Information AboutNon-aggression Axiom |
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The non-aggression principle (also called the '''non-aggression axiom''', '''anticoercion principle''', or '''zero aggression principle''') is an ethical prohibition against "aggression," which is defined as the ''initiation'' of physical force or the threat of such upon persons or their property (the principle does not preclude retaliation against aggression). It is an essential tenet of all Libertarian thought, though some libertarians view it as more of a guideline than an ironclad rule. The principle leads libertarians to reject Theft , Murder and Fraud ; when applied to governments, it prohibits many policies including Taxation and the Military Draft . The principle has been derived by various philosophical approaches, including Natural Law , Utilitarianism , Egoism , and Objectivism . However, such a philosophical justification is not strictly necessary, as some espouse the principle as a simple matter of personal preference. Versions of the principle trace back at least to John Locke , who held that people have the right to act as they choose, as long as they do not infringe upon anyone else’s right to do the same. More recently, Murray Rothbard derived the principle from Self-ownership and Ayn Rand derived it from the right to life. The non-aggression principle typically includes Property as a part of the owner; to aggress against someone's property is to aggress against them. Walter Block described the same with these words: "The non-aggression axiom is the lynchpin of the philosophy of libertarianism. It states, simply, that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another. That is, in the free society, one has the right to manufacture, buy or sell any good or service at any mutually agreeable terms." and: "The foundation of libertarianism is the non-aggression axiom. This states that it is illicit to initiate or threaten invasive violence against a man or his legitimately owned property. Murray Rothbard characterized this as "plumb line" libertarianism: follow this one principle, and you will be able to infer the libertarian position on all issues, without exception." Murray Rothbard wrote: "The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence ('aggress') against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a nonaggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory." LIBERTARIAN PARTY PLEDGE On the Libertarian Party (U.S) membership form , one must sign a pledge to a variation of the non-aggression principle stated as follows: I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Historically, the non-aggression principle supersedes an earlier formulation by 's Harm Principle states that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others". CRITICISM The non-aggression principle faces three kinds of criticism: the first holds that the principle is immoral, the second argues that it is impossible to apply consistently in practice, while the third holds that the interpretation of the principle is too ambiguous to be useful. Moral criticism The moral criticism is based on Consequentialist Ethics , usually Utilitarianism . It holds that the non-aggression principle is unethical because it opposes the initiation of force even when the results of such initiation would be better than the results of any other course of action. Suppose, for instance, that you could save a million lives by killing one man. The non-aggression principle holds that you should not kill that man. But this leads to a million deaths. Granted, such extreme situations are rare, but opponents of the non-aggression principle argue that milder forms of the same dilemma (for example the choice between taking away part of a wealthy man's property or allowing a poor person to starve) are very common. There are, on the other hand, libertarians who support the non-aggression principle by basing its advocacy in a form of utilitarianism known as Rule Utilitarianism . These utilitarians grant that violating the non-aggression principle may sometimes lead to the best consequences, but maintain that these situations are rare enough to justify promoting and following the non-aggression principle. The common reasoning is that individuals would be prone to making numerous errors if they made complex calculations for every interpersonal situation that arose in order to determine whether aggression would lead to good consequence. Therefore, rule utilitarians advocate the non-aggression principle as a ''general rule'' in order to minimize bad consequences (as well as to serve as a time-saving device that relieves the individual of the need to engage in lengthy utilitarian calculations for every interpersonal situation that arises where aggression is tempting). Inconsistency criticism The second type of criticism focuses on the difficulty of determining who exactly ''initiated'' force in many real-life conflicts. As a general rule, each side in a conflict claims that the other "started it". Sometimes it is plainly clear who initiated force - for example, when a thief steals a person's wallet. Other times, however, the situation is more complicated. For example, one side may have been the first to ''threaten'' force and the other side may have been the first to actually ''use'' force, or the conflict began such a long time in the past that no one remembers who started it. War s are a particularly difficult case, because very few of them begin with a country openly declaring that it wants to initiate force on another. The 2003 Invasion Of Iraq is a useful example, especially since it is a source of disagreement among libertarians. Some claim that the US government initiated force on Iraq, while others claim that the US government merely retaliated against a dictator who violated the terms of a peace agreement established at the end of the Gulf War , and initiated force on his people. A version of this second criticism is often upheld by Libertarian Socialists and others, who point out that almost every patch of land on Earth was stolen (i.e. obtained through initiation of force) at some point in its history. The stolen land was later inherited or sold until it reached its present owners. Thus, property over land and natural resources is based on the initiation of force. Among those who make this argument, some (such as followers of Henry George ) claim that private property over natural resources is unique in being based on the initiation of force, while others hold that, by extension, private property over ''all'' goods derives from violence, because natural resources are required in the production of all goods. Libertarians often reply to the "who started it?" problem by contending that the difficulty in determining who is the transgressor should not dissuade us from engaging in that process. After all, what is the alternative? Libertarians also often reply to either variant of this last point with the "water under the bridge" argument: that transgressions of the past cannot all be rectified, and