Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia tries to meet this objection along Lockean lines. According to Objectivism, the fundamental right is the right to life, and this implies the right to engage in life-sustaining activity, including the acquisition, production, and possession of property and the voluntary exchange of values with other individuals. In restricting governmental activity to the protection of individual rights from coercive action, the Objectivist politics resembles classical liberal or libertarian theories. At any rate, the recent libertarian literature, if read critically, includes valuable discussions of issues relevant to Objectivist politics. Ayn Rand laid the foundations for an Objectivist theory of rights, but her discussions of rights are brief, leaving many important matters to be clarified or explained.
Majority rule is restricted to matters such as the election of officials.
However, there is as yet no systematic Objectivist treatise on the philosophy of law. An anthology representing diverse viewpoints on various issues is Joel Feinberg and Hyman Gross, Philosophy of Law . Political Philosophy and Public Policy Ayn Rand observed that when men attempt to rush into politics without an adequate philosophical base, the results are policies that are superficial, inconsistent, and self- defeating. According to Objectivism, the foundation for public policy must be a clear theory of individual rights and a precise application of this theory to practical issues. An important claim of Objectivism in this domain is that the moral and the practical do not conflict.