The basic libertarian principle is often phrased in terms of 'self-ownership' - the principle that one is the rightful owner and therefore has exclusive rights of disposal or control over one's own physical person (body-mind; faculties; abilities; energies; time; life-activities) - and, by further reasoning, exclusive rights of disposal or control over the productive fruits of applying one's personal resources in action (property rights, including the right to start and own/control a business of one's own, or pool capital with others, whatever one freely chooses).
Now, in the header I put the word "explained", and in so doing I'm both giving an essential description of the core libertarian principle as well as a why-account, as in why do people possess an exclusive right of 'self-ownership' and classic, essentially Lockean property rights.
The core libertarian 'self-ownership' principle reformulated is provided in the image above: one person's life is not another's (or others', as in a majority/mob) to dispose of.
I take the libertarian principle to be some kind of undeniable moral truism although its precise specification is a matter of controversy. Is it consistent with any form of welfare or subsistence rights that Rand explicitly denies? (And for reasons I will get into shortly I regard Rand as preeminent exponent of the libertarian idea.) If it is undeniable, then it means that whatever other ethical/moral principles we can all reasonably agree upon after due deliberation, they all must occur within the constraints of libertarian 'self-ownership'.
Now, as to the reformulated wording. The most directly comparable formulation of "one person's life is not another's to dispose of" or "my life is not yours to dispose of" in the literature is Prof. Hospers' "other men's lives are not yours to dispose of," in his early-1970s article, "What Libertarianism Is." But it's a safe bet that his primary influence in this regard was his series of conversations and correspondence with Ayn Rand in the early '60s. And the evidence that it originated with Rand is a passage in Atlas Shrugged (1957) where the hero, John Galt, asks the Head of State (heh heh) Mr. Thompson (heh heh), what he has to offer him, and the panicked (heh heh) and account-overdawn (heh heh) Mr. Thompson says, "I'm offering you your life" or words to that effect, and Galt replies, "It's not yours to offer, Mr. Thompson." (Of course, anyone who has followed these things knows, Hospers, a widely respected figure in his profession, is recognized in particular for his expertise in aesthetic theory, and he's a big fan of Atlas Shrugged.)
Now, the core libertarian self-plus-property ownership principle is often taken by many scholars and interpreters to imply a rejection of any extensive measures of taxation and governance (a really big, powerful armed forces might be required for a period of time to defeat a mortal foreign enemy?), and especially measures that take property/income/wealth from one citizen and give it to another, or, what's usually called redistributive taxation/spending. (Self-styled anarchist libertarians or 'anarcho-capitalists' say that you don't need any form of government/taxation to have a stable rule of (libertarian) law, national defense, or other 'public goods' functions usually attributed to a 'minimal state' framework.)
Now, the basic libertarian 'self-ownership' is, I believe, best formulated by Rand and (subsequently) Hospers, but Rand gives an explanatory why-account that Hospers doesn't in his article, although the intuitive appeal of the principle is there aplenty even in his telling. But it's Rand who really gets to the meat of the why-account, which is the whole theoretical & thematic core of Atlas Shrugged and her entire philosophy: the role of the mind in man's (human) existence and all this entails.
Rand boils down the basic principle in dramatic fashion in the Galt-Thompson scene as much as she does throughout pretty much the whole novel. The basic opposition comes down to this: Is John Galt's mind properly at Mr. Thompson's disposal rather than (exclusively) his own? By "mind" Rand means a specifically human, conceptual or intellectual faculty which depends on the volitional (thereby requiring free or uninhibited thought/action) act of focus, and the ultimate measure of the service to one's life, i.e., ethical or moral perfection, is the degree of one's focusing one's mind as opposed to evading or being otherwise frustrated or negated from within or without (by other actors).
