ANARCHY, STATE, AND UTOPIA
Robert Nozick
Basic Books (1974)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award.

"If the state did not exist would it be necessary to invent it? Would one be needed, and would it have to be invented? These questions arise for political philosophy and for a theory explaining political phenomena and are answered by investigating the 'state of nature' to use the terminology of traditional political theory....

...The fundamental question of political philosophy, one that precedes questions about how the state should be organized, is whether there should be any state at all. Why not have anarchy? Since anarchist theory, if tenable, undercuts the whole subject of political philosophy, it is appropriate to begin political philosophy with an examination of its major theoretical alternative....beginning the subject of political philosophy with state-of-nature theory has an explanatory purpose...." Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Part 1, State-of-Nature Theory, or How to Back into a State without Really Trying, Chapter 1, "Why State-of-Nature Theory?" pp. 3–4

"...A theory of a state of nature that begins with fundamental general descriptions of morally permissible and impermissible actions, and of deeply based reasons why some persons in any society would violate these moral constraints, and goes on to describe how a state would arise from that state of nature will serve our explanatory purposes...

...State-of-nature explanations of the political realm are fundamental potential explanations of this realm and pack explanatory punch and illumination...

...Since considerations both of political philosophy and of explanatory political theory converge upon Locke's state of nature, we shall begin with that...." Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Part 1, State-of-Nature Theory, or How to Back into a State without Really Trying, Chapter 1, "Why State-of-Nature Theory?" pp. 7–9

BOOK DESCRIPTION
PUBLISHER
In this brilliant and widely acclaimed book, winner of the 1975 National Book Award, Robert Nozick challenges the most commonly held political and social positions of our age—liberal, socialist, and conservative.

BOOK REVIEW
"...This was the first book to make libertarian views on the nature and legitimacy of the state respectable in academia.

Anarchy, State and Utopia set out to prove, in a manner both intellectually rigorous and playful, that the only morally defensible state is one restricted to the minimal functions of adjudication and defense against force and fraud. No welfare state, no industrial policy, no bailouts, no anti-discrimination laws allowed.

One revolutionary element of Anarchy for mainstream political philosophy is that Nozick started his discussion from the individualist-anarchist viewpoint that he was exposed to by libertarian economist Murray Rothbard. Rather than accepting the state's legitimacy as a given, Nozick spun long, complicated webs of thought before capturing a legitimate state of any sort. He brought within the mainstream of political philosophy what had previously been thought of as kooky fringe notions about competing, private defense agencies. Nozick did conclude that a single defense agency could indeed arise from anarchy to become an effective minimal state without violating anyone's rights. This was the shift, within the book's three-part structure, from anarchy to state.

Discussions of Anarchy often focus on his detailed arguments about how to justify a minimal state and his arguments with liberal philosophical powerhouse John Rawls over the justice of government wealth redistribution. That's understandable, but often leads to neglect of the book's fascinating 'utopia' section. Nozick explains that his vision of the minimal state is the closest we can come to utopia. His utopia is not one in which a central vision of the good life predominates. Rather, it's a multivarient, cornucopic world where people could form communities that met their needs without being ordered around by a managing state. 'Utopia is a framework for utopias,' he concludes, 'a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others…utopia is meta-utopia: the environment in which utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing.' And a libertarian minimal state, Nozick posited, was that utopia...." (from "Anarchist in the Academy," reasononline obituary by Brian Doherty, Associate Editor, Reason magazine, January 25, 2002)