Jeffrey Friedman is wrapping up the first day of his seminar in the summer of 2003. “We have gotten off the table the idea that freedom is inherently valuable, or that capitalism is inherently valuable,” he says. “What we have left is that capitalism may be more valuable than the alternative, given the consequences.”

         We eleven are mostly students, conservatives or libertarians. Several are from Yale and Harvard, one from Oxford. Three are members of the press. We have come to Princeton, our way paid by donors who want us to hear what Friedman has to say.

         Friedman is 44, the son of an atheist rabbi. He is dark-haired, intense, exacting, and with a quick smile. He is a teacher of political science at Barnard College, New York. He says he started adult life as “an annoying Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist.” Among libertarians he is famous, and also a bit infamous, for his seminars that deconstruct their creed.

         Years ago, Friedman became dismayed with the showing of libertarians in academia. Even Robert Nozick, author of the acclaimed Anarchy, State and Utopia, was emerging from academic warfare severely damaged. “Professors teach Nozick because he is so easy to dismiss,” Friedman says.

         He started an academic journal, Critical Review, to strengthen libertarian ideas by testing them against opponents. To his chagrin, he says, the opponents were winning.

         By the early 1990s Friedman says, he had abandoned libertarianism, though “not for an alternative.” He developed a completely empirical view, he says, and began poking through studies in political science. “I began finding nuggets of research that the usual people didn’t see,” he says. “They were things it takes a libertarian to see.” And these, he says, now form the basis of “a case that doesn’t walk the traditional path.”

         It is to consider this case that he has invited us for three days at Princeton.

Deconstructing liberty    

         First the way must be cleared. Our old ideas must be deconstructed, starting with our idea of liberty. The attack comes in an essay by a Marxist, one G.A. Cohen of Oxford University.

         Now, I work in the press. We deal with lots of left-liberals. We don’t have Marxists. The idea of seriously arguing with a Marxist seems, well, preposterous. We don’t argue with Nazis. After the 20th century, why do we even talk to Marxists? I mention at lunch that it seems strange to be having a dispute with a communist. The fellow from Oxford looks pained and says, “Cohen’s not a communist. He’s a market socialist.”

         Oh. Progress, then.

         Cohen’s “Capitalism, Freedom and the Proletariat” (1979), starts by quoting philosopher Jan Narveson’s definition of liberty as “doing what we wish without the interference of others.” This is a bad definition, and Cohen makes the most of it.

         Cohen says, “Let us suppose that I wish to take Mr. Morgan’s yacht, and go for a spin. If I try to, then it is probable that its owner, aided by law-enforcing others, will stop me. I cannot do this thing that I wish to do, because others will interfere. But liberty, Narveson reasonably said, is ‘doing what we wish without the interference of others.’ It follows that I lack a liberty here.

         “Patently, the point is generalizable. Private property always limits liberty.”

         Notice that that Cohen posits a yacht, a rich person’s property. He could just as well have posited a bicycle, and suggested that he had the right to take a student’s bike for a spin. Not even a People’s Republic would allow Cohen to do that.

         But I have to admit that private property does limit liberty. It defines liberty. Liberty is really the permission to do what we wish with what we own, including ourselves. Cohen calls this a moralized liberty, and, Friedman adds, “The ‘moralized’ part of ‘moralized liberty’ is doing all the work.”

         I suppose it is. I can live with that. Jonathan Wolff argues in “Freedom, Liberty and Property” (Critical Review, Summer 1997) that we ought to use “freedom” in the sense of possibility (“My leg iron is off; I am free to walk”) and “liberty” in the sense of permissibility (“I could walk if I wanted, but I am not at liberty to leave the house”). 

         I agree with Cohen that libertarian liberty is about the permissions you have in a world of private property. I mention to Friedman that I have long thought that the technically correct name for libertarianism is “propertarianism.” 

         He smiles. “Exactly.”

