produce the minimal state.” 129 It then remains unclear why materialistic individualism is inherently preferable to collectivism, and why the moral impetus to ensure protection against social risk ends at the minimal state. Presuming the social utility and economic efficiency of both state provision through redistributive taxation and private provision through private contract were equal, it is not clear what grounds Nozick would have for preferring the latter. Nozick presumes the opposite, and the opposite is often true in fact, but in accepting the artificial nature of the state, Nozick and the liberal contractualist tradition must also acknowledge that this is not a necessary state of affairs, but merely a common one. Philosophically, too, Nozick’s position is questionable. From a Foucaultian perspective, “bio - power” and the subsequent rise of state racism occur because of a vacuum of purpose within the state. From a Marxist perspective, the state exists, and has always existed, to prosecute the political aims of the economically powerful as a means of redressing the numerical imbalance between them as a group and the economically weak, a perspective mirr ored by Aristotle. In Plato’s Republic , Socrates rejects this form of institutionalism entirely and focuses on the duty and character of the ruler 130 . When Hayek observed that “a democracy may well wield totalitarian powers, and it is conceivable that an authoritarian government may act on liberal principles”, he was observing that no necessary connection between the type of government, a minimal constitutional one in Nozick’s case, and its subsequent purpose, the prosecution of the basic human rights to free contract and property ownership, and those necessary to 129 Ibid., p. 52. 130 See Foucault, M., “Society must be defended” at http://rebels- library.org/files/foucault_society_must_be_defended.pdf, p. 239, Marx, K. and Engels, F., The Communist Manifesto , OUP, Oxford, 1998, p. 10 , Aristotle, Politics , at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html, Part V and Plato, Republic , Book I, at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.2.i.html, both retrieved 14/04/2016 at 19:48 p.m.
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