View source for A Critical Commentary on the Zwolinski 2013 “Libertarianism and Liberty” Essays

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[[Category:Jan Lester]]
[[Category:Matt Zwolinski]]
[[Category:Six Reasons Libertarians Should Reject the Non-Aggression Principle]]
[[Category:Non-Aggression]]
[[Category:Libertarians Criticizing Each Other]]
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{{DES | des = The pompous [[Jan Lester J C Lester]] says "It is expositionally very useful that the degree of philosophical error and confusion evinced in these essays is extremely high but not of any unusual kind."  He shreds Zwolinski based on his own erroneous idea of liberty, which is much better than Zwolinski's.  He also defends the ludicrous [[Non-Aggression|NAP]] that Zwolinski shreds. | show=}}
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A Critical Commentary on the Zwolinski 2013 “Libertarianism and Liberty” Essays|links=true}}
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A Critical Commentary on the Zwolinski 2013 “Libertarianism and Liberty” Essays|quotes=true}}

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Caplan‘s view that ―if you can‘t think of counterexamples to the latter, you‘re not trying hard enough.‖ But counterexamples that are merely logical possibilities and unlikely scenarios are beside
the point. And real systematic refutations of the practical morality of the NAP/MAP do not appear to exist. We then move on to the offered
―six reasons why libertarians should reject the NAP.‖ And we
ought to note immediately that to refute one, dubious, interpretation of the NAP is not to refute every interpretation of it. And only one sound interpretation of the NAP is required.
“1. Prohibits All Pollution”
 
This section
asserts that ―industrial pollution violates the NAP and must therefore be prohibited‖
mor
eover, even ―personal pollution produced by driving, burning wood in one‘s fireplace, smokin
g,
etc., runs afoul of NAP.‖ As has already been
explained, prohibiting pollution (for instance, coercively preventing someone from lighting his fire for needed warmth and cooking) also violates the absolute NAP. Hence the MAP comes into play.
“2. Prohibits Small Harms for Large Benefits”
 
We are asked
to ―suppose, to borrow a thought from Hume, that I could prevent the destruction of the whole world by lightly scratching your finger?‖ And here
the practical libertarian can reply that the NAP is about the real world rather than about every logically possible world and thought experiment. The essay
goes on to ―suppose that by imposing a very, very small tax on billionaires, I could provide
life-
saving vaccination for tens of thousands of desperately poor children.‖ This is slightly less
implausible but it is still not realistic. Taxation is not needed to develop new vaccines. And the institution of any taxation would disrupt productivity immediately and then do cumulative damage as the economy has its growth slowed. Moreover, that growth would probably have included new advances in vaccines sooner or later. This section
concludes by asking ―is it really so obvious that the
relatively minor aggression involved in these examples is wrong,
given
the tremendous benefit it
 produces?‖ And the ―
obvious
‖
 answer appears to be that implausible assumptions do not refute a practical principle.
“3. All
-or-
Nothing Attitude toward Risk”
 
The question posed is
, ―what if I merely run the
risk
of shooting you by putting one bullet in a six-shot revolver, spinning the
cylinder, aiming it at your head, and squeezing the trigger?‖ And the
 right
answer is that it is an aggressive act to take such a serious risk at someone else‘s expense. In monetary
terms, the degree of the aggression is something like the amount of money that the victim would have to be paid to accept such a risk (this is not to imply that everything can be reduced to money, of
course). Without such an agreement, you are using someone else‘s property
 
 – 
 his head
 – 
 without his permission for your dangerous game. Imposed risks are already aggressions; actual damage is not necessary. Otherwise, by analogy, one may as well say that coercing someone to do something at gunpoint only becomes an aggression if you actually shoot them when they fail to comply. The essay
observes that ―almost everything we do imposes some risk of harm on innocent  persons‖ and that ―Most of us think that some of these risks are justifiable, while others are not‖ but our reasonable explanations ―carry zero weight in the NAP‘s absolute prohibition on aggression.‖
And, again, this overlooks that there is aggression whether such risks are allowed or prohibited. But there is no insuperable problem with applying the MAP, as long as we have a reasonable account of what policy best deals with the clash in an unbiased way (it need not be perfect or admit of cardinal accounting).
 
