RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT:Nozick and the invisible hand of racial injustice
How should libertarian political theory respond to the legacy of racial injustice in societies such as the United States and the United Kingdom? Although libertarianism is often associated with strong individual rights and scepticism toward state intervention, critics such as Charles Mills argued that libertarians have paid insufficient attention to questions of race and frequently resisted measures intended to advance racial justice.
This article revisits Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia in light of those criticisms. It explores Nozick’s confidence in markets, his concern about the state’s role in generating injustice, and his warnings against attempts to politically engineer a just society. At the same time, it shows that Nozick’s framework raises deeper questions about race and historical injustice than are often recognised. Examining these tensions reveals how market processes can perpetuate as well as alleviate injustice, why identifying a genuinely just starting point for existing patterns of wealth and income is impossible, and why injustice cannot be reduced simply to harms inflicted by identifiable individuals. The article concludes by considering whether a form of universal basic income could help address the enduring effects of historical injustice while limiting opportunities for future political abuse.