Matt Bruenig — Libertarian Julian Sanchez Agrees Non-Aggression Is Circular

You can’t resolve a philosophical debate between a classical liberal and a socialist by appealing to the NAP, because each can claim their view is consistent with that principle given their theories of property: The state is not “aggressing” on an individual “property owner” if in fact The People ultimately own (or have some kind of share right in) all property, given the normatively loaded way “aggression” is used here. The appeal of the NAP lies in its apparent simplicity and intuitive plausibility (tautologies tend to be intuitively plausible), but it’s typically deployed in a way that amounts to a kind of shell game: I argue that socialism must be rejected on the grounds that it violates this one simple moral principle, and hope my interlocutor doesn’t notice that I’ve essentially begged the question by baking a theory of strong property rights incompatible with socialism into my conception of “aggression,” when of course libertarian property rights are ultimately backed by the threat of (individual or state) violence as well.

All along I have emphasized that my point about the NAP being question-begging is stupidly obvious and has been made by others before. It is its stupid obviousness that makes me so shocked that libertarians pretend not to understand it (or maybe they actually don’t understand it, which is even more shocking).

Libertarian Julian Sanchez Agrees Non-Aggression Is Circular
Matt Bruenig

Of course, Libertarians will claim that there is no vicious circle involved because the non-aggression principle is a priori. 

Socialists also claim that their principle of no absolute right to private property is either also a priori or empirical in that originally all property was common and private property is based on primitive accumulation, that is, appropriation of the commons that abrogates the prior right of all to share the commons. They will also point out that much if not most primitive accumulation was through aggression.