Libertarianism without Inequality [Hardcover]

Michael Otsuka (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 14, 2003

Michael Otsuka's ingenious and exciting book vindicates left-libertarianism, a political philosophy which combines stringent rights of control over one's own mind, body, and life with egalitarian rights of ownership of the world. He reclaims the ideas of John Locke from the libertarian right, and defends a view which is both more libertarian and more egalitarian than the Kantian liberalism of John Rawls. Otsuka endorses a fully egalitarian principle of equal opportunity for welfare and defends a pluralistic, decentralized ideal of political society. Libertarianism without Inequality is a book which everyone interested in political theory should read.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`In this important contribution to rights theory, the deontology of punishment, and the problem of political obligation, Michael Otsuka argues against the belief, prevalent on both the left and the right of the political spectrum, that the fundamental principles of libertarianism conflict with the ideal of economic equality. This allows him to defend libertarianism without inequality a radical and provocative normative construction that is both more egalitarian and more libertarian than mainstream (left-of-centre) liberal egalitarianism. . . . Otsukas style is pithy, engaging, and crystal-clear.' Ian Carter, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

`Continued His theses are bold, imaginative, and defended with the utmost philosophical rigour. . . . In my view, the book represents one of the best recent contributions to normative political theory. . . . His book will no doubt give rise to a great deal more discussion, and it surely deserves to have a major impact on current debates on justice and political obligation' Ian Carter, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

About the Author

Michael Otsuka is in the Department of Philosophy, University College London.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199243956
• ISBN-13: 978-0199243952
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,188,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Rebuttal of Nozick and Rothbard, October 15, 2007

By 

Political Philosopher - See all my reviews

This review is from: Libertarianism without Inequality (Hardcover)

This is an imaginative, clever and deep discussion of central issues in political philosophy.

The argument centers around reconciling stringent rights to individual liberty -in the way philosopher Nozick construes them- with extensive redistribution of worldly resources. Otsuka's is a brilliant reconstruction of Locke's theory of resource-acquisition, and of the simultaneous moral pull of liberty and equality.

Since the book is cutting-edge in recent debates in moral/political philosophy, it contains little reference to practical politics or policy. Not for the intellectually faint-hearted.

16 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Impressive, September 8, 2004

By 

Political Theorist (Cologne, Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Libertarianism without Inequality (Hardcover)

I've read Nozick and Michael Otsuka is no Nozick. This book was a big disappointment. It's tedious and dull (unlike Nozick, with whom you may not agree, but whom you'll never find tedious or dull) and the arguments were the sort of thing I would expect from an eager undergraduate writing her or his very first essay in moral theory. I did not find Otsuka's effort up to the task of dealing seriously with the problems he addresses. The whole book is an exploration of the author's (not widely shared) personal intuitions, combined with a set of really strange and bizarre counterfactuals, which make the oddest and most marginal cases the central tests of political or moral theories. I have to say that I consider the time reading the book to be completely wasted. (And I should also point out that this rather thin book is really just some unrelated essays that have been stitched together into one volume; the essays on criminal justice ethics were silly and bore hardly any relationship to the topic promised by the title of the book.)

9 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Incomplete and dry, April 12, 2005

By 

Hugo S. Cunningham - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Libertarianism without Inequality (Hardcover)

This book reads like a graduate thesis in philosophy, with the defects thereof. It cites and engages the works of earlier philosophers (notably John Locke and Robert Nozick), but lacks the analysis of real-life political controversies that would engage the general reader.

There is a long tradition of left-wing libertarianism (aka Anarchism, Bakuninism, etc.), centered on distrust of a centralized state. An Anarchist would never allow courts and police (assuming such existed at all) to defend contracts and property rights (the "watchman state" endorsed by anarcho-capitalists). Neither, however, would he prop up socialism with a Berlin Wall. (Such anarchism has worked in subsistence-level peasant societies [eg Nestor Makhno's districts in Ukraine, 1919-1920], but not in complex industrial societies.)

Mr. Otsuka's book did not acknowledge Anarchism apart from one brief reference.

Instead, his "libertarianism without inequality" sounds closer to what Fred Siegel, historian of John Lindsay's policy failures in NYC (1966-1974), calls "dependent individualism." In his first chapter, Mr. Otsuka posits a government strong enough to enforce an absolute equality of income, with supplementary income to handicapped who need it to achieve equal happiness. He hems and haws about whether the massive taxation required to enforce such equality would violate libertarian principles. His second chapter suggests a bizarre way to raise revenue: capriciously exorbitant fines against those deemed to have surplus wealth (eg, apparently, though he didn't use this example, a $1 million fine for dropping a sandwich wrapping). Mr. Otsuka did not engage political problems, eg incentives to perform well at demanding and/or unpleasant jobs, or the contempt of law that would be generated by unfair fines.

I did not read the rest of the book as closely -- two chapters on law enforcement and self-defense which sound truistic to a general reader, and three additional chapters returning to his idea of egalitarian "libertarianism."

The use of "libertarianism" in Mr. Otsuka's book title was bound to provoke American pro-capitalist "libertarians," aka "liberals" condemned by the Vatican and Latin American socialists. That draws it more attention than a more modestly packaged collection of philosophy essays, but is the extra attention really worth much?