Cognition and truth-seeking as such have a value [normative] foundation. And the normative foundation on which cognition and truth rest is the recognition of private property rights.
—Hans-Hermann Hoppe1
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Definition
In the previous lesson we discovered some necessary facts about the nature of law; we know that there must be a universal and objective law, and we know that the normative structure of law must be based upon the normative structure of argumentation. In this lesson the central norm–the core axiom of true law–will be made explicit.
We call this central axiom the Non-Aggression Principle, or NAP, and it can be stated as follows: the non-aggressor ought be the director, or that the aggressor ought not be the director (these statements are contra-positive). Let’s break that down, here aggression is defined as the initiation of conflict, so in any contest over some property $\alpha$, if $A$ is the aggressor and $B$ the non-aggressor, $B$ ought be the one to direct the use of $\alpha$ and $A$ ought not.
The Argument from Argument
The term ’axiom’ has a precise meaning in philosophy, unlike in mathematics where axioms are merely inter-consistent but arbitrarily chosen rules,2 praxeological axioms are self-evident propositions. A proposition is self-evident if you must accept its validity in attempting to dispute its validity. We saw above how the law of non-contradiction is a self-evident proposition, in disputing anything at all you first must accept that the law of non-contradiction holds.
Similarly, in disputing the NAP you pre-suppose its truth as it is implied by the very nature of argumentation. First, recall that argumentation does not exist in a normative void, that is to say there are certain norms which are pre-supposed in the very act of arguing. Consider what it would mean for this not to be the case: if argumentation had no particular normative structure it would lose any meaning—literally any action a man takes could be considered an argumentation: such as eating an apple, or swinging from tree, or shooting someone through the head. It is because of the fact that certain norms define a dialectic as such that there is such a thing called argumentation in the first place.
Second, the validity of any truth claim must be raised and decided upon in the course of an argumentation, so the normative structure of argumentation in particular has the special status of being the practical pre-condition for ascertaining the truth or validity of any statement. This is known as the a priori of argumentation, which is another self-evident proposition—if you were to dispute it, you would first have to start arguing thus pre-supposing its truth.
Third, to try and argumentatively dispute one of the norms of argumentation would be to contradict oneself, this is called a dialectic or performative contradiction. That is, it is a contradiction not between propositions, but between a proposition and the very act of proposing it. For instance, if one were to argue that people ought never argue they would first pre-suppose that they should be arguing, thus they are in contradiction. Therefore, the negation of “people ought never argue,” which is “people ought ever argue,” or “people ought sometimes argue,” must be correct. Of note is that under argumentation ethics the “sometimes” is not an arbitrary “when I feel like it,” it’s something more like, “people should argue to resolve disputes” rather than “people should engage in conflict to resolve disputes.”
This is because, fourth, argumentation is a conflict-free interaction, interlocutors have some dispute over the truth of the matter and they are seeking to convince the other not through the force of violence (i.e. by aggressing against them), but rather through the force of their argument. Specifically, argumentation is a method of resolving disputes peacefully, not violently. Consider $A$ and $B$ have a dispute over who has the property right to $\alpha$, $A$ asserts that they are the owner, and vice versa. Arguing over this dispute would not involve the two parties violently attacking each other, it would involve the exchange of propositions with the intent of determining the truth of the matter. Simply warring over $\alpha$ would not be truth-seeking, interpersonal warfare does not involve argumentative justification and argumentative justification does not involve interpersonal warfare. This means that the normative structure of argumentation implies non-aggression, thus the NAP is dialectically true.
