The new issue of Regulation (Vol. 48, No. 1 [Spring 2025]) features, under the rubric “From the Past,” my review of Anthony de Jasay’s book Justice and Its Surroundings (Liberty Fund, 2002). This book may appeal more to political philosophers than to economists, compared with Against Politics (Routledge, 1997) which I recently reviewed for Econlib. We always find a dose of both philosophy and economics in de Jasay’s writings, which is not surprising since any proposal for social organization has moral underpinnings—ultimately requires value judgments as economists say.
Against Politics should probably be read before Justice and Its Surroundings, but since both books are collections of articles, the reader can, as it were, choose his level of difficulty within each. And his seminal book The State probably remains the best entrance door to his thought; moreover, it is available online at the Online Library of Liberty.
To go back to my latest Regulation review (available online in both html and pdf versions—scroll to p. 55 in the latter case) of Justice and Its Surroundings, here are a few excerpts:
Property can be considered as the infrastructure of society and it is, with its consequence of commerce, “prior to political authority, to the state.” All-voluntary private relations and the all-coercive state are at the two extremes of a spectrum. …
De Jasay argues that a cooperative game is played in society, not a prisoner-dilemma game, and that subjection to a central enforcer is not necessarily required. …
In an original typology, de Jasay considers a right as created by a voluntary exchange with a matching obligation. I lend you $100 for one year, and you agree to assume the obligation of reimbursing me $104 next year; thus, I have a right to $104 at that time. A liberty is something physically feasible that I may do if it is not a tort and does not violate an obligation I assumed. …
We can encapsulate de Jasay’s complex theory of justice in a combination of a strong presumption of liberty (or, in fact, liberties), spontaneous conventions as the foundation of law, and a strong respect for private property. …
De Jasay does not believe in a general and formal equality before the law as the liberal state is called to provide. This is because there is no state in his theory. He might say that equality before conventions exists as a matter of fact. Many will find this to be a weakness of his theory, at least in a standard classical liberal perspective.
Other interesting aspects of Justice and Its Surroundings include its attack on egalitarianism and socialism, including market socialism. De Jasay also criticizes Buchanan’s social contractarianism although he shows much respect for him—as Buchanan expressed much respect for de Jasay’s work. My review covers more and provides more detail.
READER COMMENTS
Mactoul
Mar 24 2025 at 12:28am
The world of Jasay is apparently without crime and criminals indeed. Hobbes is not even mentioned let alone refuted.
Is he saying that medieval Venice State etc did not concern itself with commercial law? Even granted that, the medieval states were hardly anarchies. The merchant and his property were protected by the might of the state. More in particular , I would have thought, for the Italian city-states were quite commercial in orientation.This any proto statal authority is particularly strong and odd. One naturally thinks that medieval people were quite strong on authority .
When you start with natural prohibition you end in natural law. What Jasay wants to call immemorial and near-universal cross-cultural conventions –is precisely what others call natural law. A mere convention, if words have any meaning, necessarily lacks the universality. But for some odd reasons, the term natural law is to be deprecated and the term convention misapplied.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 24 2025 at 11:25am
Mactoul: Some of your points are valid, but most are not and indeed have been refuted by de Jasay. Just in Justice and Its Surroundings, for example, “Hobbes” is mentioned 18 times. Chapter 3, “Prisoners’ Dilemma and the Theory of the State” (a reproduction of his Palgrave entry on the same topic), reviews the failings of Hobbes’s theory, which conceived the whole social game as a prisoners’ dilemma. (See also Chapter 1.) His book Social Contract, Free Ride can be seen as a more technical refutation of Hobbes’ prisoner-dilemma approach.
Mactoul
Mar 25 2025 at 1:01am
I meant Hobbes was not mentioned in your review. From the emphasis on various topics given in he review, it seems that the classical liberals/libertarians are carrying on an interminable and one-sided conversation with progressives/socialists —one-sided because the socialists don’t exist any more and the progressives have moved on to social topics (where the libertarians generally agree with them).
I really wonder about this refutation of Hobbes. How is it even possible. There can be a response but in these matters, which are not susceptible to mathematics, despite pretensions of game theory and others of the ilk, a refutation is a pretty strong word under the circumstances.
Since the review is largely given over to questions of redistribution, equality etc, the topic of how an anarchy handles crime was not touched upon. How do all humans transform into happy cooperators?
It strikes me that the advent of liberalism had to wait existence of a sufficiently docile population. The murder rate in Europe had been decreasing for centuries (Steven Pinker, Better Angels of Our Nature), and the liberalism could only take off when the murder rate (a surrogate for general crime rate) went down to a sufficiently low level.
Mactoul
Mar 24 2025 at 1:12am
In Locke, a unowned thing gets to be owned when an individual mixes his labor with it. But here the term discover is used. Question is why? Also the question is justification of Locke’s mixing of labor. Why does mixing of one’s labor makes one the owner of that thing?
And why would discovery of something makes one owner of that thing? Discovery is a rather vague and flexible term.
I submit that mixing of one’s labor is a more rigorous definition for ownership since it matches with the moral premise that a man must eat of the sweat of his brow However, the qualification mixing of one’s labor is silent on how much labor needs to be mixed with precisely which thing. Can I own the air simply by waving my hands or own a piece of land by walking on it?
So, a political community, a collective decision is required to define how much labor needs to be mixed with a particular thing as to establish ownership. And this is precisely the point Milton Friedman made when he gave the example of ownership right in the airspace above one’s property.
Jon Murphy
Mar 24 2025 at 7:56am
Great stuff Pierre. I need to get back into de Jasay. I started reading him a few years ago but had to put him down; he was consuming a lot of mental resources at a time where the opportunity cost was sky-high (dissertation & job hunt).
While I am not an anarchist myself, I find the philosophy interesting as an ideal. It is something to be striving toward, even if it can never ultimately be reached.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 24 2025 at 10:49am
Jon: Thanks. You are right that understanding Anthony de Jasay requires “a lot of mental resources.” You also write:
This is a defendable position. De Jasay himself sometimes seems to acknowledge it. Quoting from my Regulation review (and de Jasay):
We must also remember that he wasn’t sure that an anarchic society could be protected against thuggish states.
David Seltzer
Mar 24 2025 at 7:01pm
Pierre: “Property can be considered as the infrastructure of society and it is, with its consequence of commerce, “prior to political authority, to the state.” All-voluntary private relations and the all-coercive state are at the two extremes of a spectrum. … De Jasay argues that a cooperative game is played in society, not a prisoner-dilemma game, and that subjection to a central enforcer is not necessarily required.”
I’m reading The State. I must admit I sometimes read a paragraph several times before I understand it. It seems De Jasay is leaning in the direction of the normative. From James Madison “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. He asked, how does the government control the governed as well as itself? (paraphrase). Does Madison mean suprahuman angels or humans who treat others such that there would be no need for governance. Who might be those flawed, self-interested humans?