Abstract
This chapter is an attempt to shed some light on the legitimacy of some recent claims by prominent black leaders and scholars that reparations are owed to members of their race, and should be paid for by the US government out of tax revenues. I shall critically consider in the light of libertarian theory both the views in favor of this position put forth by Robinson and those against it of Horowitz; http://www.salon.com/news/col/horo/2000/05/30/reparations/index.html. See also Myron Magnet, The Dream and the Nightmare, New York: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, especially the chapter “Race and Reparations.”
The author wishes to thank Jeff Tucker of the Mises Institute for helpful comments and criticism, and Hannah Block for editing. All errors that remain are the author’s alone, of course.
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Notes
- 1.
Robinson, Randall, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. See also Richard America Paying the Social Debt: What White America Owes Black America.
- 2.
Horowitz, David, “The latest civil rights disaster: Ten reasons why reparations for slavery are a bad idea for black people—and racist too.”
- 3.
On libertarianism, see Anderson, Terry and Hill, P.J., “An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: the not so Wild, Wild West,” Journal of Libertarian Studies Vol. 3, No. 1, 1979, pp. 9–29; Barnett, Randy E., The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998; Benson, Bruce L., 1989, Enforcement of Private Property Rights in Primitive Societies: Law Without Government,” The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. IX, No. 1, Winter, pp. 1–26; Benson, Bruce L., “The Spontaneous Evolution of Commercial Law,” Southern Economic Journal, 55: 644–661, 1989; Benson, Bruce L., The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State, San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1990; Cuzán, Alfred G., “Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy?,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Summer, 1979); De Jasay, Anthony, The State, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985; Friedman, David, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2nd ed., 1989; Friedman, David, “Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case,” Journal of Legal Studies, 8: 399–415, 1979; Hoppe, Hans-Hermann, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics and Ethics, Boston: Kluwer, 1989; Hoppe, Hans-Hermann, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy, Boston: Kluwer, 1993; Hoppe, Hans-Hermann, “The Private Production of Defense,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, Winter 1998–1999, pp. 27–52; Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers, National Goods Versus Public Goods: Defense, Disarmament, and Free Riders, 4 Rev. Austrian Econ. 88 (1990); Morriss, Andrew P., “Miners, Vigilantes and Cattlemen: Overcoming Free Rider Problems in the Private Provision of Law,” Land and Water Law Review, Vol. XXXIII, No, 2, 1998, pp. 581–696; Peden, Joseph R., 1977, “Property rights in Celtic Irish law,” The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring, pp. 81–96; Rothbard, Murray N., For a New Liberty, Macmillan, New York, 1978; Rothbard, Murray N., The Ethics of Liberty, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1982; Rothbard, Murray N., “Society Without a State.” J. R. Pennock and J. W. Chapman (eds.), Anarchism: Nomos XIX. New York: New York University Press, 1978, pp. 191–207; Rothbard, Murray N., Man, Economy and State, Auburn AL: Mises Institute, 1993; Skoble, Aeon J. “The Anarchism Controversy,” in Liberty for the 21st Century: Essays in Contemporary Libertarian Thought, eds. Tibor Machan and Douglas Rasmussen, Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995, pp. 77–96; Sechrest, Larry J., “Rand, Anarchy, and Taxes,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol. I, No. 1, Fall 1999, pp. 87–105; Spooner, Lysander, No Treason, Larkspur, Colorado, (1870) 1966; Stringham, Edward, “Justice Without Government,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, Winter 1998–1999, pp. 53–77; Tinsley, Patrick, “With Liberty and Justice for All: A Case for Private Police,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, Winter 1998–1999, pp. 95–100; Tannehill, Morris and Linda, The Market for Liberty, New York: Laissez Faire Books, 1984; Woolridge, William C., Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man, New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1970.
- 4.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extant and End of Civil Government, in Social Contract 17–18 (E. Barker ed., 1948).
- 5.
