{"agent_id":"nozick","agent_name":"Robert Nozick","slug":"taxation-as-forced-labor","label":"Taxation as forced labor: is taxation of earnings on a par with forced labor?","topic":"Taxation as forced labor","question":"Is taxation of earnings on a par with forced labor?","position":"Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. The argument: taking some hours of someone's labor is equivalent to taking the products of those hours, since money and the goods money buys are produced by labor. If the state compels some persons to work some hours for the benefit of others — through compulsory non-paid service, say — we would recognize this as forced labor. Taxation of earnings does precisely the same thing in different form: the tax represents hours of labor whose product the laborer is required to turn over to the state for transfer to others. The distinction between \"taxing wages\" and \"compelling labor\" is not a moral distinction but a procedural one. The position follows directly from the entitlement theory and from self-ownership: if I own myself, I own my labor; if I own my labor, I own its products; and the involuntary appropriation of those products, whether by direct conscription or by taxation, is on a moral par.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.","n":[]},{"t":"The argument: taking some hours of someone's labor is equivalent to taking the products of those hours, since money and the goods money buys are produced by labor.","n":[1]},{"t":"If the state compels some persons to work some hours for the benefit of others — through compulsory non-paid service, say — we would recognize this as forced labor.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Taxation of earnings does precisely the same thing in different form: the tax represents hours of labor whose product the laborer is required to turn over to the state for transfer to others.","n":[]},{"t":"The distinction between \"taxing wages\" and \"compelling labor\" is not a moral distinction but a procedural one.","n":[]},{"t":"The position follows directly from the entitlement theory and from self-ownership: if I own myself, I own my labor; if I own my labor, I own its products; and the involuntary appropriation of those products, whether by direct conscription or by taxation, is on a moral par.","n":[2,3,4,5]}]],"texts":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Chapter 7 Section II (the taxation argument). Reception: G.A. Cohen on self-ownership and the labor argument; Thomas Nagel's response in the Yale Law Journal review; Hayek and the Austrian tradition on coercion; the contemporary tax-policy debates; libertarian (Rothbard) and liberal-egalitarian replies.","works":["Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Chapter 7 Section II (the taxation argument)"],"reception":"G.A. Cohen on self-ownership and the labor argument; Thomas Nagel's response in the Yale Law Journal review; Hayek and the Austrian tradition on coercion; the contemporary tax-policy debates; libertarian (Rothbard) and liberal-egalitarian replies.","status":"The most quoted, most contested, and most provocative formulation in ASU. Many readers regard it as a reductio of libertarianism — taxation manifestly is not the same as forced labor, and a doctrine that says it is must be wrong. Defenders respond that this reaction is exactly the moralized intuition Nozick was trying to dislodge: we have been raised to accept taxation as natural and to see forced labor as outrageous, and Nozick is asking what the moral difference is. Cohen takes the formulation seriously and constructs the most sustained reply, which is also a sustained attack on the underlying self-ownership thesis. The line remains the canonical provocation of libertarian political philosophy.","era":"1938-2002","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia","page":"pp. 185–186","canonical":"","quote":"Those who doubt that this extension can be carried through, and who draw the line here at taxation of income from labor, will have to state rather complicated patterned historical principles of distributive justice, since end-state principles would not distinguish sources of income in any way.","label":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 185–186"},{"n":2,"work":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia","page":"p. 184","canonical":"","quote":"The likelihood is small that any actual freely-arrived-at set of holdings fits a given pattern; and the likelihood is nil that it will continue to fit the pattern as people exchange and give. From the point of view of an entitlement theory, redistribution is a serious matter indeed, involving, as it does, the violation of people's rights.","label":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 184"},{"n":3,"work":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia","page":"pp. 186–187","canonical":"","quote":"A theory of property would, among other things, contain such a classification of constraints and decision modes, and from a small number of principles would follow a host of interesting statements about the consequences and effects of certain combinations of constraints and modes of decision.","label":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 186–187"},{"n":4,"work":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia","page":"p. 190","canonical":"","quote":"Building a fence around a territory presumably would make one the owner of only the fence (and the land immediately underneath it). Why does mixing one's labor with something make one the owner of it? Perhaps because one owns one's labor, and so one comes to own a previously unowned thing that becomes permeated with what one owns. Ownership seeps over into the rest.","label":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 190"},{"n":5,"work":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia","page":"p. 185","canonical":"","quote":"If, however, something did depend upon the notion, one would want to examine it more carefully. For a skeptical view, see Kenneth Minogue, The Liberal Mind, (New York: Random House, 1963), pp. 103-112.","label":"Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 185"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-minimal-state","label":"The minimal state: is anything more extensive than the night-watchman state morally justified?"},{"slug":"the-entitlement-theory","label":"The entitlement theory: is justice a matter of historical process rather than patterned distribution?"},{"slug":"side-constraints","label":"Side constraints: are rights structural limits on action rather than goals to be promoted?"},{"slug":"the-experience-machine","label":"The experience machine: is hedonism refuted by the fact that we want to do, not just to feel?"}]}