Libertarianism Without Inequality by Michael Otsuka

Author:Michael Otsuka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OxfordUniversityPress

VI

To this point I have artificially assumed the absence of disputes about and across the borders of political societies and monities.189 In this concluding section, I shall explain how my account of legitimate political authority applies to more realistic circumstances in which such disputes exist.

In a Lockean state of nature disputes would undoubtedly arise over whether groups or individuals are entitled to stake claims to plots of land for the purpose of establishing autonomous and sovereign entities. Other sorts of conflicts among such a vast number of independent sovereignties would also need to be adjudicated. Indeed, the greater the number and diversity of autonomous cities, towns, and regions of the sort that I envisioned at the close of Section IV, the greater the likelihood of conflict. In the light of such difficulties, the closest one could actually come to a peaceful and orderly realization of the Lockean ideal of political societies as voluntary associations would be a fluid confederation of political societies and monities that is regulated by an interpolitical governing body.190 It would be necessary for this governing body to possess limited powers which encompass the overseeing of the drawing of the boundaries that demarcate these societies and monities and the settling of disputes that might arise among these parties.191 While the legitimate authority of the governments of the various societies would be based upon consent, the legitimate authority of this governing body would not necessarily be so based.192 Given the disorder and chaos which would ensue in the absence of such a governing body, all individuals would legitimately be subject to its authority—even those who do not consent to it.193 Hence, the ideal of political societies as voluntary associations would need to be underpinned by involuntary governance at the interpolitical level.194 It does not follow from the fact that involuntarism is justified at the inter-political level that this rationale carries over to justify involuntarism at the level of smaller political societies (and monities). The case for voluntarism is overridden by necessity at the interpolitical level even though it is not overridden by such considerations at the level of individual political societies. A voluntarist would be committed to the confinement of involuntary governance to the bare minimum necessary, given the moral undesirability of political authority in the absence of free consent. A voluntarist would also be committed to as democratic a means as possible of establishing and perpetuating such a governing body on the grounds that, other things being equal, the more democratic the means, the more closely such a body would approximate one that is based on unanimous consent.

It would be necessary for the limited powers of this governing body to encompass the adjudication of conflicts to which attempts to acquire plots of land and other worldly resources in a state of nature would give rise. The discord which Locke identifies as the consequence of the private exercise of the right to punish would arise as a consequence of the private exercise of the right to enforce one’s claims over land and other resources in a state of nature.

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