Ȅǿȇ Partʺʺ: Politics and PhilosophyMachan seeks to demonstrate that since “each person is responsible to
achieve his own happiness, that society that is suited for him is one in
which his individual liberty is fully secured.... [I]t is only in such a free
society that the moral agency, the freedom and the dignity, of each per-
son can be respected. Ļus only in that kind of community can the moral
life flourish” (ȀȈȆȄ, p.Ȁǿǿ).
Machan asks why someone who has the option of either taking from
another person or producing and trading on his own should support the
institution of private property. He suggests essentially utilitarian answers,
reasons why respecting the institution of ownership is generally advan-
tageous even for the person in question. He concludes “that ownership
is a morally appropriate institution for human beings in general.... [T]o
rely onhisown work (and/or trade, creativity, ingenuity, etc.) is better
for the person than to live off the work of others” by stealing or confis-
cating (pp.ȀȂȂ–ȀȂȃ). Finally, Machan’s approving characterization of Ayn
Rand’s doctrine is tacitly utilitarian. Rand, he says, defends “capitalism
as morally right because human beings can work (trade, create, risk) for
their own good only when and where it prevails.” She advocates it as “a
system that is good for human beings, morally good for them, to choose
for themselves” (MachanȀȈȆȄ, p.ȀȂȅ).
Even Murray Rothbard has at least once (ȀȈȆȂ, pp.ȁȂ–ȁȄ) lapsed into
a tacit utilitarianism, seeing it as “vitally necessary for each man’s survival
and prosperity that he be free to learn, choose, develop his faculties, and
act upon his knowledge and values.... [T]o interfere with and cripple this
process by using violence goes profoundly against what is necessary by
man’s nature for his life and prosperity.”
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In the contractarian camp, John Rawls in effect says we should ask: “If a
group of ideally rational beings came together in order to pick rules to gov-
ern their mutual relations, which rules would they be compelled (by the
power of their rationality) to pick?” (restatement by MurphyȀȈȆȆ, p.ȁȂȂ).
Well, what do those beings rationally take into account? Facts of reality
and applicable economic and other theories, presumably, together with a
value judgment in favor of happiness, especially their own. Rawls assumes
that the parties negotiating in the original position already accept a “thin
theory of the good,” according to which “liberty and opportunity, income
and wealth, and above all self-respect are primary goods,” goods conducive