         But does that mean the liberty in libertarianism is bogus? Cohen thinks so, and Friedman seems to agree. In “What’s Wrong With Libertarianism” (Critical Review, Summer 1997), Friedman says: “Inasmuch as there is just as much of the world to be parceled out under each system’s set of property rules, and the rights governing all of this property are just as coercively enforced in all systems, there is no difference in the ‘amount’ of coercion…”

         I was stunned by this statement. But in a very restricted sense it is true. In a capitalist society and a socialist society, there are places you are allowed to go and places you aren’t. In both societies, everything is owned by some individual, company, co-op, collective, or state agency. Further, all the properties that capitalism creates — patents, copyrights, bonds, stock options, futures, fishing rights, grocery coupons — are protected by force.

         Friedman believes capitalism is preferable to socialism. But the reason, he says, is not that capitalism uses less force to set up and run. It’s that capitalism allows people more choices that they will actually make use of. He and I have several back-and-forths about this. I begin to think that our disagreement is more one of labels than of essences. The amount of decision-making permitted me under capitalism, particularly my right to say “no” to people who would use my time and my property, is what I call “liberty.” Friedman has a different name for it, as we shall see. But he’s for it.

Deconstructing property

         What most of us call liberty derives from what we own. But why do we own what we own?

         Because of the nature of man? Not quite. The Bushmen in the film, “The Gods Must Be Crazy” are human, and their hunter-gatherer society does not have property. However, all agricultural societies have it. It says something that there is no society in which you can walk up to another person’s field and start planting your crops in it.

         But our job is to justify capitalist property. In that regard, our first inclination is to say, “Look at capitalist property and socialist property. Private owners care for their properties and improve them; socialist citizens don’t.”

         That is an excellent reason, but Friedman wants a more philosophical one.

         The libertarian offers an argument from self-ownership. If your life is an end in itself, and you own your life, meaning you have the right to direct and control it, you should be allowed to obtain rights to direct and control things.

         Why? Friedman asks, “How is self-ownership translated into world ownership?”

         If you own yourself, you own your talents; if you own your talents, you must own the product of your talents. 

         The most obvious problem with that is land, because land is not a product of our talents. How did land become property? It was divided up by farmers, which was necessary if people were to grow food. But we want a philosophical reason…

         Let’s take an easier case: a painting. In “Freedom, Self-Ownership and Libertarian Philosophical Diaspora,” in the summer 1997 Critical Review, Justin Weinberg of Georgetown University supposes he paints a painting.

         “If that painting is taken away from me—suppose it is appropriated by the state… then I no longer own the painting,” Weinberg writes. “But I still fully own and possess my talents… If the state confiscates my earnings, it is not materially different from the state confiscating my painting; I still fully own my talents. So I still fully own myself.” He can still paint another picture (and the state can take that one away, too).

         I don’t buy this. If the state has confiscated my painting, it has confiscated the product of my time and effort. To say, “Don’t worry, you still own your talents,” is an apology for a thief. 

         I want to own the painting. But I am alerted by Friedman’s approach: I am not willing to make my ownership of the painting so fundamental that I don’t care about any imaginable consequence. At one of the breaks, I go to Friedman and say, “That I own my painting is valuable to me. I’d rather live in a society that let me own the painting even if it meant living in a poorer society. But I’m not going to insist on owning the painting if the price is mass misery.”

         “You are a reasonable man,” he says.

         What of the would-be painter who owns no paints, brushes, canvases or free time? Is self-ownership meaningful to him? Cohen, the Marxist, argues that it is not. 

         Cohen posits a world with two self-owning persons, Able and Infirm. Able can produce enough goods to sustain them both. Infirm cannot produce anything. Cohen stipulates that the two own the world jointly in a partnership that is undissolvable and self-enforcing, so that each must agree before either can touch anything. This means Able needs Infirm’s permission before Able can do any work. Infirm would need Able’s permission, too, but he can’t work.

         Cohen does not say this, but from Able’s point of view, this is no different from Infirm owning everything.

         Does Able have self-ownership? Cohen stipulated that he did. But will the libertarian be satisfied with his position? No. He is self-owned in theory, but he has no liberty.

