David Gordon

Is a Marxist society liable to be an oppressive one? To ask this question is immediately to pose two others: what is meant by Marxism; and what counts as an oppressive society? To take these questions in reverse order, by an oppressive society I shall mean one in which, other things being equal, people do not possess basic civil liberties. Examples of basic civil liberties include, but are not limited to, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and, if the society has a political system, the freedom to participate in that system. An example of what I mean by basic civil liberties is the system of basic liberties discussed by Rawls; the United States Bill of Rights is another example

N. M. L. Nathan's argument that IDP utilitarianism, if universally adopted, is inconsistent, does not succeed. The argument requires that if an IDP utilitarian has only self-regarding desires, then none of these desires can be informed. This rests on a partial misuse of the expression satisfaction of desire. For an individual attempting to realize his self-regarding desires, the satisfaction of the satisfaction of a desire is unmeaning. The naming of an object of the desire is an intrinsic part of the phrase satisfaction of desire. Further, contrary to Nathan's claim, this suggestion does not trivialize IDP utilitarianism.

When libertarian political philosophy attracted wide public notice in the 1970s, a common view was that the distinctive individual rights advocated in libertarian theory required grounding in a theory of ethics. Recently, this view has come under challenge. It has been argued that resort to such grounding in ethical theory is unneeded. An appeal to common sense intuitions suffices to justify libertarianism. First, a brief account of libertarianism will be presented. Then, some examples of the older, pro-grounding position will be discussed. Then, the principal defense of the newer view, Michael Huemer’s The Problem of Political Authority, will be examined. This discussion constitutes the substance of the present paper. The principal contention of the present article will be that the argument to libertarianism from intuitions does not succeed. In conclusion, it will be suggested that a return to the earlier, grounding view is indicated for philosophers who wish to defend libertarianism.

In an ingenious argument, Ng and Singer claim to show that it is possible to derive the general principle of utility from another principle, Weak Majority Preference, which many who are not utilitarians would be prepared to accept. WMP does indeed sound acceptable: ‘For a community of N individuals choosing between two possibilities, X and Y, if no individual prefers Y to X, and at least individuals prefer X to Y, then X increases social welfare and is preferable’. But from this seemingly innocuous rule, Ng and Singer maintain, quite substantial results follow if one takes account the well-established fact of intransitive indifference owing to the existence of finite sensibility.

Ludwig von Mises argued that (1) economic calculation under socialism is impossible, and that (2) the lack of calculation would entail chaos and starvation. In these pages, Bryan Caplan has accepted the first claim but rejected the second, and has argued further that in real‐world attempts to implement socialism, it was the lack of incentives, not the absence of economic calculation, that was responsible for economic chaos. I suggest, against Caplan's interpretation, that by “chaos” Mises meant the lack of calculation, rather than some further state of affairs entailed by this lack. So interpreted, Mises's argument escapes the brunt of Caplan's criticisms.