The human rights that are defended in libertarian literature tend to be limited in scope, which entails that the duties that people can be compelled to fulfil are similarly minimal. For this reason a commitment to libertarianism tends to be seen as incompatible with support for subsistence rights, enforceable positive duties, and redistributive taxation, since each one of these issues may require the infringement of libertarian property rights. In this thesis I aim to challenge these assumptions about libertarianism and to show that if a more plausible reading of libertarianism is adopted – what has come to be known as left-libertarianism – then this will generate a more substantial range of rights and correlative duties which are not only compatible with redistributive taxation, but in fact entail it. I show that libertarianism, despite its contention that human rights are exclusively negative, does not rule out subsistence rights provided that these are understood as negative rights, for example: a right not to be deprived of the means of subsistence, or deprived of a clean living environment. Negative rights can be violated not only by individuals or by institutions, but also by individuals supporting institutions. In order to respect the negative rights of others it is necessary to refrain from supporting or contributing to institutions that violate these rights. Moreover, failure to respect these rights brings about a positive duty of rectification, demonstrating the potential for positive libertarian duties even in the absence of positive rights. Since the manner in which rights can be violated is extensive, so is the scope of those individuals that owe rectification. The fundamental libertarian rights of self-ownership, which I characterise as three property rights – over the body, over the faculties (including talents, abilities and labour) and over what one can produce through exercising those faculties in conjunction with the body – demonstrate how we can come to have property rights over external objects, but self-ownership does not confer permanent private property rights over unlimited external worldly resources. In fact, a robust right of self-ownership is incompatible with the radically inegalitarian appropriation with which libertarianism is ordinarily associated. Given the equal rights of selfownership of every individual, it is far more plausible to conceive of the world as held in some egalitarian manner, rather than as unowned and available for appropriation in such a way that would disadvantage latecomers. I propose an egalitarian understanding of world ownership which comprises common ownership of land, and joint ownership of other external worldly resources such as oil and minerals. Taking the injustice of radically inegalitarian appropriation in conjunction with a duty to rectify past injustices, there follows a libertarian argument for redistribution, but crucially this redistributive taxation is collected not on income but on natural resource use. On a left-libertarian theory of rights, then, there is no right to appropriate unlimited resources, but there is a right to redistribution in the event of past injustices, including the misappropriation of worldly resources.

This thesis shows that exploitation can arise from a just background, via just steps, when we exercise our moral rights. The theory rests on the idea that exploitation can arise via a special category of luck, which I call socially constructed luck. By taking into account what John Rawls calls background justice and what G.A. Cohen refers to as an accumulation problem, I argue that socially constructed luck is brought about through a cumulative process of people freely exercising their moral rights in the pursuit of their own conception of the good life. Unless the negative effects of this type of luck are offset, exploitative interactions can arise where people have no reasonable alternative but to enter a particular transaction. Socially constructed luck can play a direct role in privileging some individuals at the expense of others and allows for the extraction of surplus benefits. Importantly, by showing that luck egalitarianism should be understood within a conception of exploitation, the thesis not only provides a deeper understanding of how the luck egalitarian and relational egalitarian views align, but also justifies the introduction of a basic right to a reasonable alternative.

In this article, I want to explain Michael Otsuka¡¦s idea of distributive justice, the latest theory of the left-libertarianism. Otsuka argued that self-ownership can be combined with a kind of egalitarian ownership principle and he critics that the conflict between self-ownership and equality is an illusion. I will examine Otsuka¡¦s theory about self-ownership, egalitarian proviso and the framework of political societies of voluntarism. And I will point out what is the wrong and right in his theory.

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The diploma thesis aims to confirm whether Pirate parties are liberal and left-libertarian parties and that they are similar to green parties in this way. After 2006 Pirate parties emerged gradually as a new alternative to manage the politics and democracy in Western democracies. Pirates came up with themes such as the fight against copyright or the protection of individuals within the internet. In the first theoretical part of this thesis both liberalism and left-libertarianism as well as Green parties are discussed. The second empirical part deals with Pirate parties. First, their origin and development are described and, with an emphasis on Swedish, German, Icelandic and the Czech Pirate Party - because of their relevance associated with electoral successes -, basic elements of their programmes are introduced. Based on those findings the analysis confronting the elements of liberalism and left-libertarianism with programmes of Pirate parties is performed in the final section of the thesis. The hypothesis that Pirate parties are predominantly left-libertarian parties is proved. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

