Bernard Williams once drew a surprising conclusion from an unlikely source: Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia.
Nozick’s book is often taken to be a bible among libertarians who advocate for an ultra-minimal state. Yet Williams thought Nozick’s arguments, if true, had radical redistributive implications:
Mr Nozick’s derivation theory of justice does not imply that contemporary property holdings are just; on the contrary (though it is a matter of unrecoverable fact), it is 99 per cent probable that almost all of them are not. (Mr Nozick may well think that much of America rightfully belongs to Indians.) And in a vitally important but unemphatic passage (page 231) he makes it clear that redistribution by the state may well be, as things are, necessary for the rectification of past injustice.
Williams goes on to complain:
There is little comfort in these pages for contemporary friends of business; but Mr Nozick hardly makes it as clear as he might that this is so.
There’s an ironic twist in William’s charge. It’s almost as if he’s saying: “Here, let me show you how, by your own lights, we can easily go from what seems like a hard-nosed political conservatism to a radical redistributive scheme. Hoist by your own petard!”
The lesson to be learned is that we are often unaware of the implications of our own views.
Segway….
There’s a similar sort of charge that might be brought against an old defence of the British Museum’s stolen goods.
The defence usually proceeds by noting that wealthy Western museums, though they are indeed in possession of stolen goods, ought to keep them because they are best equipped to preserve them. Returning these fragile and priceless artifacts to an unstable political climate or a poorly run museum could risk their destruction. And don’t we all benefit from having a safe place to store and thereby view these objects? Who better to take care of these stolen goods than the British?
Fair enough.
But is the British Museum all it is cracked up to be?
Proponents of this view will no doubt be shocked find out that a serial thief was able to steal 2,000 precious artifacts from the British Museum over the course of a few years. But how? How could a thief get around one of the great and mighty institutions of British life? Aren’t the British far too smart and savvy to be outsmarted for years upon years by a simple-minded thief?
It turns out that they are.
And now the opposite seems true: if leaving these stolen goods in the British Museum could risk their disappearance, then shouldn’t we give them back? After all, how, after this dastardly turn of events, could one trust the British with these precious cultural artifacts?
I for one think that perhaps there is a case to be made that the British are not fit to care for their stolen artifacts. Better to give them back, then, on both you-stole-it-and-so-it-is-not-yours sorts of grounds and you-are-not-the-competent-civilized-caretaker that you said you are sorts of grounds.
I mean, "sometimes big museums get robbed" doesn't really counter the argument that they're relatively speaking the safest place.