The Origins of Property and Non-Aggression
(Marushia Dark, November 3, 2014)
Property rights and non-aggression emerge from first principle logic.
If I don't own my body, then it must be unowned, or someone else owns it, in which case I am a slave. If I am unowned, then could I not simply claim ownership over myself? And unless someone can refute my claim or make a superior one, then my claim surely must stand as good.
If I'm a slave, I have no rights but what are granted to me because someone else owns me; but then this begs the question of why someone else owns me when I don't own myself. Surely, I must have greater interest in the affairs of my own body than they do. They might own me if they hold power over me and force me into submission; or if I am unowned and they happen to make the first claim on me and their claim is superior to any claim I might make or I make no claim at all, or am otherwise unable to enforce my claim; or if I own myself and I agree that they now own me, whether through genuine asset or through ignorant acquiescence to their trickery.
If I'm neither unowned nor a slave, then I must own my body. If I own my body, I own my thoughts, my words, me memories, my feelings, and my actions, as these are a natural extension of my body. If I own all these things, then it must follow that I own the things I gather through my labor that are otherwise unclaimed by anyone else. I own things that I make with my body and mind and with these things I have gathered; and if I own all these things, then naturally I can do more or less whatever I want with them, such as destroy them or otherwise get rid of them. Which means I can give them away freely or exchange them for other things and in turn own those things for which I traded because I the other will have quit their claim as surely as I have quit mine, or else what is the point in our exchange? We would not do so if we thought we might get nothing in return.
I also own things I claim, which claim I can defend from all aggressors, such as measures of land and other property.
If I own things and have a right to them, then either I own them exclusively or partially. If exclusively, then no one can deprive me of what I own without my consent or without the use of superior force against me. If I own it conditionally, then they must have a superior claim over part of it, or I must have otherwise agreed to it at some point, or they must have stolen a portion of it from me at some point through force or trickery.
If we accept the use of coercion as valid, then I only have those rights which I can defend and all rights and property belong to the one best able to use force or trickery or persuasion to compel others. In such a system, which we might call the State of Nature, everyone would likely be trying to take as much as they could for themselves and only giving to others at their own convenience. Surely this would be so, as their survival and happiness would depend on the accumulation of such things in ever greater amounts.
In such a system, might would make the right and the will of the strongest, fittest, most clever, or most adaptable would be enforced.
However, in such a violent State of Nature, those less powerful individuals might realize potential benefit in banding together against a greater common enemy and so suspend their aggression against each other for a time in pursuit of this mutual foe. Once they have defeated him and divided his spoils, they might soon turn again on each other; or they might instead come to realize that, through cooperation, they become more powerful and can do things together that they could not do alone. They could also compel others collectively where they could not individually.
In this way, they begin to form compacts of mutual non-aggression, and even protection and exchange in pursuit of a myriad of small prizes. This they do because they now realize a link between their own self-interests and the interests of others; that such partnership in fact is more beneficial to them in the long-run than what short-term gains could be had from violence, particularly when weighed against the limited costs of delayed gratification and the more substantial costs of potential conflict.
Presumably, other groups would band together in this way as well and there would be fighting between them at first. But in time, they might join together as well to form still larger groups. Perhaps they might begin to wonder amongst themselves at what point others have also reached this conclusion, and so they might make it their default policy to approach other groups initially in a spirit of non-aggression, realizing that conflict between them collectively would be more costly than the small gains to be lost from not dominating the other individually.
And to ensure peace within the group, they would naturally develop a system of fairness among all members. Were it to be based on anything but merit, then those who received less than what they perceived to be a just amount would rise up against the rest. In-fighting would occur and, in time, the group would become weakened and susceptible to predatory groups from without. Such a risk would affect everyone and be quite costly on an individual level, and so there would be great incentive to acknowledge each person's claims, to ensure separation between them, and to resolve disputes amicably rather than through violence; for violence would weaken the group and lead to consequences, which could not be easily undone, which may breed animosity or thoughts of vengeance, or which could have other unforeseeable results.
The threat of collective aggression would be sufficient to keep any individual in check within the society, for each would be forced to consider how his fellows might react were the situation reversed. So it is that a social contract would be formed among individuals according to the natural order of things based on the principles of non-aggression and respect for property rights. This is no mere allegory, but the expression of real history, for in every culture we find a version of the axiom that admonishes, "As you would have others do to you, so shall you do for others."