This is one more book by Tibor R Machan's on libertarian philosophy. The book is small and in fact some of the chapters have already been published in Journal of Private Enterprise, Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, The Personalist, etc. The book starts with a preface citing the need for philosophy in human life and then proceeds further to discuss one's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as exemplified in American constitution from an individualistic libertarian standpoint.

Liberalism is a school of thought, which considers individual liberty to be the most important aspect in any political setup. The liberals could be broadly differentiated as two groups — classical liberals and social liberals. While social liberals assign greater role to the government and subscribe to the welfare schemes of the government like education, social security, health care, etc achieved through taxation, classical liberals go against such ideology. Machan, predominantly adhering to classical school of liberalism, tries to argue for individual property rights, unbounded individual freedom, of course as long as it does not harm others and argues against taxation and positive rights. In this book, he picks all the issues from morality, to taxation to justice and welfare state.

After highlighting issues related to freewill and determinism and discussing the problems associated with having a political system based on religious faith in a pluralistic society, Machan turns his attention to the core theme of his philosophy that is Individualism in the third chapter. He says, "Individuals are ends in themselves as understood in these positions (objectivist politics) and they may not be sacrificed to something else unless they deem that a goal they want to pursue." But he subscribes not to the Hobbesian form of individualism, where everything the individuals do is because of their nature, but individualism qualified with the characteristic of freewill, following the Ayn Randian concept of individualism. The basic premise of Machan, and if I can extend it further of all the Ayn Rand-like thinkers is that human beings are essentially individualistic and no system, state, or institution can question the individuals freedom and as a matter of fact the essential role of the state is just to ensure that human freedom in guaranteed. Hence the role of the state is reduced to oversee that no harm is done to the other, and in order to do that there is police and judiciary system. Ayn Rand says, "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." And in some other instance, she says that the goal of her fiction is to project her vision of an ideal man: not man as he is, but man as he might and ought to be. This only suggests that Ayn Rand's concept of individual is neither the case nor a logical hypothesis, but only a fragment of imagination. And, Machan in this book tries hard in basing his libertarian ideas on issues of morality, private property, justices, welfare state, taxation, etc on the basis of Randian individualism, which by itself is contentious.

Another argument he gives is that there is no predefined goal for a society. Unlike any other voluntary groups towards which the members of it work, society doesn't have any predefined goal towards which members should work. Hence, according to him, individual liberty could not be sacrificed on the basis of any greater good. But one's right to life, property and pursuit of happiness — is it not by itself a goal towards which the society progresses? What do those things mean and how to achieve it may be a different issue but those rights by themselves are they not the goals towards which individuals as members of the society work?

In the later chapters of the book, Machan, sticking on to the philosophy of individual liberty in its purest sense tries to downplay the notion of welfare state concept and argue against positive rights. The state for him, like any other libertarians, is not a paternalistic one as conceived by the social liberals. And as state that ensures true democracy (in fact, he mentions it as constitutional democracy) they need not have a say on education, public health, welfare activities, morality, and like. I presume this to be too theoretical to adhere to at least at this point of time. Lets say harming others. The liberalists say that except to protect harming others, the state has no other function. But, what does it mean to say harming? Is it only physical harming? What about verbal abuse? But how can one take up the issue of verbal abuse because it can be individuals' freedom to say what he/she wishes to say? Or harming, in a wider perception may also be exploitation against which policies like affirmative action, gender quotas are implemented. Of course, a true libertarian might not support all these. But, the issue is that the present existence of a society with its members has a history with all its politics and power plays. So, I presume the right to property and happiness by itself is so complex, which makes the libertarians and social liberals to take different standings, though in spirit they may go together to acknowledge and appreciate the individuals' freedom.

There are few typographical errors; otherwise, the book is a good piece of work and stimulates interest in libertarian philosophy. Readers will find the book interesting, even if they do not subscribe to the views expressed by Machan.

© 2007 V. Prabhu

V.Prabhu writes about himself:

I have finished my doctoral degree in philosophy. My research topic was on Wittgenstein and his views on religion, culture and value. Currently I am working as senior lecturer in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. I am interested in ethics and applied philosophy.

Categories: Ethics