E-Mich - "Self-Ownership, Reciprocity, Left-Libertarianism, and Libertarian Socialism"

Mardi intime de la Chaire Hoover par Pietro Intropi (Trinity College Dublin, Fellowship Chaire Hoover)

In this presentation I examine a left-wing libertarian view that combines self-ownership with an egalitarian account of reciprocity. I discuss what kind of equality underpins such a view, comparing it with other left-wing libertarian approaches (left-libertarianism and libertarian socialism). I argue that, pace Quong, self-ownership and the luck-egalitarian justification of equality typically adopted by left-libertarians are not in tension. Nonetheless, left-libertarians have reason to complement their view with duties of reciprocity to capture a distinctively solidaristic aspect of equality. Second, I examine how reciprocity can be embedded in a libertarian socialist framework in which external resources are collectively owned, showing that reciprocity does not tie the realisation of distributive equality to a particular economic system (socialist vs. non-socialist). Third, I examine some policy implications that follow from combining self-ownership with reciprocity: these differ depending on which rights people can have over external resources, but all left-wing libertarian views committed to reciprocity acknowledge the existence of social rights that people have as co-operators.