         Now consider the capital-less worker in a capitalist society. He cannot work without the agreement of an employer, Cohen says. Is his self-ownership any more meaningful than Able’s?

         Cohen wants to say it is not, but he is wrong. He has put Able into a world where there is no market or possibility of one, because there can be no rival buyers or sellers. There is only Infirm, who has a 100% monopoly. Able is at his mercy.

         This is not the position of a worker under capitalism. The worker is at liberty to negotiate with any employer. He is at liberty to sell goods or services directly, and have no employer at all. He may sponge off his relatives or marry into cash. On Cohen’s world, Able can do none of these things because there is no one to do them with. Able is like the worker in a communist world, who may be employed only by the state.

         And Cohen compares him to the workers in capitalism. I think, “This Marxist does some fine card tricks, but he wins by stacking the deck.”

Deconstructing responsibility 

         The hard sell for the libertarian is neither liberty nor property. It is responsibility. 

         I ask Friedman twice about the argument against the welfare state in Charles Murray’s In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government (1994). Murray argues that what people want is a satisfying life, and that a good society should allow ordinary people to have satisfying lives.

         Deep satisfaction, Murray says, comes from effort to achieve a meaningful goal. And what, for the ordinary person, could fit that bill better than working hard, supporting a family and raising capable and moral children? Before the welfare state, even the poor American who did this was respectable. As Garet Garrett wrote in 1947, recalling a maxim of his youth: “To be poor is no disgrace. In the whole civilized world that was only true here, and it was true here because no stigma, no hint of caste, no sense of status attached itself to the condition of being poor.”

         The welfare state takes this away—not because it taxes the strong, but because it pauperizes the weak. 

         Friedman has asked us what we think of the suggestion from liberal theorist Bruce Ackerman that the government provide each new adult with a capital grant — say, $20,000. This could be for tuition or tools or a down payment on a house or a binge on cocaine and hookers.

         Murray’s answer would be to earn the money. It is not just that the person will “appreciate” it more, though he will. Also the person will have learned how to earn and save $20,000. Others will benefit because he will have become a producer of wealth rather than a waster of it.

         I think of the $20,000 and remember what it was like to be 21 years old. God help them, academics can be as stupid as fire plugs.

         Friedman dismisses Murray’s argument as “bourgeois complacency.” In “What’s Wrong With Libertarianism,” he explains what he means. People experience more than one kind of happiness. One might think of the happiness of watching one’s child graduate from college, of reading poetry, of watching TV, of feeling a full belly, or of a debauch in a whorehouse. Why, Friedman asks, does Murray favor the achiever’s happiness?

         I suppose it is because, through introspection, Murray decided the achiever’s happiness is deeper and more lasting, and is the sort that should matter most. Perhaps also because it is more socially useful.

         Friedman asks whether all humans at all times have felt this achiever’s happiness. Our warm feeling, elicited by Murray, could be the result of “bourgeois society, and thus our own bourgeois sensibilities.” In other words, a father providing for a wife and children may feel satisfied not because any man naturally would, but because his capitalist culture taught him to feel that way. People in some other culture might not feel that way, which would mean that libertarianism was culture-specific.

         Yes, it might mean that. 

         Friedman offers another argument. In a market economy, he says, “people are not, in fact, solely or even largely responsible for their good ill or fortune,” so that the ability to make a good living “depends overwhelmingly on good luck.”

         John Rawls argues this, too, in A Theory of Justice. If it were true, it would be deadly to capitalism. It is true of the economic position of children—it depends on their luck in having successful parents—and it is the principal reason why capitalist societies have socialized their schools. But the “you’re not responsible” thesis is generally not true of adults. One’s starting place in life is determined by luck, but one’s ending place is not. 

         What I see among the adults is that they are overwhelmingly self-made.  

         Friedman calls this “Victorian psychology.”

‘Voice’ and ‘Exit’

         The first day at Princeton has been a hosing-down. The fellow from the trade paper cannot stand it.  He leans back with