Is the Non Agression Principle a necessary component of Libertarian thought?
I ask because untill I came here roughly a year ago, I had never heard of the NAP, yet I have considered myself to be a libertarian since early high school. As a result, I have never defined my political thought by non aggression, or tied myself down to its conditions.
So, does libertarianism need the NAP, or is that a component of one of many different political philosophies that incorporate libertarian thought?
No. In fact, it confuses the issue: Libertarians gain popular support from their use of the term, since who wouldn't claim that it was wrong to use violence against somebody unless they had or were going to use it against others? However, libertarians define aggression in an idiosyncratic way. For instance, if I leave my bike outside my house whilst I go in to collect something, and then you get on and cycle off libertarians would probably say that I can use a degree of force to stop you. However, in what way are you aggressing against me? You haven't laid a finger on me, just stolen my bike.
Likewise, in what way is fraud an instance of aggression? Fraud is a way of taking a person's property without their consent (because the conditions under which the property was taken were not the conditions consented to), but does it involve violence? Of course not.
Now, each of these cases involve
violations of rights, but not the use of violence against a peaceful person. So, only if libertarians define aggression as "the violation of rights" can they say they think force should only be used to prevent aggression, or that various activities that don't involve violence can be called "aggression." This may be a good, workable definition, but it is still idiosyncratic.
Further, Ayn Rand said that the reason that the initiation of force should be prohibited is that she thought that rights could only be violated by the initiation of force. The above examples show that claim to be false, but we can go further: Even if we were to accept that rights can only be violated by initiations of force, it doesn't follow that
all initiation of force should be prohibited. It only follows that
rights violating initiations of force should be prohibited. If she had said that
all initiations of force violate rights, her conclusion follows. But she didn't.
So, though they could still define aggression as "violations of rights," I suppose, I think libertarians should concentrate primarily on rights: Our property rights, first of all over ourselves (self-ownership), over previously unowned resources we mix our labour with, and in things we acquire from voluntary exchanges from others.