Is the Market a Test of Truth and Beauty?

ȃȂǿ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophy

having some idea of its consequences. But Rothbard does think he has

another way.

ŞśŠŔŎōŞŐ’ş ōŤŕśřş ōŎśšŠ ŞŕœŔŠş

Rothbard identifies three broad types of philosophical basis for libertari-

anism, first is utilitarianism. Second is emotivism: it adopts liberty, or the

libertarian nonaggression axiom, as its premise on purely subjective, emo-

tional grounds. As Rothbard suggests, such a stance abandons the realm

of rational discourse (ȀȈȆȂ, pp.ȁȂ–ȁȃ).

Ļird is Rothbard’s own approach, emphasizing natural rights embed-

ded in natural law. Each entity, including the species man, has its own

distinct nature.

Since men can think, feel, evaluate, and act only as individuals, it be-

comes 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. Ļis is the necessary path of human nature; to interfere with

and cripple this process by using violence goes profoundly against what

is necessary by man’s nature for his life and prosperity. (ȀȈȆȂ, pp.ȁȄ–ȁȅ)

To appeal to what is necessary for man’s life and prosperity, given his
nature, sounds like a utilitarian argument. Anyway, Rothbard begins with
the right to self-ownership, with the axiom that each man or woman owns
his or her own body. Alternatives are conceivable, though barely. One
caste of persons might belong to another, an arrangement hardly com-
patible with an objective, impartial ethics. Or each person might own
a tiny equal share of himself and all other persons. Trying to manage
people’s lives on such a basis, however, would quickly bring inefficiency
and starvation. (Here is another tacitly utilitarian argument.) With these
alternatives ruled out, self-ownership remains (ȀȈȆȂ, pp.ȁȅ–ȁȇ; andȀȈȇȁ,
pp.ȃȄ–ȃȅ).
Rothbard’s second axiom concerns ownership of products and land.
Everyone has a right to the goods he has produced and to hitherto un-
owned land that he has transformed by his labor. A person does not
acquire this “homesteading” right in all the unowned land that he may
claim; his right is limited to the amount of land he actually puts into
use. But once is enough. Here Rothbard avowedly follows the doctrine
of John Locke, but with modifications; for example, he rejects the “Lock-
ean proviso” that homesteading leave “enough and as good” land available