Self-ownership

Self-ownership is the concept of property in one's own body, often expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity meaning the exclusive right^[1] to control one's own body including one's life, where 'control' means exerting any physical interference and 'exclusive' means having the right to install and enforce a ban on other people doing this.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9] Since the legal norm of property title claim incapacitates (or bans) other people (except the zygote^[7]) from claiming property title over the same resource at the same time, the right to control or interfere with one's own body in any arbitrary way is secured. Anarcho-capitalism defines self-ownership as the exclusive right to control one's body as long as the owner does not aggress upon others, leading to the concept of the sovereign individual. In Minarchism the 'exclusive right' is understood by separating the 'liberty-to' from the 'liberty-from' where for each person the 'liberty-to' is restricted by all the 'liberty's-from' of others, effectively subjecting the 'liberty-to' to the ban on the usage of force. Thereafter self-ownership means the exclusive right to control one's body insofar considering action between inhabitants and not involving the state, making it roughly a pacifist morality (except for the right to limited self-defense) only among inhabitants. Self-ownership is a central idea in several political philosophies that emphasize individualism, such as libertarianism and liberalism.

'Sovereignty of the individual, individual sovereignty or de-jure self-autonomy, is generally understood as a right implying the right of self-ownership and one's property, also called negative sovereignty, but also implying the rejection (Hohfeldian disability) of positive sovereignty, in the sense that it is the initiation of forceful action, where negative sovereignty includes property rights and positive sovereignty includes the right to subjugate self-owning people to command obedience or sovereign rule ^[10]^[11]^[12] or simply being endowed with the right to receive some economic good.^[2] A view that is held by 'negative-rights libertarians'. Legal theoretically sovereignty is achieved by person A, the declarator, by applying a power norm on person B which does not require any declarative volitional behavioral action of B, where as a legal consequence B becomes the legal subject (of the obligation) meaning B receives an obligation that is satisfied by the 'non-initiation of forceful action' (negative sovereignty) by B, or any other obligation (positive sovereignty). Example of negative sovereignty power norms are declaring a land ownership claim by planting a flag or raising a fence on previously unowned land installing a physical interference ban exempted by local rules. Positive sovereignty power norms violate consent (volition) of the legal subject in the sense of libertarian involuntariness, but the negative sovereign power norm does not by definition.

The conception action is legally a power norm that imposes the (positive) parental duty on the parents^[13] which is understood not to violate the individual's sovereignty or impose involuntary servitude because it was imposed on themselves by their own behavioral physical interference action with a zygote as a negative claim right of the zygote to the parental duty which is an implicit obligation similar to a sanction norm in corrective justice.^[14] One is obligated not to create a zygote by an pure (physical) interference action or perform the parental duty which is an obligation resulting from negative sovereignty by assuming an implicit law on the zygote. So the parental duty is not a positive sovereignty claim right by the zygote. Normally in libertarian theory the claimer of property implicitly immunizes all people from circumstances on the property at the moment of acquisition that were caused by a pure (physical) interference action, which is also known as the negative Voetstoots assumption of property acquisition. Most libertarians assume the zygote to have a form of self-ownership called liberty from immediate harm,^[7] while still being subject to ownership by the parents. This right does not imply the unconditional right to subject the child to command e.g.parental power or compulsory education, a form of involuntary servitude. Many assume the parental duty to imply raising the child unharmed and to full physical and mental health combined with the duty to secure for the child its right to full anarchic individual sovereignty (both de-jure and de-facto), in the 'blank-slate' sense, meaning that (1) it is free from any obligations it did not enter in to with its own consent from majority age. For example, obligations created under parental legal guardianship (Law of agency). And (2) meaning that it has free will, implying that it is free from external control (de-facto autonomy). This duty is subject to remote liability. Sustaining the right to self-ownership requires independent moral capacity (moral agency) according to the NAP. Negative-rights libertarians assume people to be self-sovereign until they voluntarily dispose parts of this right.

States generally do not recognize individual sovereignty of any natural persons, but only of states. The right to state sovereignty and duty to keep to its treaties follows from the fundamental principles of international law called just war theory and is an implementation of the non-aggression principle. States generally only recognize natural persons as bearers of rights as matter of national law sourced from international human rights treaty and not as a fundamental principle. This fundamental non-recognition of natural persons leads to states violating the property of individuals outside of the boundaries of sovereign states,^[15] and denying the people the right to resist and secession (Right of revolution)^[4] when the state violates the state law (constitution and treaties) that it bound itself to by declaration. Such a state considers itself the ultimate arbiter in every conflict with a natural person, including conflicts involving itself,^[16]^[17] outside of any other sovereign state, as long as it does not aggress upon another state. This is called the monopoly on violence and goes further than merely claiming the right to set rules on a territory (negative sovereignty) and enforce it.^[18] It implies that this state claims the legal right to initiate force.