 
“4. No Prohibition of Fraud”
 
This section
asserts that ―Libertarians usually say that violence may legitimately be used to prevent
either force
or fraud 
.‖ Do libertarians
 
―usually‖ use the word ―violence‖? ―Coercion‖ seems more
likely and more appropriate. It
continues that ―according to NAP, the only legitimate use of force is to
prevent or punish the initiatory use of
 physical violence
 by others. And fraud is not physical
violence.‖ This is easily answered. A fraud is an
aggression
 because it violates the property rights that the relevant agreement establishes. All this talk of
―violence‖ is merely confused.
 
“5. Parasitic on a Theory of Property”
 
In this section we are
told that ―Even if the NAP is correct, it cannot serve as a
 fundamental
principle of libertarian ethics, because its meaning and normative force are entirely parasitic on an underlying
theory of property.‖ In fact, it need not be ―parasitic on an underlying theory of property.‖ It is true
that some NAP literature argues
along the following lines: ―aggression‖ is the violation of legitimate
property, and legitimate property is only derived using assumptions that are independently argued to be legitimate (self-ownership, labour-mingling ownership, etc.). That is because it lacks an abstract theory of liberty from which to derive property. However, if it is assumed
that libertarian ‗liberty‘ is ‗the absence of aggression‘, then
this can be interpreted this in a pre-propertarian way. Property comes into existence in a libertarian manner when that property does not aggress on (i.e., proactively constrain or interfere with) other people. In the first instance, it does not aggress against other people to t
ake control of one‘s own body, and it does aggress to take control of other people‘s bodies. Hence each person‘s control of his own body follows from the existence of non
-aggression, and having
control of one‘s own body is – 
 in effect
 – 
 de facto self-ownership (asserting that this is moral or lawful in practice are separate matters). After that, I make and claim this spear, hut, rabbit stew, etc., at no cost or loss to you: you are not worse off as a result. And if there is some vestigial cost or loss to others (for instance, you cannot now use the very same natural resources that I did), then we again resort to the MAP. The gist of this view should be clear enough.
18
 In this way, respecting liberty
 – 
 as the absence of interpersonal aggression
 – 
 can indeed be
the
 
―
 fundamental
 principle of libertarian
ethics.‖
 By way of illustration, we are asked
to ―Suppose
 A
 is walking across an empty field, when
 B
  jumps out of the bushes and clubs
 A
 
on the head ... If it‘s
 B
‘s field, and
 A
was crossing it without
 B
‘s
consent, then
 A
was the one who was actually aggressing against
 B
.‖ It seems worth noting that a
disproportionately large retaliation itself becomes a new act of aggression. A theory of proportional response to aggression is derivable from the NAP/MAP.
19
 Thus there need be no problem with the view
that ―‗aggression,‘ on the libertarian view, doesn‘t really mean physical violence at all.‖ And there need not even be a problem with ‗aggression‘ that ―
means
‗violation of property rights‘‖
 
 – 
 as long as that is understood as a rule of thumb. But property rights themselves can be derived from whatever control of resources does not aggress, i.e., proactively constrain or interfere with others (or, in the event of a clash, whatever minimizes such constraints or interferences
). Hence, it is false to say that ―It is the enforcement of property rights, not
 the prohibition of aggression,
that is fundamental to libertarianism.‖ As we have now seen, it is liberty
18
 
Myriad details are discussed in Lester 2012, but some critical essays become lost in their own inaccurate paraphrases of those details without first showing that they have grasped the basic problem or the basic idea of the solution.
 
19
 
See Lester 2012 (108-120) and 2011 (Chapter27).
 

 
itself
 – 
 interpreted as the absence of interpersonal aggression
 – 
 tha
t is ―fundamental to libertarianism.‖
That conclusion should not be completely astounding.
“6. What About the Children???”
 