Consider what it would mean to say that this is not the case, that violence is perfectly permissible in an argument. If Crusoe has a disagreement with Friday and Crusoe decides that he will beat Friday until agreement is reached is Crusoe really seeking the truth of the matter here? Clearly he is not, coercing others to not argue with you cannot tend to establish the truth—warfare of this sort is the enemy of reason. Insofar as a man is engaged in unreason, i.e. avoiding truth, he cannot coherently make any truth claim, thus no negation of any proposition can arise from unreason—you have to accept reason to argue at all and accepting reason means accepting the NAP. It certainly cannot be denied that the purpose of argumentation is to seek the truth of the matter, so such aggressive activities that do not tend to establish truth must be excluded from arguments. In short argumentation is a rational activity, and aggression is the enemy of reason, thus these sets of actions must be mutually exclusive. All true propositions are justifiable argumentatively. A true ethic is justifiable to an arguer. Justifiability is irrelevant in a conflict. A conflict cannot be justified to an arguer (if it could, there would be no conflict!). Hence, causing conflicts is against the ethics of argumentation.3
Looked at from another angle, participants in argumentation indisputably need to use and control the scarce resources in the world to survive; otherwise, they would perish. But because their scarcity makes conflict over the uses of resources possible, only norms that determine the proper ownership can avoid conflict over these scarce goods. That such norms are valuable cannot be denied, because anyone who is alive in the world and participating in the practical activity of argumentation cannot deny the value of being able to control scarce resources and the value of avoiding conflicts over such scarce resources.4
The Contradiction of Rights-Scepticism
A further proof of the existence of rights is found by considering what it would mean to deny that rights exist. Kinsella introduces the concept as follows:
If any right at all exists, it is a right of $A$ to have or do $X$ without $B$’s preventing it; and, therefore, $A$ can legitimately use force against $B$ to enforce the right. $A$ is concerned with the enforceability of his right to $X$, and this enforceability is all that $A$ requires in order to be secure in his right to $X$. For a rights-skeptic meaningfully to challenge $A$’s asserted right, the skeptic must challenge the enforceability of the right, instead of merely challenging the existence of the right. Nothing less will do. If the skeptic does not deny that $A$’s proposed enforcement of his purported right is legitimate, then the skeptic has not denied $A$’s right to $X$, because what it means to have a right is to be able to legitimately enforce it. If the skeptic maintains, then, that $A$ has no right to $X$, indeed, no rights at all since there are no rights, the skeptic must also maintain that $A$’s enforcement of his purported right to $X$ is not justified.5
This presents a problem for the rights-sceptic, however, because he must hold that enforcement–i.e. the use of force—requires justification. But merely challenging $A$’s use of force is not enough, the rights-sceptic can’t just express distaste at the enforcement he must attack the legitimacy of said use of force. But in order to challenge the legitimacy of $A$ using force against $B$ to enforce the right, he must hold that $B$ has a right to not have this force used against him—i.e. that $B$ or someone else can legitimately use force to stop $A$’s use of force. But then he is in contradiction, because he must recognise a right held by $B$ in his denial that rights exist.
More common-sensically, this demonstration points out the inconsistency on the part of a rights-skeptic who engages in discourse about the propriety of rights at all. If there are no rights, then there is no such thing as the justifiable or legitimate use of force, but neither is there such a thing as the unjust use of force. But if there is no unjust use of force, what is it, exactly, that a rights-skeptic is concerned about? If individuals delude themselves into thinking that they have natural rights, and, acting on this assumption, go about enforcing these rights as if they are true, the skeptic has no grounds to complain. To the extent the skeptic complains about people enforcing these illusory rights, he begins to attribute rights to those having force used against them. Any rights-skeptic can only shut up,6 because he contradicts himself the moment he objects to others’ acting as if they have rights.
[…]
Indeed, another way to respond to a rights-skeptic would be to propose to physically harm him. If there are no rights, as he maintains, then he cannot object to being harmed. So, presumably, any rights-skeptic would change his position and admit there were rights (if only so as to be able to object to being harmed)—or there would soon be no more rights-skeptics left alive to give rights-advocates any trouble.
Indirect and Joint Aggression
A somewhat common question raised with respect to the Non-Aggression Principle is whether the mob boss who merely orders his goons to engage in some aggression is himself an aggressor. The answer to this question is yes, both he and his goons are engaged in the aggression in question. To highlight why this is the case consider that a crime is an action—it is the use of efficacious means to cause the invasion of the borders of other peoples’ property, because such an invasion initiates conflict between the criminal and the victim. What is important here is that you can use other people as a means towards some end. In the provided example the mob boss is using his goons as a means to cause the invasion of the victims property, and the goons are using their hands or some weapons as means to the same end—both the boss and his goons are engaged in the same aggressive invasion.
