Interesting read. I had this same issue myself when trying to understand the non-aggression principle; what is aggression? Socialists see the Capitalist having full control over the means of production to be aggression, and Conservatives see violation of traditional morality as aggression against the nation as a whole.
So the NAP has to derive from something else. Rothbard seems to derive it from property rights, which I think is ridiculous since property rights have to be derived from another idea, i.e. individual rights.
The big issue here is exactly that the NAP needs to presuppose what qualifies as aggression, but then pretends to be establishing what is or isn't aggression.
If the NAP were derived from something else, then it is no longer acting as a principle. Hence it is not the Non-Aggression Principle anymore, and just the more common idea of defense.
The NAP defines aggression as a certain set of acts. There is no problem whatsoever in that.
It is like if I proposed the Non-Zumpswiggle Principle and then you objected that this cannot possibly be a principle because I would first need to establish what is or is not Zumpswiggle. No, I don't. I can just define what Zumpswiggle is for the purposes of the NZP.
It does not, as I demonstrate thoroughly in my essay.
Aggression isn't just a word they made up, nor is it something its major proponents every argued needed to be determined independently.
If you want to make up your own idea and words, great. Do that. But don't try to shoehorn it into already well defined concept to pretend like everyone in the past was agreeing with you.
Yeah, there is no problem with the idea of non-aggression itself. That is a pretty widespread concept for good reason, both among anarchists and non-anarchists. The issue here is how people try to use it in the argument, as a principle from which the rest of their political ethic can be derived.
The first example from Ayn Rand makes it clear too, where she suggests her non-initiation principle as a way to "determine that a right has been violated." The NAP cannot do that because we only call something 'aggression' when we already know it's a rights violation.
The only way that we might avoid that problem is if we defined 'aggression' in non-rights based terms. Ayn Rand kinda did that too, trying to make it a focus on violence. But in that case, any version she gave of the NAP would have been wrong, because there are times when she would think it's fine to initiate physical violence (e.g. if you tackle someone after they steal something from you, you'd be the one initiating physical violence, but Rand would argue that'd be justified because of the rights-violation of the theft).
As you note in the article, Rothbard thought “the good stuff in Ayn’s system is not Ayn’s original contribution at all.” This includes the non-aggression principle, which Rothbard thought was already found in Herbert Spencer and the anarchists around Tucker's Liberty.
They all thought that acts should be divided into those that are invasive and those that are not invasive and that invasive acts and only invasive acts should be prohibited, and that theft of legitimate property, whatever they conceived that to be, was invasive. They did not always agree on whether a particular hypothetical act was or was not invasive, but they agreed that was the standard by which permissibility should be judged.
Here are some quotes that demonstrate this:
Joseph Labadie: Crime is an injury done another by aggression. Anyone who injures another by encroaching upon his life, his freedom or his property is a criminal. The law of equal freedom, the essential principle of Anarchism, is a protection to life, liberty and property.[1]
Lysander Spooner: For everybody has a natural right, not only to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defence of everybody else, whose person or property is invaded.[2]
Francis Tandy: This is the Philosophy of Anarchism – the absence of all coercion of the non-invasive individual.[3]
Whether Rothbard believed the non-aggression principle was original to Rand is irrelevant. As I made clear in my conclusion, the distinctive feature of the NAP is not the division of actions into aggressive or non-aggression, invasion or non-invasion, but the belief that their entire political theory can be deduced from this singular principle. In that respect, the NAP is not found in Labadie, Spooner, Tandy, Spencer, or anyone else. As far as I can find, it really is original to Rand, even if it is an original error as a circular argument.
It's not irrelevant if this is the historical individualist anarchist position.
You are wrong on both points. The distinctive feature of the NAP is the division of acts into invasive and non-invasive and the belief that the former, and only the former, should be prohibited.
However it also happens to be true that the individualist anarchists thought that their entire philosophy did indeed flow entirely from the substance of NAP. This is true of Labadie, Spooner, Tandy and seemingly all of the American individualist anarchists.
This can be seen most explicitly in the Tandy quote given above. He identifies the philosophy of anarchism with "the absence of all coercion of the non-invasive individual." All the rest of anarchist philosophy, according to him, like the necessity of abolishing the state, flows from this premise.
It is irrelevant, because I decide the subject of my own post. The topic here is the circularity of the NAP, as it is found in its most prominent defenders: Rand and Rothbard. This is stated directly in the title. If you decide you want to use a special definition of the Non-Aggression Principle which only needs to make a distinction between aggression and non-aggression and doesn't have to work as a principle, then you can do that on your own page. Even if you do, it only further illustrates the claim I make in my title.
None of the people you list go beyond making the distinction between aggression and non-aggression. This includes Tandy, who does summarize his anarchism this way, which is not the same as DEDUCING his anarchism from this singular idea.
I consider the topic closed here, especially since we had this same discussion on reddit.
What ideas does Tandy use to reach his anarchism if he is not deducing it from something like the non-aggression principle? As far as I can tell, that is exactly what he is doing.
