Journal of Libertarian Studies

Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State

The Journal of Libertarian Studies
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Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974) is an “invisible hand” variant of a Lockean contractarian attempt to justify the State, or at least a minimal State confined to the functions of protection. Beginning with a free-market anarchist state of nature, Nozick portrays the State as emerging, by an invisible hand process that violates no one’s rights, first as a dominant protective agency, then to an “ultra-minimal state,” and then finally to a minimal state.

Volume 1, Number 1 (1977)

CITE THIS ARTICLE

Rothbard, Murray N. “Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State.” Journal of Libertarian Studies 1, No.1 (1977): 45-57.

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