The 'right to property in one's person' is often understood as personality rights, and are just like intellectual property rights and right to privacy or private life generally a violation of self-ownership or individual sovereignty. For example, the right to be forgotten bans any person from keeping reputation on other people. The right to life is sometimes named as part of self-ownership and is implied by the self-ownership right when understood either as the inviolability to the purely interfering negligence tort of killing or simply as the tort of (bodily) property trespass killing the owner.

^ BGB Germany: "Rights of the owner: The owner of an item can, unless the law or the rights of third parties conflict with it, handle the item as he wishes and exclude others from any influence." https://dejure.org/gesetze/BGB/903.html
^ ^a ^b Block, Walter (1986). The U.S. Bishops and Their Critics: An Ethical and Economic Perspective. SSRN 1896495. Citation: "In classical philosophy, negative rights or negative liberty consist solely of the right not to have physical force, or the threat thereof, initiated against oneself. Each person, then, has the right not to be murdered, raped, robbed, assaulted, battered, etc. The doctrine of positive "rights," in contrast, typically holds that people have the right to food, clothing, shelter, and, depending on which variant is under discussion, to a reasonable lifestyle, to non-discriminatory behaviour, to meaningful relationships, to psychological well-being, to employment, to a decent wage, etc." Block assumes a positive right to mean a positive obligation that was imposed without requiring a declarative volitional act of the obligated like with a contract.
^ Homowy, Ronald (2008). "Individual Rights". The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. p. 246. Citation:"each person is born to a negative obligation to leave others in the peaceful enjoyment of their persons and their own property.. property rights are negative rights. In the absence of special complications, one’s property rights only impose on others the duty not to trespass and to leave one free to do as one sees fit with oneself and one’s own property"
^ ^a ^b John Locke (1689). "State of Nature (Chapter 2.6)" (PDF). Second treatise on government, Book II. Citation: "But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." Locke understands liberty as liberty right instead of a physical freedom, for example freedom is bound by one's obligations (nobler purpose) like satisfying one's contracts, compensating for caused property damages and let the owner peacefully apply his purpose when he calls for it. Citation (B2,C13,P155) "for having erected a legislative, with an intent they should exercise the power of making laws, either at certain set times, or when there is need of it, when they are hindered by any force from what is so necessary to the society, and wherein the safety and preservation of the people consists, the people have a right to remove it by force. In all states and conditions, the true remedy of force without authority, is to oppose force to it. The use of force without authority, always puts him that uses it into a state of war, as the aggressor, and renders him liable to be treated accordingly."
^ Thomas Hobbes (1651). "Of the first and second Natural Laws, and Contracts C(Chapter 14)" (PDF). Leviathan. p. 101. Citation: "And when a man hath in either manner abandoned, or granted away his Right; then is he said to be OBLIGED or BOUND, not to hinder those, to whom such Right is granted, or abandoned, from the benefit of it: and that he Ought, and it is his DUTY, not to make void that Duty that voluntary act of his own: and that such hindrance is INJUSTICE, and INJURY, as being Sine Jure; the Right being before renounced, or transferred." Hobbs introduces contractual claim rights analogous to Hofeld-Newcomb's liberty and claim rights. The logical existence of contract claim rights, in contrast to mere reciprocity, must presuppose some preexisting claim right (usually self-ownership) of the authorizing party of the contract (the obligated) that can be punished in case the contract is violated, which otherwise would be inviolable.
^ Murray Rothbard. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. Citation (p. 33) "The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to 'own' his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference." Citation (p. 27) "... that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. ... 'Aggression' is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else ... is therefore synonymous with invasion."
^ ^a ^b ^c Murray Rothbard. Ethics of Liberty. Citation (p. 216): "... define negative liberty as the absence of physical interference with an individual's person and property, with his just property rights broadly defined." Citation (p. 215): "liberty is the absence of physically coercive interference or invasion of an individual's person and property." Citation (p. 60): "The simplest case, of course, is property in persons. The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that each person must be a self-owner, and that no one has the right to interfere with such self-ownership. From this there follows immediately the total impermissibility of property in another person." Citation (p. 77) "To say that someone has the absolute right to a certain property but lacks the right to defend it against attack or invasion is also to say that he does not have total right to that property." Rothbard's and Berlin's