"In other words, individual freedom pre-supposes the suppression of the invader, whether that invader appears as an individual criminal or as the corporate criminal – the State, – and whether as the Republican or as the Imperial form of State.
The freedom of each individual denies all the freedom to invade. For when one individual invades, the activities of another are restrained." - Francis Tandy
This is not a page about Tandy. Not gonna say it again, comments need to be on topic. If you want to see why no one can deduce things from the NAP, you can read my article. The concept of "invasion" is meaningless unless we already have a sense of what limits, if crossed, would qualify as an invasion. Consequently, people who claimed they could deduce where these limits are from the concept of non-invasion, like Rand and Rothbard, needed to engage in circular reasoning, baking the conclusions they wanted into how they defined their terms and then pretend to "deduce" them.
I know it's been a year since this exchange happened, but didn't Tandy deduce his idea of Anarchism from Egoism, and then used the NAP to explain what his idea of Anarchism entails?
Answer is still mostly the same as a year ago. I'd want to do more reading from Tandy before I comment on their specific argument.
However, even your summary shows the issue with calling that the NAP. It isn't acting as a principle at all, hence the title of my paper.
The idea of self-defense is extremely common in ethical and political philosophies, and has been used long before anarchism was ever proposed. But the entire idea of self-defense needs to presuppose someone having a just/legal/normative/whatever claim to something which is being "defended." The idea of self-defense cannot be made into a principle then without becoming circular or tautological.
If Tandy did use this argument, then he'd fall to the same answer. But the description so far makes it sound like he didn't. Instead, he just used the idea like everyone else does, or how we can see Berkman using the idea of self-defense. As far as I can tell, the NAP properly speaking is a faulty argument originally attributed to Ayn Rand.
I don't know what you mean about deducing Anarchism from Egoism. Here is what Tandy says:
"Human happiness is the aim of all social reform. Such generalizations as may be made to guide us on the road to happiness, are valuable only insofar as they contribute to that end. This is true of the principle of Equal Freedom [NAP]. Exceptional cases may arise, when a strict adherence to this principle would result in greater misery than would a violation of it... But these cases are very exceptional, and, under such circumstances, a violation of Equal Freedom is fully justified. Yet so trustworthy a guide is this principle, that unless the wisdom of violating it is almost absolutely certain, it would be better to follow it wherever it may lead us. As a general working principle it cannot be too strongly insisted on."
Interesting read. I had this same issue myself when trying to understand the non-aggression principle; what is aggression? Socialists see the Capitalist having full control over the means of production to be aggression, and Conservatives see violation of traditional morality as aggression against the nation as a whole.
So the NAP has to derive from something else. Rothbard seems to derive it from property rights, which I think is ridiculous since property rights have to be derived from another idea, i.e. individual rights.
The big issue here is exactly that the NAP needs to presuppose what qualifies as aggression, but then pretends to be establishing what is or isn't aggression.
If the NAP were derived from something else, then it is no longer acting as a principle. Hence it is not the Non-Aggression Principle anymore, and just the more common idea of defense.
The NAP defines aggression as a certain set of acts. There is no problem whatsoever in that.
It is like if I proposed the Non-Zumpswiggle Principle and then you objected that this cannot possibly be a principle because I would first need to establish what is or is not Zumpswiggle. No, I don't. I can just define what Zumpswiggle is for the purposes of the NZP.
It does not, as I demonstrate thoroughly in my essay.
Aggression isn't just a word they made up, nor is it something its major proponents every argued needed to be determined independently.
If you want to make up your own idea and words, great. Do that. But don't try to shoehorn it into already well defined concept to pretend like everyone in the past was agreeing with you.
So it'd be better to call it the Non-Aggression Idea, but the NAI doesn't have the same ring as the NAP
Yeah, there is no problem with the idea of non-aggression itself. That is a pretty widespread concept for good reason, both among anarchists and non-anarchists. The issue here is how people try to use it in the argument, as a principle from which the rest of their political ethic can be derived.
The first example from Ayn Rand makes it clear too, where she suggests her non-initiation principle as a way to "determine that a right has been violated." The NAP cannot do that because we only call something 'aggression' when we already know it's a rights violation.
The only way that we might avoid that problem is if we defined 'aggression' in non-rights based terms. Ayn Rand kinda did that too, trying to make it a focus on violence. But in that case, any version she gave of the NAP would have been wrong, because there are times when she would think it's fine to initiate physical violence (e.g. if you tackle someone after they steal something from you, you'd be the one initiating physical violence, but Rand would argue that'd be justified because of the rights-violation of the theft).
As you note in the article, Rothbard thought “the good stuff in Ayn’s system is not Ayn’s original contribution at all.” This includes the non-aggression principle, which Rothbard thought was already found in Herbert Spencer and the anarchists around Tucker's Liberty.
They all thought that acts should be divided into those that are invasive and those that are not invasive and that invasive acts and only invasive acts should be prohibited, and that theft of legitimate property, whatever they conceived that to be, was invasive. They did not always agree on whether a particular hypothetical act was or was not invasive, but they agreed that was the standard by which permissibility should be judged.
