Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:44 — 20.0MB)
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 004.
My longtime friend Walter Block was recently in town, and while we visited had several discussions on libertarian theory, as we usually do when we see each other. He agreed to let me record a discussion on one of the few issues we do not completely agree on: voluntary slavery; we recorded this last night. Walter believes voluntary slavery contracts ought to be enforceable in a private law society, and in this I believe he is in the minority of libertarians (with Nozick, say). We touched on a variety of issues, including debtor’s prison, how acquisition of body-rights differs from Lockean homesteading, and the like.
Some of my writing relevant to this topic and our discussion include:
- A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability, Journal of Libertarian Studies 17, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 11-37
- Inalienability and Punishment: A Reply to George Smith, Winter 1998-99, Journal of Libertarian Studies.
- How We Come To Own Ourselves, Mises Daily (Sep. 7, 2006) (Mises.org blog discussion; audio version)
- Causation and Aggression (co-authored with Patrick Tinsley), The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, vol. 7, no. 4 (winter 2004): 97-112
Walter’s articles on this topic include:
- Toward a Libertarian Theory of Inalienability: A Critique of Rothbard, Barnett, Gordon, Smith, Kinsella and Epstein, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, Spring 2003, pp. 39-85
- “Alienability: Reply to Kuflik,” Humanomics. Vol. 23, No. 3, 2007, pp. 117-136
- “Are Alienability and the Apriori of Argument Logically Incompatible?” Dialogue, Vol. 1, No. 1. 2004.
- Alienability, Inalienability, Paternalism and the Law: Reply to Kronman American Journal of Criminal Law, Vol. 28, No. 3, Summer 2001, pp. 351-371
- Market Inalienability Once Again: Reply to Radin Thomas Jefferson Law Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1, Fall 1999, pp. 37-88
- Alienability, Inalienability, Paternalism and the Law: Reply to Kronman
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To own something is to control something, to be able to use and dispose of it as you wish. In today’s society, you do, mostly, have the ability to control, use, and dispose of your body as you wish – but slavery is illegal – that is you are not allowed to sell yourself into slavery. This means that you are NOT able to use and dispose of yourself as you wish in this regards. In other words, you don’t completely own yourself. It would seem that the government at least partly owns you – maybe a 10% stake in you – which allows you to do most, but not all things, as you wish.
I think, in short, that the assumption is often made, rather lazily, that we own ourselves, but when the issue is examined it will be found that it really isn’t that simple.
Being unable to sell yourself into slavery is not a limit on ownership but a consequence of it. As for the state owning us, you need to distinguish between positive law and the rights that correspond therewith, from justified law and rights. It is true that the state acts as our masters and thus legally partially owns us, but this is not justified anymore than chattel slavery was. Each person is the 100% natural owner of himself.
Indeed there is a difference; and if you found yourself as a slave in Mississippi in the 18th century, you would certainly find out the difference: Both of us have the right not to be slaves, and that right is guaranteed to us because we live in a 21st century westernised society. We also have a moral right not to be slaves. However the 18th century slave only had the latter kind of right, and what difference did it make to his situation?
Indeed his slave master not only had the legal right to enslave people, he believed he had the moral right as well!
Moral or natural rights are ultimately no more than opinions that people hold. They are useful in that they can influence people and so lead to societies adopting them as legal rights.
The trouble with talking of ‘natural rights’ is that it implies that theses are universal, but they are not. As I mentioned, not everyone was against slavery. There are legal rights and then there are opinions. To talk of ‘natural rights’ is to talk of nothing at all.