Consider the example of a man shipping a bomb to a victims house using a courier, the bomb blows up upon the victim opening the package, has the bomb-maker committed a crime here? Well, if using other people as means is to break the chain of causation then perhaps the courier is the criminal as he is the one who delivered the bomb. But even this cannot be so, because the bomb only went off upon the victim opening the package, so really the victim has committed suicide! Of course, this is ridiculous, the bomb-maker is well-aware that paying a courier to deliver a package to someone is likely to result in said package being opened—the courier and the victim are both being used as means towards the end of the victim exploding, this is the intent of the bomb-maker.
Even the [positive] law recognizes that an intervening force only breaks the chain causal connection when it is unforeseeable. As the Restatement of Torts provides, “The intervention of a force which is a normal consequence of a situation created by the actor’s … conduct is not a superseding cause of harm which such conduct has been a substantial factor in bringing about” […] Clearly, when the terrorist in these cases uses a courier to deliver a letter bomb, it is not unforeseeable that the victim will receive it; and it is not unforeseeable that the victim will open it.7
This is because if the outcome of a given activity was truly unforeseeable this implies that it is not an action, as for it to be an action the end has to be deliberately aimed at and sought after. Consider me leaving a knife on my kitchen counter that is then whipped away by a tornado and thus stabs a man through the heart. I didn’t stab him, the tornado did, because the tornado was unforeseeable by me. If I was a wizard who could control tornadoes and I summoned the tornado to throw my knife into the heart of the man that would be foreseeable and therefore criminal. In other words, $A$ simply hoping that lightning will strike $B$ is different to $A$ knowing exactly when and where lightning will strike and duping $B$ into standing there at the appropriate time—“there is no intention if the outcome is only hoped for.”8
To make this even more clear consider the example of a rifle that requires three men to shoot—perhaps it has three triggers which are far apart and which all must be pulled to fire the bullet. If three men conspire to each pull a trigger at the same time to shoot an innocent man, then all three of them are engaged in an aggression against this person. We can trivially analogise this to a bomber plane that requires three men to operate—one to steer the plane, one to load the bombs, and a third to trigger the release of the bombs. It is not only the man who triggers the release, but also his two co-conspirators who are each engaged in the action of bombing with the bomber plane—insofar as this bombing is an aggression then all three men are equally liable for this crime.
This is why the getaway driver in a bank robbery is just as liable for the theft as his partners who restrained the crowd and stole the funds from the vault respectively. Furthermore, if in the process of the robbery the crowd-controller shoots one of the hostages the getaway driver and the safecracker are responsible for this murder because the murder is understood to be a part of the entire robbery going forth. If instead they were not robbing a bank, which involves threatening hostages with death, but were rather jointly attempting to steal a car then one of the car thieves randomly sets off a bomb killing countless individuals, then only the bomber is responsible. Setting off the bomb is a separate action to the stealing of the cars, so the co-conspirators to the car theft are not responsible for it.
To re-iterate this point allow me to quote Kinsella:9
Consider the following example. A malcontent, $A$, purchases a remote-controlled tank. With the remote control he can steer the tank and fire its cannon. He directs the tank to blow down the walls of a neighbor’s house, destroying the house and killing the neighbor. No one would deny that $A$ is the cause of the killing and is guilty of murder and trespass. However, after the rampage, a hatch opens in the tank, and an evil midget jumps out. It turns out, you see, that the midget could see on a screen which buttons were pressed on the remote control, and he would operate the tank accordingly. We submit that $A$ is equally liable in both cases. From his point of view, the tank was a “black box” that he used to attain his end, regardless of whether there was a human will somewhere in the chain of causation. (Of course, the evil midget is also liable.)