concept of negative liberty corresponds to Howowy's and Block's negative claim right. Citation (p. 101): "Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so." Rothbard acknowledges that the zygote obtained inviolability rights not to be harmed, so the parents property rights on the egg cell and the sperm cell are based on a legal norm that incapacitates all people but the zygote at conception to claim bodily overlapping property by a naked legal fact/act (involuntary legal norm). Citation (p. 150) "any physical force used against another to keep him from homesteading is an act of criminal assault against him, and aggression may not be used to establish a homestead right (just as one would-be homesteader may not use force to prevent someone else from getting to a piece of land first)." This formulates the right to appropriate or interfere with everything that is unowned. Appropriated resources do not have to be claimed as property or can be disposed of immediately after. Neither appropriation without property claim nor property disposal immunizes the previous owner of liability, but absence of reasonable forseeability and avoidability of possible harmful violation does.
^ Lysander Spooner (1852). "Trial By Jury" (PDF). Let's Abolish Government. Citation (p179) "If one man commit a trespass upon the person, property or character of another, the injured party has a natural right, either to chastise the aggressor, or to take compensation for the injury out of his property."
^ Herman-Hans Hoppe (2020). Economics and Ethics of Private Property. p. 424. Citation: "In the same vein, the fact of self-ownership is a praxeological precondition of argumentation. Anyone trying to prove or disprove anything must be a self-owner."
^ Spooner, Lysander (1852). "Trial By Jury". Let's abolish government. p. 86. Citation (p. 86) "The only real 'sovereignty' or right of 'sovereignty' in this or any other country, is that right of sovereignty which each and every human being has over his or her own person and property, so long as he or she obeys the one law of justice towards the person and property of every other human being. This is the only natural right of sovereignty, that was ever known among men. All other so-called rights of sovereignty are simply the usurpations of impostors, conspirators, robbers, tyrants, and murderers." Citation (p81) "What, then, is a 'sovereign' government? It is a government that is 'sovereign' over all the natural rights of the people. This is the only 'sovereignty' that any government can be said to have. Under it, the people have no rights. They are simply 'subjects' – that is, slaves. They have but one law, and one duty, viz., obedience, submission." Citation (p. 208) "There is no particle of truth in the notion that the majority have a right to rule, or to exercise arbitrary power over, the minority, simply because the former are more numerous than the latter. Two men have no more natural right to rule one, than one has to rule two." Spooner understands sovereignty to mean the negative sovereignty of property rights but says that this is the only sovereignty, so rejecting positive sovereignty of ruling power.
^ Rand, Ayn (1988). The Ayn Rand lexicon: objectivism from A to Z. Penguin Publishing. p. 204. ISBN 9780452010512. Citation: "the ruler of the individual – as a sovereign authority (with or without supernatural mandate), an authority logically antecedent to the citizen and to which he must submit. The Founding Fathers challenged this primordial notion. They started with the premise of the primacy and sovereignty of the individual."
^ Rand, Ayn (1982). "The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made". Philosophy: Who Needs It. Bobbs-Merrill. p. 40. ISBN 0-672-52725-1. "Citation: this is in his exclusive, sovereign power. Man is neither to be obeyed nor to be commanded."
^ Edward Feser (2004). Self-Ownership, Abortion, and the Rights of Children: Toward a More Conservative Libertarianism.
^ Stefan, Molyneux (2013). "What Is True". On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion, Free Version. p. 5. Ref: Freedomain radio show 2013, Molyneux: "The parental care duty is similar to the duty for a rental car."
^ Liberland attacked by Croatian authorities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqs8RiNjvCA
^ "Isn't It Time We Overthrew the State?". LewRockwell.
^ Rothbard, Murray (1963). The Anatomy of the State. p. 34. Citation (p34): "(Charles) Black admits that this means that the State has set itself up as a judge in its own cause, thus violating a basic juridical principle for aiming at just decisions. He brusquely denies the possibility of any alternative." Citation (p. 54) "...the State always makes sure that it seizes and retains certain crucial “command posts” of the economy and society. Among these command posts are a monopoly of violence, monopoly of the ultimate judicial power,..."
^ Nozick, Robert (1974). "Is the Dominant Protective Association a State?". Anarchy, State, and Utopia. p. 41. Citation: "Writers in the tradition of Max Weber treat having a monopoly on the use of force in a geographical area, a monopoly incompatible with private enforcement of rights, as crucial to the existence of a state. As Marshall Cohen points out in an unpublished essay, a state may exist without actually monopolizing the use of force it has not authorized others to use;... Nor need everyone grant the legitimacy of the state’s claim to such monopoly,... because as revolutionaries they believe that a given state lacks this right,..."

