Now remember that I started the chapter by distinguishing two senses in which we can understand the question, "What is the justification of the state?" The first was: "What is the moral justification, if any, of government agents using force at all?" The second was: "What is the justification, if any, of government agents using force to achieve a particular purpose, P?" Now, we just got done discussing the first question. We briefly considered anarchism and the natural law theory, and then looked at social contract theories in a little more depth. Then, tentatively as usual, I came down in favor of a consequentialist justification for having a state at all. But then I said that I had not given you a consequentialist argument that we ought to establish, and support, some governments. And the reason I said that was that, in order to give a consequentialist argument for establishing a government, I’d have start saying what I think a government should do. Because if I’m going to try to give a moral justification of the existence of government, then I had better begin by making things easy for myself -- starting, in other words, with the task of trying to justify a really good state. And what is a good state? A good state is one that does (well) whatever governments should do, and it doesn’t do anything else. And as I said, that just makes it more pressing that we try to find out what governments should do -- what their proper functions are, and are not.
You might say, "I thought we already figured that out. The purpose of the state is to protect rights and to preserve justice." Well fine: but question is, which rights? What sort of justice? There are, after all, many different conceptions of what rights we have, and what justice consists of.
Indeed, it’s on those questions that you’ll find the differences between conservatives, welfare state liberals, libertarians, socialists, and fascists. There are a handful of anarchists among the libertarians and the socialists (certain kinds of communists are anarchists, believe it or not). But everyone else agrees that the existence of some kind of government is morally justified. And then what they disagree about is what government should do. Nearly everyone is willing to nod their heads when it is said that the purpose of the state is to protect rights and preserve justice. It’s just that all these different camps have a different conceptions of which rights we do have, and what justice consists of.
One fairly useful way to conceive of the differences between these different views is as how much they want government to do. For a stark and timely contrast, consider two of these views: libertarianism, which wants the state to do only a few things, and socialism, which wants the state to do a lot of things.
Libertarianism, in political theory, is the view that that state governs best that governs least; its function is only to keep people from harming each other. There are no rights to food or shelter or health care; we only have rights to life and legal justice, and rights to do what we like with whatever we have at our disposal, so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Therefore, the proper functions of government might include the maintainance of the courts, the police, the military, and perhaps a few other vital functions. But under no circumstances, according to libertarianism, should government do such things as establish schools, or heavily regulate industry, or run social welfare programs. Nor should government restrict free speech, sexual practices, gambling, or any other so-called victimless crimes. For libertarianism, government’s main imperative should be: Hands off!
Socialism, nearly on the other end of a continuum, is the view that the state is responsible for an equitable distribution of wealth and for controlling the means of production and distribution of resources in an economy. This has been loosely and popularly known as "communism"; but philosophers use the term "communism" to mean one stage in the progression of a socialist society. Anyway, a socialist believes that we have a right not just to life; we have a right to all the essential means of sustaining life, such as food, clean water, shelter, and so forth. An important right that many socialists say we do not have is the right to private property. Justice, moreover, consists not only of everyone having adequate amounts of those basic rights; it consists also of the lack of large discrepancies in wealth and other resources between people. And so the functions of the government are many and varied, everything from running electric and water utilities, to providing welfare benefits for those who cannot work, to running factories, and so forth. So socialists want the government to be in virtually every productive area of life. They maintain that governments are morally justified in being a part of all of those different areas.
Obviously, we do not have the time to weigh the merits of libertarianism and socialism, or any other theories about the function of government. I just want you to understand that once we have given some justification for the existence of the state at all, we are faced with the question of what governments are morally justified in doing, which is another way of saying what their purposes or functions should be. As you can see, this turns to be one of the most important questions, not only of philosophy, but of any inquiry.
Quibble: Socialism doesn't refer to a level of government control, merely to a level of economic equality. It would be difficult to say all fascist governments are socialist. And on the other hand, anarchism is sometimes libertarian socialism. I would fix this but I don't know the actual term...maybe despotism suffices, but it has a lot of connotations associated therewith.
![[Home]](wikipedia.png)