David Boaz, the editor of ‘The Libertarian Reader’, describes Libertarianism’s concerns in this way:

“Constraining power is the great challenge for any political system. Libertarians have always put that challenge at the centre of their political and social analysis”.

So what is it about Libertarianism that is so necessarily right-wing? If we take as the central thesis of libertarianism the protection of individual freedom, then it seems to be that to best serve that freedom we should be committed to some notion of self-determination.

In fact, while libertarianism began as a theory concerned with protecting individual autonomy, as it developed the focus on a minimal state and free market capitalism it increasingly sacrificed that goal  in the name of individual property rights.

One of the most influential modern right-libertarians is Robert Nozick. In his seminal book Anarchy, State, and Utopia Nozick set about to establish how, if at all, a state could emerge and function that truly protected individual rights and treated people as ends in themselves.

According to Nozick, taxing people on their earnings is such a violation of their rights that it is akin to aggressing against them:

“Taxation of earnings is on par with forced labor. Some persons find this claim obviously true: taking the earnings of n hours of labor is like taking n hours from the person; it is like forcing the person to work n hours for another’s purpose. Others find this claim absurd. But even these, if they object to forced labor, would oppose forcing unemployed hippies to work for the benefit of the needy”.

An important concern for Nozick is that others do not use individuals as a ‘means towards an end’: one ought not use another to support one’s own means by redistributing their property.

However, in order to justify property ownership in the first place Nozick relies on the premise that when one person acquires land or resources it is justified because they will use that land productively which will benefit all of society (basically the “trickle-down effect”). So in order to justify private property Nozick must rely on principles that he would reject in the case of taxation!

There are numerous other reasons why the right-libertarian total emphasis on property rights and protection from state power, but not private capital’s power, seems flawed: fundamentally, if we are concerned with protecting individual autonomy, it seems to me that that a mix of positive (freedom to do things) and negative (freedom from unjustified repression) freedom that is facilitated in by both the state and individuals would be most successful at serving this goal.