The Complexity of Self-Ownership in Libertarian Ideology: The Corporate Self
Abstract
Libertarianism is often considered a more logically consistent and predictable political
stance concerning the role and rights of government. The libertarian movement prides
itself on consistently adhering to an ideological creed, creating a party that is
interested in principle rather than popularity. Libertarianism in the current American
usage refers to an ideology that prefers to organize the world through the decentralized
mechanisms of private property, trade, and voluntary cooperation, rather than through
government. The central claim of libertarians is fairly simple. Each individual has
a right to liberty, that is “the right to do whatever we want with the things we own,
provided we respect other people’s rights to do the same” (Sandel 60). At the heart
of this ideology is the idea of self-ownership. In the third chapter of Michael J.
Sandel’s book, he asks the basic question: “Do we own ourselves?” In answering this
question and perusing the ideology of libertarianism, he examines five common objections
to the libertarian denial of the merits of wealth redistribution and poses what he
believes is the way libertarians would reply to those objections. Although his libertarian
responses do not come from his own beliefs, they are based in legitimate rights-based
libertarian political philosophy, such as those proposed by Murray N. Rothbard and
Robert Nozick. The natural-rights based claim of libertarianism depends on the seemingly
valid notion that we own ourselves absolutely. From this, libertarian theorists deduce
that we must own our time and labor and any attempt to redistribute any of our labor
or wealth by the government, beyond a minimal state, is coercion on par with enslavement.
What I offer is a refutation of some of these oversimplified conceptions of ownership
by prominent rights-based libertarian theorists. After exposing inherent inconsistencies
in the libertarian conception of ownership and how it relates to natural rights, I
show how my new conception of ownership, one based on a corporate model of ownership,
changes the way the parameters of libertarianism while preserving personal liberty.
Type
Honors thesisPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/5208Citation
Mizrahi, Isaac (2012). The Complexity of Self-Ownership in Libertarian Ideology: The Corporate Self. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/5208.Collections
More Info
Show full item record
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Rights for Collection: Undergraduate Honors Theses and Student papers
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info