Non aggression axiom

Miscellaneous General
1

I’ve been having a very long detailed conversation with a friend who is an avowed Marxist. She has posed a question about the non-aggression axiom that I’m having difficulty answering. Here is the question:

If ownership is perpetual exclusive use, how is that maintained? How does one keep or maintain the exclusive part of use? Is it not by either explicit or implicit threat? Is there not some flavor of feudalism in ‘holding’ on to what one owns? Walls? Fences? Violence? Or through law (with the implicit threat of violence or constraint)?

2

Homesteading is about respect for actions, it does not grant rights to land-particles. If you begin farming somewhere you have the right to continue doing so unmolested. That is all… It is not perpetual exclusive use. If you leave, it becomes fair game.

There is no flavor of feudalism because feudal lords do not peacefully homestead their plots.

If she thinks property can only be enforced via violence, point out that all concepts can only be enforced using violence. Property and non-property. Self ownership and slavery… Its just that once people start trading and engaging in division of labor, they become dependent upon eachother’s property rights and violence is no longer necessary. I want farmers to have homesteading rights because I know it will bring more benefits for me. Homesteading rights are self reinforcing…

3

I’d say she’s correct (except I wouldn’t use “feudalism” the way she apparently does). However, I don’t see any problem with it. The non-aggression axiom isn’t the same as pacifism. Not all violence is aggression; only the initiation of violence is.

EDIT: Curse you, Sieben! I thought I’d be the first to answer!

4

There’s nothing wrong with “violence” per se; only initiation of violence. Marxists, etc.—at least the not-completely-insane ones—are not completely anti-property, they just think that if you leave it someone else can take it up. Well, an-caps—at least the not-completely-insane ones—agree completely! Property can be abandoned! The only difference is the length of time needed before it can be called abandoned. Your commie types don’t set that at zero: they don’t say that every time you step outside your front door, your house is abandoned! You can go collect the mail. You can presumably go out to work. I’d even bet they’d agree you can go away on holiday for a while. So how long can you leave something without abandoning ownership? Nobody can answer that in any objective way. In an an-cap world, your friend could go live in an area where abandonment sets in after a week, or whatever, if she wants. It wouldn’t even pose much of a problem for people who want it to be longer: just hire someone to sit on it for you. From the lefties’ perspective, the sitter becomes the owner, but that’s not a real problem: when you come back, he’ll go away and a week later (or whatever) you’ll be the duly recognized owner again! So the question is back-to-front: how does your Marxist friend propose to avoid having libertarian property rights without violence?

5

I was going to say something, but the above three posts handle it.

as far as asking her how to avoid property rights without violence, I don’t think she’ll shirk away from encouraging the use of violence against capitalists. I was told (several times) at various SDS parties I would frequent (wearing slacks, french cuffs with my LvMI cufflinks, and a camel hair jacket) that people like me would either have to ‘go’ for the world to be a good place. the softer hearts would tell me I’d have to be re-educated.

of course these kids are pussycats and were all talk, but the rhetoric is there and I doubt your little marxist friend will view aggression against capitalist slavemasters as a weakness in her ideology.

6

I know this has been answered but I’d like to post to see if I understand things myself:

The non-aggression principle says nothing about violence in general being wrong, only the initiation of violence.

If there is no one currently using a certain spot of land, you can build a house, till a garden, take fruit from a tree, build a fence or a wall, without ever having to resort to any sort of violence whatsoever. This is commonly called “mixing your labor with the land.” I really can’t think of any other way for a human being to interact with the earth and ya know- live.

In order for someone else to use these things you have made, THEY absolutely have to resort to aggression (initiation of force,) either by forcing you to not be able to eat a cabbage you grew, or by forcing you to stay out of the building you made. If your friend thinks there is something wrong with defending property ask what would happen if you tried to take her purse. I don’t think there would be anything wrong with her using violence to get it back or having someone else get it back forcefully, and I doubt she would think twice about that either.

Now the second person coming along is claiming ownership (control) but there is a problem, how can the aggressor argue the next stronger force from claiming ownership? In this case the situation turns into might = right and everyone just kills each other in some Darwinian-style contest of survival of the fittest.

Each person would be forced to take as much as possible from the soil as they could until the next warlord came along. The first-user (homesteader) is the proper owner simply because any other option turns into the immediate overuse of land. Humans would just fight it out over over each piece of land, use the land until it is barren, and move on. Not a good way to deal with scarcity- using up Mother Earth’s materials basically all at once.

Luckily, human beings can see beyond immediate gratification unlike most animals. It can be noticed that if I respect another’s land (follow non-aggression principle,) in the long run I can get much more out of the property owner because his vested-interest in his property helps assure he doesn’t overuse the land, and he can eventually gather a buildup of goods (surplus,) as can I on my land. The person who gets good at raising chickens eventually builds a surplus of eggs, and the guy who was just growing corn for his own benefit can also build up a surplus. Now when I have too many eggs or corn I can either let them rot or I can go trade for something else I want.

I’ll direct you to the law of comparative advantage here if you want definite proof that people dividing up work brings more total goods into existence than everyone making all their own crap. More goods = equals more prosperity for EVERYONE! YAY!

Isn’t that what everyone, from the Marxist, all the way to the most capitalist really want, the system that brings the most propsperity for all?

For the long term benefit of individuals and mankind in general the non-aggression principle must be respected. That’s only if you value life and increasing your standard of living though.

7

@OP: Personally, I would avoid making the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) the hill on which you die… don’t let the debate focus just on NAP. The NAP is a good first-order approximation of the rights we would expect to obtain in a natural order society but the NAP breaks down under boundary conditions and it is also not reconcilable with (justifiable) retaliatory violence.

Clayton -

8

Hey Clayton I think I know what you mean by breaking down under boundary conditions- if somebody steps on what you consider your grass you don’t exactly have the right to beat them up or shoot them. You’d be the one committing aggression. What if they hop over a wall you made though? There are really endless questions here as you can imagine.

I need to read up more on customary law I think. How would these situations be handled under private law? Obviously I can’t lay claim to a state-sized plot of land. When do actual boundaries come about? I figure if you can fence it in, it’s yours.