the pattern of distribution of goods in the economy”. Income rights are “connected to the distribution of goods in an economy”, and therefore affected by factors – such as the amount of surplus and the relative bargaining power of individuals – that are outside of the control of the possessor.

As my ability to accrue benefit from my product, or my labour, is a function of the existence of the market, I cannot claim to have full ownership over that benefit. In contrast to control rights, which simply “imply a duty on everyone’s part not to interfere with my possession and use of the resource”, income rights are “contingent on the presence and cooperation of others in an area [and]… on the existence of stable rules of cooperation which govern the exchanges”. People have to respect my ownership of a thing, but nobody is under any obligation to trade with me.

Christman therefore argues that “since income rights are definable only with reference to such distributive considerations, they can only be justified with reference to those considerations”, and subsequently the two elements of ownership should be dealt with separately.

“To say that I alone possess the right to dispose of me and direct my actions does not entail that I thereby also have the right to benefit from the exchange of my skills in any way available.”

The solution to the conflict between self-ownership and redistribution in pursuit of equality is for the state to “sever its protection of control rights from the structuring of income rights which it utilises to equalise resources”; I can do what I want (within reason), but any benefit I accrue from selling my resources to others will be redistributed.

Christman believes that his distinction between different kinds of property rights will satisfy both libertarians and egalitarians as “the interests outlined as the core of self-ownership are not the components of property rights that generate the horrific inequalities of unrestricted capitalism”. Nozick will be happy that he retains ownership and control over himself, and Cohen that equality is achieved, if only income rights are restricted. It also removes the need for the notion of responsibility as introduced by Cohen, by characterising taxation as payment in return for the benefit that I accrue from the existence of a system that is dependent on factors outside of my control.

Would Nozick be happy though? Or would he argue that he still has a system imposed on him that amounts to forced labour? I think he would. The central problem with Cohen’s and Christman’s arguments is that they assume there is only one route to equality and focus on that, as does the question at hand, which is why I have attempted to demonstrate that it deals not with an apparent incompatibility between self-ownership and equality, but between self-ownership and redistribution in pursuit of equality.

Christman refers to “the horrific inequalities of unrestricted capitalism”, but the form of capitalism in operation in the world is not unrestricted – it is regulated in myriad ways. If a truly libertarian system were put in place, in which the state’s only role was to protect the safety of its citizens and the market was completely free, who is to say that this would not result in equality? It might take a long time, but surely what we seek is a sustainable egalitarian society, and it is questionable whether any form of redistribution could achieve this, given the extent to which it is at odds with our notion of self-ownership.

Bibliography

Christman, J., 1991. ‘Self-ownership, equality, and the structure of property rights.’, Political Theory, 19, no 1, 28-46.

Cohen, G.A., 1995, Self-ownership, Freedom and Equality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.229-44

Honoré,  A., 1987. Making Law Bind, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.161-79

Nozick, R., 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Oxford: Blackwell, pp.30-3, 160-4, 168-74, 262-5, 228-30, 178-82.