The US Bureau of Land Management’s control over much of the land west of the Mississippi has been more of a disaster than anything else. See on this Anderson, Terry L., and Hill, Peter J., “Property Rights as a Common Pool Resource,” Bureaucracy vs. Environment: The Environmental Costs of Bureaucratic Governance, John Baden and Richard L. Stroup, eds., Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981; Anderson, Terry L., and Leal, Donald R., Free Market Environmentalism, San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1991; Block, Walter, “Ownership will save the environment,” New Environment, First Quarter, 1991, 41–43; Block, Walter, “Protection of property rights key to maintaining resources,” Environment Policy and Law, Vol. 1, No. 3, June 1990, p. 28; Block, Walter, ed., Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation, Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1990; Block, Walter, “Earning Happiness Through Homesteading Unowned Land: a comment on ‘Buying Misery with Federal Land’ by Richard Stroup,” Journal of Social Political and Economic Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer 1990, pp. 237–253; Hill, Peter J., and Meiners, Roger E., eds., Who Owns the Environment?, New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998; Hoppe, Hans-Hermann, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy, Boston: Kluwer, 1993; Horwitz, Morton J., The Transformation of American Law: 1780–1860, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977; Margaret N. Maxey and Robert L. Kuhn, eds., Regulatory Reform: New Vision or Old Curse, New York: Praeger, 1985; Rathje, William L., “Rubbish!,” Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 264, No. 6, December 1989, pp. 99–109; Ray, Dixie Lee, 1990, Trashing the Planet, Washington D.C.: Regnery Gateway; Rothbard, Murray N., “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution,” Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation, Walter Block, ed., Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1990; Stroup, Richard L., and John C. Goodman, et al., (1991) Progressive Environmentalism: A Pro-Human, Pro-Science, Pro-Free Enterprise Agenda for Change, Dallas, TX: National Center for Policy Analysis, Task Force Report; Stroup, Richard L., and Baden, John A., “Endowment Areas: A Clearing in the Policy Wilderness,” Cato Journal, 2 Winter 1982, pp. 691–708.
- 6.
The latest managerial failure of the bureaucrats, the US Park Service in this case, has been a forest fire set by the authorities themselves as a preventative; the only difficulty is that it raged out of control, creating millions of dollars of damages. See on this “Los Alamos Under Siege,” Newsweek, 5/22/00, p. 35. Were any private enterprise guilty of so massive a blunder, it surely would have become enmeshed in bankruptcy proceedings. But by the very nature of things this fail-safe mechanism is available to markets, not governments.
- 7.
Gwartney, James, Robert Lawson and Walter Block, Economic Freedom of the World, 1975–1995, Vancouver, B.C. Canada: the Fraser Institute, 1996.
- 8.
Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York: Basic Books Inc., 1974; N. Stephan Kinsella, “A Theory of Contracts: Binding Promises, Title Transfer, and Inalienability” (paper presented at Auburn, Alabama, April 1999, Ludwig von Mises Institute’s Austrian Scholars Conference 5; published version forthcoming.
- 9.
Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York: Basic Books Inc., 1974, p. xz.
- 10.
On libertarian punishment theory, see Barnett, Randy, and Hagel, John, eds., Assessing the Criminal, Cambridge MA: Ballinger, 1977; Block, Walter, “Toward a Libertarian Theory of Guilt and Punishment for the Crime of Statism,” Huelsmann, Guido, ed., The Rise and Fall of the State, forthcoming; Block, Walter, “National Defense and the Theory of Externalities, Public Goods and Clubs,” Hoppe, Hans-Hermann, ed., Explorations in the Theory and History of Security Production, forthcoming King, J. Charles, A Rationale for Punishment, 4 J. Libertarian Stud. 151, 154 (1980); Kinsella, Stephan N., “A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights,” (volume) 30 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 607–45 (1997); Kinsella, Stephan N., “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory,” 12:2 J. Libertarian Studies 313–26 (Fall 1996); Kinsella, Stephan N., “Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach,” 12:1 J. Libertarian Studies 51 (Spring 1996); Kinsella, Stephan N., “Estoppel: A New Justification for Individual Rights,” Reason Papers No. 17 (Fall 1992), p. 61; Kinsella, N. Stephan, “Inalienability and Punishment: A Reply to George Smith,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, Winter, 1998–1999, pp. 79–93; Rothbard, Murray N., The Ethics of Liberty, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1982.
- 11.
