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Philippe Van Parijs' Real Freedom for All (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) is one of the most stimulating contributions to left-libertarianism published in the last decade. It is, therefore, not surprising that an edited volume that critically examines his ideas has now been published. The contributing authors (two of whom, Peter Vallentyne and Hillel Steiner, are other well known left-libertarians) raise interesting and often pointed questions, but they all have some good things to say about Van Parijs' original proposal.
To assess these criticisms, it is necessary to begin with a brief account of Real Freedom , something that Andrew Reeve does quite well in the introductory chapter. Real Freedoms advances the idea that one should have the opportunity to do as one chooses, subject to certain constraints having to do with the rights of others. Since most people do not have a choice between working and not working, a central point in Real Freedom is that the state should guarantee a generous and unconditional basic income to all. "Such a payment" Reeve notes "is ... different from standard welfare payments, which are often means tested, [and] depend upon a person's availability and willingness to take employment [among other conditions]" (5). Van Parijs justifies this scheme as a necessary condition for building a free society and he further claims that a free society is a just society. "Van Parijs also defends a second form of redistribution, which is targeted at those with a particular disadvantage, and designed to achieve what he terms undominated diversity " (3). Because only capitalism can generate the wealth necessary for implementing these programs, Van Parijs offers a qualified defence of that system in comparison to socialism. An acceptable form of capitalism would have to accommodate the concept of "employment assets"; in his view, individuals who hold jobs "have appropriated a (social) asset, just as if they occupied a piece of land, and are required to pay a fair price for doing so" (3). This could be a considerable source of revenue for the state.
Chapter 2 by John Cunliffe, Guido Erreygers and Walter Van Tier retraces the origins of the idea of a basic income. They analyze proposals formulated by Joseph Charlier (in 1841) and by Mabel Milner in 1918. Their...