The Libertarian Illusion: Ideology, Public Policy, and the Assault on the Common Good.

• Author: Kuznicki, Jason
• Position: Book review

The Libertarian Illusion: Ideology, Public Policy, and the Assault on the Common Good

William E. Hudson

Washington: CQ Press, 2008, 244 pp.

It is daunting to review a book claiming that everything you believe is wrong. Fortunately, William Hudson's The Libertarian Illusion 'also attacks many things that neither I nor very many other libertarians believe. This gives courage for the rest.

Hudson, a professor in the political science department at Providence College, is a communitarian. Were I to judge by his book alone, communitarianism appears to mean support for everything that government planners would like to do, provided only that a democratic majority believes such policies constitute the common good. In his first substantive chapter, Hudson also defends higher taxes to pay for these state-supplied goods and services. This stance is unlikely to endear him to the majority, but it's refreshingly honest.

Hudson also appears to have found a word for anything he disagrees with: "libertarian." He bends it to suit his needs. Thus Grover Norquist, who proposes tax cuts because they will lower government revenue, is a libertarian. But so too is Art Laffer, who proposes tax cuts because they will raise government revenue. Clearly, for any change in tax rates, at least one of them must be wrong. Yet neither view, if taken in isolation, offers a particularly strong example of libertarianism. A libertarian would lower taxes not to reach some desired level of government revenue, but because respect for the taxpayer demands it.

A taxpayer has a moral claim to all of his honestly acquired income. This claim is stronger than that of any other individual or group. Adding the words "state" or "'society" to the claims of others does not change this situation in any relevant sense. This is the heart of libertarian thought on taxation. If lowering taxes changes the state's revenue, a libertarian may find this a fortunate or unfortunate side effect, at his discretion.

Hudson, however, disagrees not only with Norquist and Laffer, but also with the libertarian moral claim. He writes,

The ability that any of us have to earn income and acquire wealth depends only partly on our oval individual efforts. It relies as well on the operation of political, economic, and social institutions that make it possible for any of us to "earn a living."... Viewed in this light, those deductions from nay paycheck can be seen as reimbursement to society for that portion of my earnings derived from social goods [p. 43]. Although social goods dearly are part of everyone's capacity to earn income, it's a precipitous move to say that the state may therefore tax us. It is by no means...