Nozickian Justice Reconsidered: A Relational Egalitarian Critique of Entitlement Theory

Abstract

This paper critically examines Robert Nozick’s Entitlement Theory of Justice from a relational egalitarian perspective grounded in social constructivism. I argue that entitlement theory fails on three levels: (1) it is conceptually incoherent, (2) it licenses morally abhorrent outcomes incompatible with human dignity, and (3) it is practically impossible to implement. Nozick’s core concept of self-ownership commits a category error by treating persons as property, while his Lockean Proviso either permits domination or collapses into the patterned principles he rejects. I conclude by sketching a relational egalitarian alternative in which property arrangements are democratically constructed instruments serving reciprocal justification and non-domination.

I. The Philosophical Ground: Reciprocal Egalitarianism

1. Social Constructivism and the Priority of Persons

Rights, property, and law are not natural facts but human constructs—products of social practices shaped by power and vulnerability. Any adequate political philosophy must begin from the reality of embodied, interdependent agents in conditions of scarcity. Justice, therefore, is not a matter of discovering pre-political entitlements but of constructing fair terms of social cooperation among equals.

The foundational moral constraint is non-instrumentalization: persons must be treated as ends in themselves, never merely as means. Institutions that determine life prospects must be justifiable to each person on terms they can accept as free and equal. This yields a relational principle of legitimacy:

Reciprocal Justification – Institutions are legitimate only when their terms are justifiable to all affected persons as equals.
Anti-Domination – Arrangements that subject some to arbitrary power over their basic life prospects are illegitimate, regardless of their historical genesis.

Democratic authority is therefore not a threat to liberty but the means by which reciprocal justification is achieved. The key question becomes not whether the state respects pre-political property rights, but whether property arrangements themselves can be reciprocally justified to those they govern.

II. The Foundational Incoherence of Entitlement Theory

1. The Self-Ownership Catastrophe

Nozick’s system rests on the concept of “self-ownership,” yet this idea is internally incoherent. If self-ownership implies full property rights—including the right to sell or transfer ownership—then the theory permits slavery. If it excludes such rights, it has already subordinated property to moral considerations that the theory claims to exclude. Either self-ownership permits domination or abandons its own logic.

The deeper problem is categorical: ownership is a relation between persons regarding things. It cannot coherently describe the relation of a person to themselves. Treating persons as property—even self-owned property—reifies subjects as objects, violating the very moral inviolability Nozick seeks to preserve. The rights actually doing the normative work are those of autonomy and dignity, grounded in personhood, not property.

Defenders sometimes propose “inalienable self-ownership,” but this is a contradiction in terms. The concept of ownership paradigmatically includes transferability. To strip ownership of alienability is to admit that what we have toward ourselves is not ownership at all but moral status. The “ownership” metaphor thus performs no theoretical work—it is a rhetorical device disguising status rights as property rights. Once exposed, the derivation of external property rights from self-ownership loses its foundation.

2. The Bootstrapping Problem

Even if self-ownership were coherent, entitlement theory still collapses on the question of how property rights become binding. Nozick treats property as pre-political, grounding the state’s legitimacy in its protection. But, as Kant observed, unilateral property claims in a “state of nature” are only provisional: they lack authority to bind others. Only within a legitimate civil order can property rights become peremptory—definitively binding on all. Property thus presupposes political authority; it cannot justify it. Nozick’s order of dependence is reversed.

3. Framework Circularity and Colonial Practice

This inversion reveals itself historically in encounters between societies with incompatible property frameworks—colonial conquest, for example. Nozick’s theory offers no meta-principle for adjudicating such conflicts. “Justice in acquisition” depends entirely on which framework prevails, and thus on power, not right. Property cannot be a constraint on political power when its very definition depends on political victory.

4. The Proviso Dilemma

Nozick’s Lockean Proviso—that appropriation is just only if “enough and as good” is left for others—collapses under scrutiny. If interpreted weakly (others must be no worse off than in a state of nature), it becomes trivially satisfied and permits domination through dependency. If interpreted strongly (others must retain effective autonomy), it demands continual redistribution to preserve equal freedom—precisely the “patterned” principle Nozick rejects. Either the proviso does no work or it destroys the theory. There is no stable middle ground.