[1] BGB Germany: "Rights of the owner: The owner of an item can, unless the law or the rights of third parties conflict with it, handle the item as he wishes and exclude others from any influence." https://dejure.org/gesetze/BGB/903.html

[block_bp-2] Block, Walter (1986). The U.S. Bishops and Their Critics: An Ethical and Economic Perspective. SSRN 1896495. Citation: "In classical philosophy, negative rights or negative liberty consist solely of the right not to have physical force, or the threat thereof, initiated against oneself. Each person, then, has the right not to be murdered, raped, robbed, assaulted, battered, etc. The doctrine of positive "rights," in contrast, typically holds that people have the right to food, clothing, shelter, and, depending on which variant is under discussion, to a reasonable lifestyle, to non-discriminatory behaviour, to meaningful relationships, to psychological well-being, to employment, to a decent wage, etc." Block assumes a positive right to mean a positive obligation that was imposed without requiring a declarative volitional act of the obligated like with a contract.

[3] Homowy, Ronald (2008). "Individual Rights". The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. p. 246. Citation:"each person is born to a negative obligation to leave others in the peaceful enjoyment of their persons and their own property.. property rights are negative rights. In the absence of special complications, one’s property rights only impose on others the duty not to trespass and to leave one free to do as one sees fit with oneself and one’s own property"

[locke-4] John Locke (1689). "State of Nature (Chapter 2.6)" (PDF). Second treatise on government, Book II. Citation: "But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." Locke understands liberty as liberty right instead of a physical freedom, for example freedom is bound by one's obligations (nobler purpose) like satisfying one's contracts, compensating for caused property damages and let the owner peacefully apply his purpose when he calls for it. Citation (B2,C13,P155) "for having erected a legislative, with an intent they should exercise the power of making laws, either at certain set times, or when there is need of it, when they are hindered by any force from what is so necessary to the society, and wherein the safety and preservation of the people consists, the people have a right to remove it by force. In all states and conditions, the true remedy of force without authority, is to oppose force to it. The use of force without authority, always puts him that uses it into a state of war, as the aggressor, and renders him liable to be treated accordingly."

[hobbes_lev-5] Thomas Hobbes (1651). "Of the first and second Natural Laws, and Contracts C(Chapter 14)" (PDF). Leviathan. p. 101. Citation: "And when a man hath in either manner abandoned, or granted away his Right; then is he said to be OBLIGED or BOUND, not to hinder those, to whom such Right is granted, or abandoned, from the benefit of it: and that he Ought, and it is his DUTY, not to make void that Duty that voluntary act of his own: and that such hindrance is INJUSTICE, and INJURY, as being Sine Jure; the Right being before renounced, or transferred." Hobbs introduces contractual claim rights analogous to Hofeld-Newcomb's liberty and claim rights. The logical existence of contract claim rights, in contrast to mere reciprocity, must presuppose some preexisting claim right (usually self-ownership) of the authorizing party of the contract (the obligated) that can be punished in case the contract is violated, which otherwise would be inviolable.

[6] Murray Rothbard. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. Citation (p. 33) "The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to 'own' his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference." Citation (p. 27) "... that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. ... 'Aggression' is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else ... is therefore synonymous with invasion."

[roth_eol-7] Murray Rothbard. Ethics of Liberty. Citation (p. 216): "... define negative liberty as the absence of physical interference with an individual's person and property, with his just property rights broadly defined." Citation (p. 215): "liberty is the absence of physically coercive interference or invasion of an individual's person and property." Citation (p. 60): "The simplest case, of course, is property in persons. The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that each person must be a self-owner, and that no one has the right to interfere with such self-ownership. From this there follows immediately the total impermissibility of property in another person." Citation (p. 77) "To say that someone has the absolute right to a certain property but lacks the right to defend it against attack or invasion is also to say that he does not have total right to that property." Rothbard's and Berlin's concept of negative liberty corresponds to Howowy's and Block's negative claim right. Citation (p. 101): "Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so." Rothbard acknowledges that the zygote obtained inviolability rights not to be harmed, so the parents property rights on the egg cell and the sperm cell are based on a legal norm that incapacitates all people but the zygote at conception to claim bodily overlapping property by a naked legal fact/act (involuntary legal norm). Citation (p. 150) "any physical force used against another to keep him from homesteading is an act of criminal assault against him, and aggression may not be used to establish a homestead right (just as one would-be homesteader may not use force to prevent someone else from getting to a piece of land first)." This formulates the right to appropriate or interfere with everything that is unowned. Appropriated resources do not have to be claimed as property or can be disposed of immediately after. Neither appropriation without property claim nor property disposal immunizes the previous owner of liability, but absence of reasonable forseeability and avoidability of possible harmful violation does.