that an act of theft which happened very long ago can reasonably be ignored - since it is irrelevant to people living today. This, however, can generate more charges of inconsistency, because it implies that peaceful possession of property in the present legitimizes theft and/or trespass in the past -- the principle known in some contexts as "squatters' rights" and in other contexts as "the right of adverse possession". This requires a "cutoff" point: a point in time when illegitimate property becomes legitimate property. Opponents argue that any such point is arbitrary. One prominent libertarian (and also Anarcho-capitalist theorist), Murray Rothbard , argued that much private property in the U.S. southwest ought to be taken from its present private owners, and given to the lawful heirs of those who had claim to it under Mexican law before the U.S./Mexican war, although he also regarded this case as historically unique. Another reply can be made on the basis of the existence of proof of possession and individuality of owners. That is: if current heirs of long dead property owners can identify the property that has been stolen and ''prove'' that the owner has passed down to him or her his initial right of property - then those persons must be recognized as the rightful owners. This is similar to the "innocent until proven guilty" proposition of modern law, that owners should be reguarded as legitimate until proven differently. Ambiguity criticism In addition to the above two kinds of criticism, there is also a debate around the manner in which libertarians typically ''interpret'' the non-aggression principle. Specifically, libertarians see Tax es as a form of government aggression. However, unless their libertarianism is of such an absolute degree that it opposes any kind of state, most consider taxation as a "necessary evil." They may argue that because of the Free-rider Problem , enough funds would not be obtainable by voluntary means to protect individuals from aggression of a greater severity. Hence, they will accept taxation as long as no more is levied than is necessary to ''maximize'' protection of individuals against aggression (from other individuals and from government itself). On the other hand, anarchist libertarians ( Individualist Anarchist s and Anarcho-capitalist s), as strict adherents to the non-aggression principle, argue that security should be maintained by voluntary payment to private defense forces, rather than taxation. Both anarcho-capitalists and opponents of libertarianism in general have made the argument that the non-aggression principle, if embraced in a pure or absolute sense, forbids the existence of states. Anarcho-capitalists use this argument in their attempts to convert other libertarians to their views, while opponents of libertarianism use it to support the claim that consistent application of libertarian principles would result in the complete abolition of the state - which, in their view, is an Extremist and absurd position to hold. Social contract There are many who oppose the libertarian idea that taxation is a form of aggression on , from this perspective; meaning that people are 'free' to pay protection tax, but they are still coerced. Other libertarians point out that, as long as all the land on Earth is adminstered by states, a person may not exit a state without entering another state and, hence, opting out of a social contract would be impossible unless one decides to live in the ocean. Supporters of social contract theories, on the other hand, argue that opting out of many contracts that libertarians do not oppose is also difficult. For example, if a private corporation owned the water supply in a region, and disgruntled residents of the region found it impossible to establish a new entrant in that market, then the revocation of one's contract with that corporation would mean that one would have to move out of the region. Thus, the argument goes, one's contract with the water corporation is very similar to a social contract. Inspired by such considerations, some Minarchist s have suggested establishing social contracts (and taxes or "fees") only at local or regional levels, the smaller the better, since leaving a neighborhood, for example, is less burdensome and is much better at preserving freedom of choice, than having to leave an entire country. Such a system also introduces an element of competition among the various taxing entities to which a monopolistic central government does not have to answer. On the other hand, this system also makes it difficult to undertake any sort of large-scale public project, since an agreement between different regional governments would be needed. The additional challenges would limit the implementation of large-scale public projects to only those with widespread support, perhaps consolidated through an umbrella organization of smaller governments (e.g, UN , EU , NAFTA , NATO ). Furthermore, lacking a centralized point of taxation control, this system also allows for the creation of "tax havens": if a certain region has little or no local taxes, many of the rich people from neighboring regions may move to it, thus depriving their original home regions of tax revenue. Whether this is good or bad depends on one's political views, but it is certain that tax havens can only form in very small independent (or autonomous) areas, and cannot form in large countries where tax policy is determined by the central government. Of course, the existence of a social contract, much like the non-aggression principle, is itself a matter of dispute among the advocates of different political ideologies and views. Many libertarians argue that no contract can exist without conscious and voluntary assent by all participants. American Individualist Anarchist Lysander Spooner is a noted proponent of this view, while espousing the non-aggression principle as Natural Law . Spooner holds that the fact that governments hold the threat of force over the heads of those who would not pay taxes, any supposed social contract to pay taxes would not be legitimate since legitimate contracts can only be made in the absence of coercion (i.e., they must be voluntary). Others argue that a social contract can indeed exist, but that it is an implicit contract between individuals to adhere to the non-aggression principle; these argue that taxation is therefore a violation of the social contract. For example, anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon maintains that rather than being a contract between man and government, the "social contract is an agreement of man with man; an agreement from which must result what we call society" to "abdicate all pretension to govern each other." Finally, those who oppose the notion of moral prohibitions altogether argue that it is not relevant whether a contract exists. One is morally free to adhere to or break any contract at will. Likewise, they hold that initiation coercion against others is always morally permissible. NOTES AND REFERENCES |
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