Put another way: A human is, by nature, a volitional/free conceptual-intellectual being who must make judgments about how to act, and this requires a focused process of thinking and this requires an effort (the basic phenomenon that involves active, free, volitional movement as opposed to a relatively or fully passive or restive state), and it means that one must be able to duly consider the reasons for taking a course of action. So is it Galt's life to determine by how own free judgment how it is disposed of, or does it belong in part or full to Mr. Thompson/the State? It's an irreconcilable opposition of basic principles. Miss Rand is often bashed for putting things like this in such starkly "unrealistically black-and-white" terms, but I don't see any way around it. It's the basic crux of Nozick's rejection of Rawls' theory (and arguably on grounds Rawls concedes as true when he defends the seperateness of persons against utilitarian appropriation-of-persons-for-collective-benefits).
But the fundamentality or primacy or basic-principle-ness of Rand's role-of-the-mind theme is the why of the libertarian principle. To state again: the human mind (intellect) must operate freely to act/be what it is, and to be appropriated from outside against the action-directives issued by the exercise of its own free judgments weighing the for/against reasons (etc etc?) is to be treated as a mere instrument or means which falls afoul not just of the libertarian principle as presented here but also a 'Kantian' principle widely considered eminently plausible (the Randian version being stated as: "man is an end in himself and not a means to the ends of others" - which I take to be another alterative formulation of the libertarian principle).
So if Mr. Thompson is to get Galt to willingly cooperate, bother to put forth the effort to act (causally enact an effect, which in human terms is means-ends reasoning), he needs to be shown a reason to do so, and not the muzzle of a gun. (Oh no, that unbearably black-and-white illustration of the principle, stated for the umpteenth time already in the novel (heh heh - if only the Rand-bashers would just fucking listen for a change, man, they might learn something; Rand's got information, man; not-exactly new shit has come to light (these past 63 years and counting ffs etc. for the umpteenth time)).)
What exactly is a reason for engaging in the effort of an action? Well, there's a vast literature on that but a lot of it has to do with reconciling the "rational" and the "reasonable," or put another way, between appeals to one's personal preference- or value-set, a so-called egoistic reason-giving or justification for action on the one hand, and what, in arriving at the best principles for governing interpersonal behaviors meet the highest standards of fairness? (Much of the influence of John Rawls in recent moral-political theory has to do with his understanding of political justice in terms of fairness or what I'm here calling reasonabless. The idea I'm advancing/advocating here is that the libertarian principle must be able to - and does - satisfy standards of fairness, principles all communicating-in-moral-terms actors can freely and cooperatively agree upon. Rawls brings in the concept of overlapping consensus to help describe/explain this ideal deliberative-communicative framework.) The reasonableness-standpoint also suggests something or other about taking a stance of impartiality so that the perspective of all moral deliberators-actors are respected (taken into account). (Political jab: this is why I loathe today's leftists who constantly caricature their opponents.) Some sort of principle of human-equality is operative throughout all this ideal, something about equal consideration of all perspectives which means techniques of free, rational, logical persuasion and dialectic. (Rawls' famous Original Position is a thought-experimenty device for taking the impartial standpoint so that particular circumstances don't affect one's judgments of fairness.)
So, Galt and Rand are saying - or might or ought to say - perhaps not to a slimeball like Mr. Thompson but rather to even an honest interlocutor whom I take Rawls and Nagel (whose 'altruism' or other-person-directed motivation comes from taking an impartial stance) to be, something like the following: "Look, give it your best shot at convincing me to take your so-called impartial stance but it's going to me my own free judgment and not yours that decides, okay? This constrains you from applying your difference principle and all that stuff in anything other than a voluntary sense, i.e., even then it's not the role of the political to employ physical force in any capacity other than protection from the initiation of force (the introduction of force into human relationships)."
Rand has a lot of very negative things to say about the initiation of physical force. "Force and mind are opposites" as she would say aplenty. Then there's the translation of "armed might (of, e.g., the electoral majority)" into "guns and physical force." Rand ain't fucking around here when she brings up the gun thing, because that's what it comes down to, a tool to threaten you to do things contrary to your own judgment and substitute for that the judgment of others (over how to lead your own life, etc.). If Rand gets nothing else about her political principles across, it's that all human relationships should be premised on rational persuasion.