This “black box” thinking is crucial; consider what would happen if it was discovered some day that firearms are actually sentient and are capable of choosing not to accept a trigger press and that this is the cause of bullet jams. Would this suddenly absolve everyone who has used a firearm to kill another of any criminal responsibility? Surely not, none of these people knew that firearms were sentient and could refuse to shoot, to the gunmen the firearm is a means towards the end of shooting a bullet at their victim(s), this does not change if it is later discovered that firearms have a mind of their own.
If it is illegal to hit someone […] this means that it is illegal to cause another person to be hit; that is to say, it is illegal to use physical objects, including one’s fist, in a way that will cause the unwanted physical contact with another person.
[…]
In analyzing action through the lens of the praxeological means-ends structure to determine if it amounts to aggression, we ask if the actor employed means to achieve the end of invading the borders of another’s property or body—in other words, we ask if he caused the border invasion. The means employed can be inanimate or nonhuman means governed solely by causal laws (a gun), or it can include other humans who are employed as means to achieve the illicit end desired. The latter category includes both innocent humans that one employs to cause a border invasion and culpable humans that one conspires (cooperates) with to achieve the illicit end.10
Communication and Social Norms
We can use this analysis to highlight also the guilt of Henry II of England, who reportedly exclaimed “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest” to a group of knights under his employ. The “turbulent priest” referred to the Archbishop of Canterbury who had excommunicated a number of bishops supportive of the king. Four of the kings knights upon hearing the kings utterance went to the archbishop and murdered him. The argument is that the kings words, though not literally worded as an order, nevertheless communicated to his knights that he wished for them to carry out the ridding of the priest. What this highlights is the importance of communication in libertarian theory—the king is using his knights as a means because he is communicating to them his desire for them to kill or otherwise coerce the priest.
What this shows is that social norms and understanding of language can influence whether a given set of words demonstrate an aggression or not. So it may be the case that if I am in a seedy bar and I go up to the biggest, toughest guy in there and call his mother a whore I am in fact communicating to him that I want a fight. Or another case is when I have a mailbox on my front door and a path leading to it, this can be seen as communicating to couriers that I want them to deliver packages by walking up to my door over my path and placing packages inside the mailbox. This demonstrates the limits of what Kinsella dubs “armchair theorising,”11 one cannot say with certainty whether a given action is aggression without having all of the relevant information provided, which is why judges are necessary in a rational legal system—the judge is able to analyse all of the relevant details to determine who is at fault. The job of the jurist sitting in his armchair is to explicate objective principles and perhaps to apply them to various simple hypothetical scenarios, where all relevant details can be provided.
Related Reading
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe (2005), “On The Ultimate Justification of the Ethics of Private Property,” in idem. The Economics and Ethics of Private Property second ed.
- Kris Borer (2010), Cause No Conflict
- N. Stephan Kinsella, Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights
Footnotes
1 Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1988), “The Ultimate Justification of the Private Property Ethic,” (Liberty), https://libertyunbound.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Liberty_Magazine_September_1988.pdf
2 See Ludwig von Mises (1962), “The Starting Point of Praxeological Thinking,” in idem. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science.
3 I am indebted to The French are Harlequins for this particular summary.
4 N. Stephan Kinsella, “Argumentation Ethics,” in idem. Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights.
5 N. Stephan Kinsella, “Rights-Skepticism,” in idem. Dialogical Arguments for Libertarian Rights.
6 (my footnote, not Kinsella’s): Murray Rothbard (1985), On The Duty Of Natural Outlaws To Shut Up.
7 N. Stephan Kinsella and Patrick Tinsley, Causation and Aggression
8 Adolf Reinarch (2000), “On The Concept of Causality in the Current Criminal Law,” p. 14. Trans. Berit Brogaard. Jonathan Sandford, ed. (1998) and Ed Rackley (2000); unpublished draft translation; available at www.stephankinsella.com/texts.
9 N. Stephan Kinsella and Patrick Tinsley, Causation and Aggression.
10 ibid.
11 See N. Stephan Kinsella, The Limits of Armchair Theorizing: The Case of Threats