This section asserts that
―the NAP implies that there is nothing wrong with allowing your three year 
-old son to starve to death, so long as you do not forcibly prevent him from obtaining food on his
own.‖ An analogy mi
ght help to answer this point. Suppose a child will not enter the swimming pool without a lifeguard. You volunteer to be the lifeguard, and as a consequence he gets into the pool. Then to allow the child to drown flouts the claim to your protection that you have previously given him: it is thereby an aggression against the child (positive actions are not always necessary to aggress against the claims we cede to people). In a relevantly similar way, a parent has assumed a duty of care
for the vulnerable person that he has brought into existence. Negligently to allow one‘s own child to
starve to death is to flout that duty and thereby commit an aggression against that child. Therefore, one has a libertarian obligation either to feed him or to discharge the parental duty by finding someone who is willing to take it on.
20
 
Consequently, it is incorrect to say that the NAP ―implies that it
would 
 be wrong for others to, say, trespa
ss on your property in order to give the child you‘re deliberately starving a piece of bread.‖ As
the starving child is having his given claims aggressed against, anyone has a right to come to his aid in his defence. Any duties that we create by our behaviour, including but not limited to explicit contracts, may be coercively enforced if that is what is necessary to minimize any overall aggression. Zwolinski 2013 finally sums up its position with a few observations. It
first notes that ―There‘s
more to be s
aid about each of these, of course. Libertarians haven‘t written much about the issue of  pollution.‖ Is that correct? For what it‘s worth,
typing
―pollution‖ into cato.org
produced the claim of
―465 results.‖ Then
it
observes that libertarians ―can think u
p a host of ways to tweak, tinker, and contextualize the NAP in a way that makes some progress in dealing with the problems I have raised
in this essay.‖ And, indeed,
some Rothbardians have already done this with their interpretation of the NAP. But the essay asserts
that ―There comes a point where what you need is not another refinement to the definition of ‗aggression‘ but a radical
 paradigm shift
in which we put aside the idea that non-
aggression is the sole, immovable center of the moral universe.‖ Howe
ver, this overlooks a third
 possibility: one can have a paradigm shift within the interpretation of what constitutes ―non
-
aggression‖ (or ‗liberty‘). And this is what
 this response claims to have provided.
“Libertarianism needs its own Copernican Revolution”
 
The essay‘s
 
concluding sentence is that ―Libertarianism needs its own Copernican Revolution.‖ The
analogy is more apposite than is implied (although, of course, Aristarchus of Samos long antedated
Copernicus). For the ―Copernican Revolution‖ that
is possible
here is to stop trying to theorize ―non
-
aggression‖ (or liberty) ultimately in terms of legitimate property and do the reverse: to theorize
legitimate property ultimately in terms of non-aggression (or liberty). And with this approach all six given reasons to reject the non-aggression principle can be comprehensively refuted.
Yet this ―
Copernican Revolution
‖
 is viewed
as ‗heretical‘
in some libertarian texts
 – 
 where it has been noticed
at all. And the ‗heresy‘
 is compounded by the
‗incomprehensible‘
 rejection of all supposed justifications in favour of the application of critical-rationalist epistemology. Consequently, it might be useful to conclude by emphasizing that this
―revolution‖
 is not a criticism of libertarianism, as such, nor is it any kind of compromise with non-libertarian principles. On the
20
 
To be more precise, this argument applies once personhood is achieved
 – 
 
almost certainly by ―three‖
 
 – 
 and before that only the creation of suffering is wrong, but for non-libertarian reasons.

 
contrary, it is supposed to clarify and unify much currently diverse libertarian theory behind a single principle of liberty itself. That aim, at least, ought to be in accord with real libertarianism.
References
Lester, J. C. 2011.
 Arguments for Liberty: a Libertarian Miscellany
. Buckingham: The University of Buckingham Press.
 —— 
 [2000] 2012.
 Escape from Leviathan: Libertarianism without Justificationism
. Buckingham: The University of Buckingham Press.
Zwolinski, Matt. 2013. ―Libertarianism and Liberty‖ essays on libertarianism.org
 
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