[8] Lysander Spooner (1852). "Trial By Jury" (PDF). Let's Abolish Government. Citation (p179) "If one man commit a trespass upon the person, property or character of another, the injured party has a natural right, either to chastise the aggressor, or to take compensation for the injury out of his property."

[hoppe_privprop-9] Herman-Hans Hoppe (2020). Economics and Ethics of Private Property. p. 424. Citation: "In the same vein, the fact of self-ownership is a praxeological precondition of argumentation. Anyone trying to prove or disprove anything must be a self-owner."

[10] Spooner, Lysander (1852). "Trial By Jury". Let's abolish government. p. 86. Citation (p. 86) "The only real 'sovereignty' or right of 'sovereignty' in this or any other country, is that right of sovereignty which each and every human being has over his or her own person and property, so long as he or she obeys the one law of justice towards the person and property of every other human being. This is the only natural right of sovereignty, that was ever known among men. All other so-called rights of sovereignty are simply the usurpations of impostors, conspirators, robbers, tyrants, and murderers." Citation (p81) "What, then, is a 'sovereign' government? It is a government that is 'sovereign' over all the natural rights of the people. This is the only 'sovereignty' that any government can be said to have. Under it, the people have no rights. They are simply 'subjects' – that is, slaves. They have but one law, and one duty, viz., obedience, submission." Citation (p. 208) "There is no particle of truth in the notion that the majority have a right to rule, or to exercise arbitrary power over, the minority, simply because the former are more numerous than the latter. Two men have no more natural right to rule one, than one has to rule two." Spooner understands sovereignty to mean the negative sovereignty of property rights but says that this is the only sovereignty, so rejecting positive sovereignty of ruling power.

[11] Rand, Ayn (1988). The Ayn Rand lexicon: objectivism from A to Z. Penguin Publishing. p. 204. ISBN 9780452010512. Citation: "the ruler of the individual – as a sovereign authority (with or without supernatural mandate), an authority logically antecedent to the citizen and to which he must submit. The Founding Fathers challenged this primordial notion. They started with the premise of the primacy and sovereignty of the individual."

[12] Rand, Ayn (1982). "The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made". Philosophy: Who Needs It. Bobbs-Merrill. p. 40. ISBN 0-672-52725-1. "Citation: this is in his exclusive, sovereign power. Man is neither to be obeyed nor to be commanded."

[feser_roc-13] Edward Feser (2004). Self-Ownership, Abortion, and the Rights of Children: Toward a More Conservative Libertarianism.

[14] Stefan, Molyneux (2013). "What Is True". On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion, Free Version. p. 5. Ref: Freedomain radio show 2013, Molyneux: "The parental care duty is similar to the duty for a rental car."

[15] Liberland attacked by Croatian authorities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqs8RiNjvCA

[16] "Isn't It Time We Overthrew the State?". LewRockwell.

[17] Rothbard, Murray (1963). The Anatomy of the State. p. 34. Citation (p34): "(Charles) Black admits that this means that the State has set itself up as a judge in its own cause, thus violating a basic juridical principle for aiming at just decisions. He brusquely denies the possibility of any alternative." Citation (p. 54) "...the State always makes sure that it seizes and retains certain crucial “command posts” of the economy and society. Among these command posts are a monopoly of violence, monopoly of the ultimate judicial power,..."

[18] Nozick, Robert (1974). "Is the Dominant Protective Association a State?". Anarchy, State, and Utopia. p. 41. Citation: "Writers in the tradition of Max Weber treat having a monopoly on the use of force in a geographical area, a monopoly incompatible with private enforcement of rights, as crucial to the existence of a state. As Marshall Cohen points out in an unpublished essay, a state may exist without actually monopolizing the use of force it has not authorized others to use;... Nor need everyone grant the legitimacy of the state’s claim to such monopoly,... because as revolutionaries they believe that a given state lacks this right,..."

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