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 I think there is a remarkable irony in the case of libertarians. They place great emphasis on history in one particular sense: They define a just distribution today as a function of how that distribution came to be. If original acquisition meets certain standards and the subsequent
exchanges meet certain standards, then the resulting distribution is just. The shape or pattern of the distribution doesn't matter.The irony is that it is rare indeed for libertarians to pay attention to actual history. The entire continent we live on was taken from other people who were here before the European conquest. The same thing can be said for South America. Maybe it can be said for most of the world. Not only that, but millions of people were forced into slave labor in order to develop the newly stolen real estate. Some historians tell us that the sale of cotton was a very important (perhaps the most important) source of growth for the 19th-century American economy. And what do libertarians have to say about this theft or enslavement? Not much. The typical libertarian vehemently criticizes the contemporary welfare state without even considering that its rather small transfers of income might be seen as modest compensation for the crimes of the past. I'm sorry; but I think that for all their talk about justice as historical, libertarians completely miss the boat when it comes to history. Unless they are willing to take rectification seriously, I think their principles have no application to the world we live in. |
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