Libertarian Self-Doubt

In order to win, we must be confident in our principles, practical in our prescriptions, and driven by vision. We can be all three.

Britain’s libertarian voices face an interesting problem: we’re usually more honest about what we’re arguing for than our opponents. In contemporary politics, it seems that’s not a strength. If anything, it’s a liability. This very honesty, at the foundational moment before any regulation or rate is mentioned, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about the rights of the individual. We’re usually left conceding our principles before the debate even begins.

Robert Nozick, the American philosopher, understood this tension better than most. His argument against redistributive taxation cuts to the bone: when the state taxes your income to fund welfare, it’s not engaging in enlightened social provision. It’s asserting ownership over your labour. A portion of every pound you earn belongs to the state, to be deployed at political discretion. This isn’t merely economics. It’s a foundational claim about who owns you, and not one that reflects well on the state.

For most of us convinced by his arguments, this is where the wobbles start. Taxation is a deeply immoral infringement on your rights as an individual, and no amount of virtuously intended state financing changes that foundational wrong. Yet once you accept Nozick’s logic, you cannot avoid the conclusion: dismantling the welfare state to conform to individual dignity would require far more than adjusting benefit rates or tweaking tax brackets. It would require a civilisational reorientation, convincing tens of millions that the state has no moral right to extract the resources necessary to provide for every contingency.

Most libertarians, including myself on occasion, flinch before this argument even reaches the public. We concede on principle because actually defending what we believe feels politically unworkable and perhaps even slightly distasteful, even to those of us who hold the views. We retreat into technocratic arguments about efficiency, as if the problem were merely managerial rather than moral. We see the state’s plundering of individual wealth as abhorrent, yet quietly earmark some of it for the safety nets that seem inconceivable to live without.