Peter Sloterdijk has recently called for a radical rethinking of redistribution. He criticized “compulsory taxation” (sic!) as fiscal kleptocracy inadequately degrading its citizens intosubjects of tax laws, rather than encouraging the rich to give. He cited US philanthropy and suggested to promote voluntary donations in lieu of taxes, thinking of (rich) people as givers, not as takers.
via Flickr, originally uploaded by Mindful One
Don’t tax me, I’ll donate?!
Sloterdijk’s hyperliberal argument may be spearheading the kind of uncritical naturalizing of private property that also underlies much of the praise of foundations. Sloterdijk has it wrong when he believes that he doesn’t owe the polity much to be taxed.
No man is an island.
John Donne (1572 – 1631)
We do in fact, owe the polity a lot, and certainly all of our private property. This is not to say that property is theft, as the latrine Marxists like to sloganeer. This is to say: private property is never pre-social, is never independently our own doing. To begin with, private property is real only in so far as we mandate and equip a state to uphold it, just like all the other public goods, on which all individual prosperity relies (think: streets, social peace). Also, we have plenty ofempirical and normative reasons to believe that market outcomes are at best an imperfect indicator of achievement. Lastly, we know that social inequality can be self-reinforcing and we know that wealth has diminishing, if not conspicuous returns.
None of this is to say that rich people are bad people, an easy political sell that too many populists go for (this, Sloterdijk is right about). This is to say: rich people are rich because they earned a lot of the carrots we apparently need to keep things going. They deserve to eat and enjoy some of these carrots (consumption), because, ideally, they have created great value for everyone around them. Also, it’s probably a good idea to entrust these people with capital, because they ideally know how to make good use of it (investment).
Rich people aren’t rich because they created the carrots or capital out of mid-air. The polity handed out these consumption checks, and the polity has every right to bounce some of them, if that is considered fair.
Voluntary donations instead of progressive taxation and eternally tax-exempt foundation endowments restrict the polity’s right to do this rebalancing and reallocating. They shouldn’t. Private property isn’t theft, but neither is taxation.
This post is also on http://www.policy-net.org/blogs/thepotentpolity/capitalisnttheftbutneitheristaxation
German tax law defines the term tax as: „einmalige oder laufende Geldleistungen, die nicht eine Gegenleistung für eine besondere Leistung darstellen und von einem öffentlich-rechtlichen Gemeinwesen zur Erzielung von Einkünften allen auferlegt werden, bei denen der Tatbestand zutrifft, an den das Gesetz die Leistungspflicht knüpft.“ (Birk 2008: 32f.) Consequently, taxation is always compulsory and necessary. Donation is a nice idea, if we consider it as a “plus”. Sloterdijk should think more about the question: What is a tax?
It is interesting to read, that you are taking – somehow – a Hobbesian view on taxes. Locke would reject your idea of property.
Hey Fred, thanks so much for the thoughtful comment.
Thanks for digging up the definition that makes it crystal clear that indeed, Sloterdijk’s “compulsory taxation” is a pleonasm.
I hadn’t thought about Hobbes when writing this … but I’ll look into that and what Locke thinks of property. I guess I am just used to seeing “externalities” and public goods everywhere, and so I believe it is with private property, particularly as our production becomes ever more knowledge- and capital-intensive. More support for the idea that private property, or more broadly speaking, inequality has an externality comes from The Spirit Level, an (empirical) argument/book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett . It’s a great read!