Here are some quotes that demonstrate this:
Joseph Labadie: Crime is an injury done another by aggression. Anyone who injures another by encroaching upon his life, his freedom or his property is a criminal. The law of equal freedom, the essential principle of Anarchism, is a protection to life, liberty and property.[1]
Lysander Spooner: For everybody has a natural right, not only to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defence of everybody else, whose person or property is invaded.[2]
Francis Tandy: This is the Philosophy of Anarchism – the absence of all coercion of the non-invasive individual.[3]
1 http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/library/Anarchism-Labadie/index.html
2 https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lysander-spooner-vices-are-not-crimes-a-vindication-of-moral-liberty
3 https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/francis-dashwood-tandy-voluntary-socialism
Whether Rothbard believed the non-aggression principle was original to Rand is irrelevant. As I made clear in my conclusion, the distinctive feature of the NAP is not the division of actions into aggressive or non-aggression, invasion or non-invasion, but the belief that their entire political theory can be deduced from this singular principle. In that respect, the NAP is not found in Labadie, Spooner, Tandy, Spencer, or anyone else. As far as I can find, it really is original to Rand, even if it is an original error as a circular argument.
It's not irrelevant if this is the historical individualist anarchist position.
You are wrong on both points. The distinctive feature of the NAP is the division of acts into invasive and non-invasive and the belief that the former, and only the former, should be prohibited.
However it also happens to be true that the individualist anarchists thought that their entire philosophy did indeed flow entirely from the substance of NAP. This is true of Labadie, Spooner, Tandy and seemingly all of the American individualist anarchists.
This can be seen most explicitly in the Tandy quote given above. He identifies the philosophy of anarchism with "the absence of all coercion of the non-invasive individual." All the rest of anarchist philosophy, according to him, like the necessity of abolishing the state, flows from this premise.
It is irrelevant, because I decide the subject of my own post. The topic here is the circularity of the NAP, as it is found in its most prominent defenders: Rand and Rothbard. This is stated directly in the title. If you decide you want to use a special definition of the Non-Aggression Principle which only needs to make a distinction between aggression and non-aggression and doesn't have to work as a principle, then you can do that on your own page. Even if you do, it only further illustrates the claim I make in my title.
None of the people you list go beyond making the distinction between aggression and non-aggression. This includes Tandy, who does summarize his anarchism this way, which is not the same as DEDUCING his anarchism from this singular idea.
I consider the topic closed here, especially since we had this same discussion on reddit.
What ideas does Tandy use to reach his anarchism if he is not deducing it from something like the non-aggression principle? As far as I can tell, that is exactly what he is doing.
"In other words, individual freedom pre-supposes the suppression of the invader, whether that invader appears as an individual criminal or as the corporate criminal – the State, – and whether as the Republican or as the Imperial form of State.
The freedom of each individual denies all the freedom to invade. For when one individual invades, the activities of another are restrained." - Francis Tandy
This is not a page about Tandy. Not gonna say it again, comments need to be on topic. If you want to see why no one can deduce things from the NAP, you can read my article. The concept of "invasion" is meaningless unless we already have a sense of what limits, if crossed, would qualify as an invasion. Consequently, people who claimed they could deduce where these limits are from the concept of non-invasion, like Rand and Rothbard, needed to engage in circular reasoning, baking the conclusions they wanted into how they defined their terms and then pretend to "deduce" them.
I know it's been a year since this exchange happened, but didn't Tandy deduce his idea of Anarchism from Egoism, and then used the NAP to explain what his idea of Anarchism entails?
Answer is still mostly the same as a year ago. I'd want to do more reading from Tandy before I comment on their specific argument.
However, even your summary shows the issue with calling that the NAP. It isn't acting as a principle at all, hence the title of my paper.
The idea of self-defense is extremely common in ethical and political philosophies, and has been used long before anarchism was ever proposed. But the entire idea of self-defense needs to presuppose someone having a just/legal/normative/whatever claim to something which is being "defended." The idea of self-defense cannot be made into a principle then without becoming circular or tautological.
If Tandy did use this argument, then he'd fall to the same answer. But the description so far makes it sound like he didn't. Instead, he just used the idea like everyone else does, or how we can see Berkman using the idea of self-defense. As far as I can tell, the NAP properly speaking is a faulty argument originally attributed to Ayn Rand.
I don't know what you mean about deducing Anarchism from Egoism. Here is what Tandy says:
"Human happiness is the aim of all social reform. Such generalizations as may be made to guide us on the road to happiness, are valuable only insofar as they contribute to that end. This is true of the principle of Equal Freedom [NAP]. Exceptional cases may arise, when a strict adherence to this principle would result in greater misery than would a violation of it... But these cases are very exceptional, and, under such circumstances, a violation of Equal Freedom is fully justified. Yet so trustworthy a guide is this principle, that unless the wisdom of violating it is almost absolutely certain, it would be better to follow it wherever it may lead us. As a general working principle it cannot be too strongly insisted on."