States Rothbard, Murray N., The Ethics of Liberty, New York: New York University Press (1998 [1982], pp. 51–52): “Suppose we are walking down the street and we see a man, A, seizing B by the wrist and grabbing B’s wristwatch. There is no question that A is here violating both the person and the property of B. Can we then simply infer from this scene that A is a criminal aggressor, and B his innocent victim?”
- 12.
The freed slaves were presumably promised “40 acres and a mule.” If from the slave master, well and good; this is at least an approximation of what they were owed. If this was to have been derived, however, courtesy of the taxpayer, then it would be unjust, since the average citizen was not responsible for slavery. For the view that voting does not make one responsible for the acts of politicians, see Spooner, Lysander, No Treason, Larkspur, Colorado, (1870) 1966.
- 13.
Others who have made similar reparations claims in behalf of blacks include Dorothy Lewis and Hannibal Afrik of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, and Albert Thornton, chairman of the political science department at Howard University, a historically black college. See on this The National Post, 6/7/00, p. A3.
- 14.
I confess this is a very tempting conclusion to draw. Why else do we have induction if not for things just of this sort?
- 15.
Their probable response to this sally would be to attempt to have their cake and eat it, presumably by claiming that “linear” logic is an invention of dead white males, and doesn’t apply to them. It is impossible to take such people seriously. In any case, my argument is with the far more coherent Horowitz, not them. Here, I am only pointing out that Horowitz does not carry forth as fully as he might his attack on these black “scholars,” due to his inability to see that for once they are on the side of the angels.
- 16.
In Kinsella’s terminology, they are no longer “estopped” from making these claims. See on this Kinsella, Stephan N., “A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights,” (volume) 30 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 607–45 (1997); Kinsella, Stephan N., “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory,” 12:2 J. Libertarian Studies 313–26 (Fall 1996); Kinsella, Stephan N., “Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach,” 12:1 J. Libertarian Studies 51 (Spring 1996); Kinsella, Stephan N., “Estoppel: A New Justification for Individual Rights,” Reason Papers No. 17 (Fall 1992), p. 61; Kinsella, N. Stephan, “Inalienability and Punishment: A Reply to George Smith,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, Winter, 1998–1999, pp. 79–93.
- 17.
A court in Canada has ruled that written records are not required for proof of ownership. The recollections of tribal elders will suffice in their stead. Here is the court’s finding in R. v. Van Der Peet, [1996] 2 S. C. R. 507, a case concerning Indian fishing rights, from the summary: “A court should approach the rules of evidence and interpret the evidence that exists, conscious of the special nature of aboriginal claims and of the evidentiary difficulties in proving a right which originates in times when there were no written records of the practices, customs and traditions and customs engaged in. The courts must not undervalue the evidence presented by aboriginal claimants simply because that evidence does not conform precisely with the evidentiary standards applied in other contexts.” This finding played a role in the decision concerning a land reparations case, Delgamuukw v British Columbia, [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010, which cited paragraph #68 of R. v. Van Der Peet, [1996] 2 S. C. R. 507, which has been just summarized. To say the least, this determination is not at all compatible with libertarian requirements of proof. For one thing, the testimony may be a lie. For another, it is not disinterested. For a third, it may be honestly believed, but mistaken. This seems to be the conclusion in many cases of recovered memory of girlhood incest charges on the part of adult women. But there is a practical implication as well. If this unwarranted decision were to become a precedent, then, truly, the reductio ad absurdum charge against the libertarian position that it would open the floodgates of land reparations cases back before the beginning of recorded history could then be sustained. But this is only a utilitarian consideration, unworthy, probably, of our attention.
- 18.
He, himself, would have been very seriously punished for the crime of slave holding.
- 19.
In our context, Jones is the white grandchild of the slave owner, who is now in possession of the property under dispute.
- 20.
Remember, in our example, the 499 victims and their heirs cannot be found.
- 21.
Rothbard, Murray N., The Ethics of Liberty, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1982, pp. 58–59.
- 22.