III. Practical Collapse and Moral Failure

1. Domination Through Property

Nozick’s theory licenses outcomes indistinguishable from totalitarianism. Through a series of voluntary exchanges, one agent or corporation could acquire control over all vital resources. Those without property would be “free” only in the formal sense, compelled to accept whatever terms the owner sets. Private property thus becomes private sovereignty—the negation of liberty the theory was meant to protect.

Nozick’s famous Wilt Chamberlain example claims that maintaining any distributive pattern violates liberty. But relational egalitarianism is not a patterned theory: it tolerates inequality so long as it does not create domination. The relevant question is not how much one has, but what power inequality confers over others. Once inequality translates into structural dependence, it violates the anti-domination principle and forfeits legitimacy.

2. The Intergenerational Problem

Entitlement theory also fails across time. A world in which all resources have been appropriated leaves later generations with no genuine alternative but to accept existing owners’ terms. This cannot be justified reciprocally to those born into subjection. To treat them as bound by ancestral claims is to instrumentalize them for the sake of the dead. Each generation must have the authority to determine property arrangements it can justify to its own members. Property is not an ancestral chain; it is a living institution answerable to the living.

3. The Rectification Reductio

Nozick concedes that real-world holdings have been shaped by conquest, slavery, and fraud. His “rectification” principle requires redistribution to approximate what a just history would have produced. But since no such history exists, and since the necessary rectification would be massive and indeterminate, the theory collapses into the very patterned interventions it forbids. The historical principle refutes itself: it either yields nothing determinate or mandates the abolition of existing holdings.

IV. Constructing the Alternative: Property as Instrument

1. From Holdings to Relationships

The failure of entitlement theory reveals a deeper truth: justice is not about who owns what, but about how people stand in relation to one another. Property is legitimate only insofar as it structures relationships of equality rather than domination. It is not a pre-political right but a political instrument designed to enable reciprocal freedom.

2. The Principle of Reciprocal Justification

Relational egalitarianism requires that property arrangements be justifiable to all affected persons as equals. This entails three normative conditions:

No Arbitrary Power – Economic power must not confer the capacity for coercive control over others’ basic life prospects.
Material Preconditions for Reciprocity – Persons must possess the material security and capabilities necessary to participate as equals in social cooperation.
Continuous Justification – Property arrangements must remain open to democratic revision as circumstances change.

3. The Circumstances of Political Justice

To interact as peers, persons require a material baseline encompassing:

Security: Reliable access to housing, healthcare, and sustenance.
Capability: Education and developmental resources enabling occupational choice and civic participation.
Margin: A buffer sufficient to refuse exploitative relationships and engage in public life without fear of destitution.

These are not perfectionist goods but preconditions for equality in political and economic relations. Just as democracy requires civil rights to secure deliberative equality, it requires material conditions to secure economic equality of standing. A polity that fails to guarantee these conditions has not achieved democracy in substance—it has institutionalized dependency.

This is an old republican insight refashioned for egalitarian modernity: freedom requires independence, but independence must be universalized, not restricted to the propertied. The relational egalitarian state thus guarantees material independence as a condition of civic equality.

4. Institutional Implications

To preserve reciprocal justification and prevent domination, legitimate property regimes must incorporate:

Deconcentration of Economic Power: Progressive taxation, anti-monopoly enforcement, and limits on organizational dominance.
Democratic Accountability in Production: Worker co-determination and democratic control in large enterprises.
Universal Material Baselines: Public guarantees of essential goods and services.
Intergenerational Renewal: Periodic democratic reassessment of property structures and substantial inheritance taxation to prevent dynastic domination.

The aim is not perfect equality of wealth but the elimination of subordination. Inequality is tolerable only within bounds that preserve equal standing. As collective wealth changes, these bounds must adjust through democratic deliberation—a process of continuous recalibration.

V. Conclusion: From Discovery to Construction

Nozick’s entitlement theory collapses at every level. It rests on a conceptual confusion—treating persons as property; it licenses domination—the very negation of liberty; and it fails its own historical test—requiring impossible rectifications. The attempt to derive political legitimacy from pre-political entitlements is a philosophical dead end.

The alternative begins with a reversal of perspective: rights and property are not discovered facts but constructed relationships justified through democracy. The task of justice is to design institutions that enable persons to coexist as equals, free from domination and capable of mutual justification. Property rights are instruments of this moral project, not constraints upon it.

The principle is simple but profound:

Every social arrangement must be justifiable to each person as a free and equal participant in the cooperative order that governs them.

From this, all legitimate property follows—and none of Nozick’s conclusions survive.