In this paper, I have examined the political philosophy of a left-libertarian, Michael Otsuka from his book Libertarianism Without Inequality, and a libertarian socialist, Nicholas Vrousalis from his article Libertarian Socialism: A Better Reconciliation between Equality and Self-Ownership. The goal of this examination is partially to explore and present a variety of positions on distributive justice within libertarian theory as well as defend libertarian socialism as a plausible form of libertarianism. The main question motivating this defense is “Can libertarian socialism be truly libertarian in its conception of self-ownership and autonomy?”. In this examination of both left-libertarianism and libertarian socialism I compared both theories to the works of prominent right-libertarian philosophers, primarily John Locke and Robert Nozick, to determine if the theories meet the standards set by traditional libertarianism in promoting individual autonomy as well as to determine if these standards can be reconciled with substantial material equality, either in terms of opportunity or welfare. The results of this examination showed that not only are left-libertarianism and libertarian socialism plausible theories of libertarianism, even exceeding potential for individual autonomy found in right-libertarian theory, but that they both successfully reconcile this autonomy with equality. In defending libertarian socialism, it was determined that it is a successful reconciliation of self-ownership and equality, though this comes at the expense of the potential for minor decreases in self-ownership among individuals when compared to Otsuka’s left-libertarianism. This was defended, however, as libertarian socialism seems more promising a theory for those who hold stronger commitments to equality as well as additional commitments, namely a commitment to democracy.

Ce mémoire a pour but de miner le projet libertarien d'une défense de la structure de la propriété libérale basée sur le principe de propriété de soi. Loin de nier le concept de propriété de soi, nous adoptons le principe associé à la pensée libertarienne et démontrons que l'adoption d'un tel principe nous mène à la restructuration du concept de propriété vers un concept qui est cohérent avec les valeurs égalitaristes et démocratiques. Nous espérons, ceci faisant, pouvoir montrer l'incohérence du projet libertarien, et fournir les outils nécessaires afin que les égalitaristes puissent défendre leurs idées en terrain libertarien. / The purpose of this thesis is to try and undermine the libertarian project of defending the liberal structure of ownership through its use of the principle of self-ownership. Far from denying the concept of self-ownership, we adopt the principle associated with libertarian thought and show that the adoption of such a principle leads us to a restructuring of the concept of ownership towards one that is coherent with egalitarian and democratic values. We hope that, by doing so, we are able to show the incoherence within libertarianism and give the tools necessary for egalitarians to defend their ideas on libertarian grounds.

In this paper, I make use of the game-theoretical concepts of cartel theory and coordination theory via salience and Schelling points in order to assess the viability of prefigurative politics when used by group actors to address the particular case of the climate crisis. I show that prefigurative politics as a strategy faces significant systematic disadvantages when used by social movements attempting to address climate change as compared to when it is used by social movements focused on other causes. These disadvantages are based on two factors: lack of motivation and a difficulty of coordination. In order to illustrate this point, I compare the situation for contemporary climate movements to a case example of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1957, showing how cartel theory worked in the favour of the civil rights movement, and how salience was crucial for the fast mobilisation of the African American community of Montgomery.

Precis The Thesis comprehensively describes and explains basic concepts of Steiner-Vallentyne Left-Libertarianism. The introductory part compares this school of Left-Libertarianism with other approaches and advocates the method of critical theory of society being used, which was formulated by Marek Hrubec, successing classical authors of critical theory. This method divides the analyzed phenomena into three phases - critique, explanation and normativity. The critical phase describes relation between the analyzed and reality, while defining the analyzed against it. Explanation clarifies positive elements, which are consequent from the critique of reality and ultimately, the normative phase formulates a specific conception of the elements' realization. In this Diploma Thesis the critical phase is represented by defition of Left-Libertarianism against dominant streams in contemporary political philosophy, with the accent on its differentiation from related approaches, constituting their conception on one's freedom - especially rawlsian liberalism and classical libertarianism. Explanatory phase is dedicated to basic concepts of Left-Libertarianism, their historical roots and theoretical principles on which they are constituted. Finally, the normative phase presents the concept of universal basic income, which...