We must never lose sight of the fact that there are some black scholars who are avid supporters of free enterprise. Unfortunately, while this honor roll is very distinguished, it is also very short. Among economists it includes Williams, Walter, E., The State Against Blacks, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1982; Williams, Walter E., South Africa’s War Against Capitalism, New York: Praeger, 1989; Williams, Walter E., and Walter Block, “Male-Female Earnings Differentials: A Critical Reappraisal,” The Journal of Labor Research, Vol. II, No. 2, Fall 1981, pp. 385–388; Sowell, Thomas, The Vision of the Anointed, New York: Basic Books, 1995; Sowell, Thomas, Race and Economics, New York: Longman, 1975; Sowell, Thomas, Patterns of Black Excellence, Washington D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1976; Sowell, Thomas, Pink and Brown People, San Francisco: The Hoover Institution Press, 1981; Sowell, Thomas, Ethnic America, New York: Basic Books, 1981; Sowell, Thomas, “Weber and Bakke and the presuppositions of ‘Affirmative Action,’“ Discrimination, Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity, Walter Block and Michael Walker, eds., Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1982; Sowell, Thomas, The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective, New York, Morrow, 1983; Sowell, Thomas, Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality, New York: William Morrow, e1984; Sowell, Thomas, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, New York: William Morrow, 1987; Sowell, Thomas, “Preferential Policies,” in Thinking About America: The United States in the 1990s, Annelise Anderson and Dennis L. Bark, eds., San Francisco: The Hoover Institution Press, 1988; Sowell, Thomas, Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, The Dogmas, New York: The Free Press, 1993; Sowell, Thomas, Race and Culture: A World View, New York: Basic Books, 1994.
- 23.
For the libertarian case in behalf of reparations, see Block, Walter and Yeatts, Guillermo “Land Reform,” University of Kentucky Journal of Natural Resources and Environmental Law, forthcoming; Block, Walter, “Review Essay of Bethell, Tom, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998,” in The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Vol. 2, No. 3, Fall 1999, pp. 65–84; Walter Block, David Friedman, Milton Friedman, Philip Wogaman, Kenneth Boulding, Walter Berns, Edmund Opitz, Paul Heyne and Geoffrey Brennan, Discussion, in Morality of the Market: Religious and Economic Perspectives, Walter Block, Geoffrey Brennan & Kenneth Elzinga, eds., Fraser Institute: Vancouver, 1985, pp. 495–510; Rothbard, Murray N., The Ethics of Liberty, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1982. Levin, Michael, Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean, New York: Praeger, 1997, pp. 229–289, opposes reparations to blacks, but not for reasons relevant to our present concerns.
- 24.
There is a temptation to assume that all defendants in black reparations cases would be southerners. This must be resisted. Strictly speaking, of course, slavery took place not only in the South, but in the North as well.
- 25.
Horowitz may have had “second thoughts” about some of his previous political economic philosophy, but, judging from his analytic framework in the present case, there are still vestiges of Marxism infecting his perspective.
- 26.
Murray, Charles, Losing Ground: American Social Policy from 1950 to 1980, New York: Basic Books, 1984.
- 27.
Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, Chicago: Open Court, 1996.
- 28.
Rothbard, Murray N., The Ethics of Liberty, New York: New York University Press (1998 [1982], pp. 57–58); for more on the libertarian theory of private property rights, see Hoppe, Hans-Hermann, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics and Ethics, Boston: Kluwer, 1989; Hoppe, Hans-Hermann, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy, Boston: Kluwer, 1993.
- 29.
For a libertarian debate on whether immigration laws are per se criminal, see Journal of Libertarian Studies: An Interdisciplinary Review, Vol. 13, No. 2, summer 1998. If true, then all those who can prove that their grandparents would have immigrated to a given country have a reparations case under libertarian law not against all citizens of that nation, but only against the grandchildren of those few people specifically responsible for this law.
- 30.
Roberts, Paul Craig, “Taxing Away Freedoms,” TownHall.Com Columnists, 7/21/01. See http://www.townhall.com/columnists/paulcraigroberts/pcr20010719.shtml, accessed on 7/21/01.
- 31.
See Spooner, Lysander, No Treason, Larkspur, Colorado, (1870) 1966).
- 32.
The opposite case is a possible, albeit less historically likely, occurrence.
- 33.
For example, see Robinson, op. cit.
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Block, W.E. (2019). On Reparations to Blacks for Slavery. In: Property Rights. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28353-7_10
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