Now, there's the introduction of force, and there's the use of force in self-defense in the event that its use is initiated. So that gives us some idea of when the use of force is ever appropriate. If one is ever to use force, one should be able to give a damn good reason for doing so. In the case of self-defense, a life is at stake (we're taking the case of defense against attempted murder here). Or, we can speak of a portion of one's life (which is one's own to exclusively dispose of, etc.) being defended against less deadly forms of violent assault. Now, there's also the matter of what are usually termed 'emergency exceptions,' e.g., the shipwreck scenario and breaking into an absent owner's house to obtain food rather than starve - provided compensation is paid to the owner, say.
Some philosophers - James P. Sterba comes to mind - have argued that a combination of reasonableness and libertarianism (or the moral principles that give libertarianism its appeal) leads to subsistence or welfare rights on roughly the 'emergency exception' grounds, although that can probably (surely?) be reformulated in the terms of reasonableness and fairness outlined above. But there is reasonable disagreement over really (I mean, really, c'mon) how much leeway this gives the government/state to use forcible mechanisms to move resources around on a greater-needs basis. (Keep in mind that the primary/basic/fundamental/essential productive resource is the human mind/intellect.) For one thing there is a really large body of economic and political-philosophical literature that speaks of the wisdom of free markets in minimizing human want or suffering across a vast range of goods and services, in raising living standards wherever they're instituted, in making for the development of capital which leads to fewer out-of-resources scenarios, etc. (Rand famously yet widely-misunderstoodly explains all this in terms of the darn-near-explosive power of the human mind unleashed especially as that has happened in the modern period from the scientific and political Enlightenment and onward, with (in her polemical mode) statist parasites trying to divert all the fruits of that progress to their big-government programs for little or no reason (sic) other than that "the resources are there for the taking [and Rawls tells us that we should go by maximin principles as a justice-as-fairness criterion, so the proper, non-libertarian role for government/force here is to maximally improve the lives of the least advantaged, and that requires about 50% of GDP be government/force-based.]")
(Note, BTW, the implausibility of the Warren/Obama argument that billionaires are created through massive state-created infrastructure - the famously caricatured but still relevant-point-making "You didn't build that" stuff. So, how do they explain the existence of a billionaire like John D. Rockefeller or an industrialist on the level of a Henry Ford, prior to the rise of post-New Deal big government infrastructure? Is it the idea that more government-provided infrastructure adds to the per-capta GDP growth rate? I rather doubt that the data available at ourworldindata.org support such a thesis. It actually shows a fairly consistent cross-era (pre- and post-New Deal) average growth rate - so doesn't that suggest that all that extra government is just a deadweight-loss superfluity in GDP growth rate terms, thereby recommending a return to a libertarian-ish default government size?
I guess one basic question here, though, is whether the libertarian is conceding as a matter of principle that in the event that misfortune should ever exhaust a person's resources, they have a government/taxpayer-provided safety net, which is in effect conceding that there are welfare or subsistence rights. Do we get at least this concession on behalf of a "right to well-being" when Gewirth formulates his semi-famous principle of generic consistency (PCG) in terms of rights to freedom and well-being (inasmuch as he's formulating his 'dialectical' moral framework in rights-terms...). Put differently: is this a principle that even a John Galt could rationally-and-reasonably concede in terms of the value-hierarchy he could rationally endorse, which necesarily includes taking an appropriate stance of impartiality? What if he's in the shoes of the unfortunate who has exhausted all resource-avenues (somehow)?
I think I'll leave that as an open question for now. While it is an interesting question whether the kind of subsistence-rights-claim I'm talking about can still be called libertarian in some sense, the more interesting question is whether it's the right position to take. I happen to think it is, as long as it's properly qualified and constrained. There is an emergency-exception kind of rationale on the one hand, and then there's the reality of government taxing and spending upwards of 40% of GDP in many advanced economies today on the other hand. Is there some kind of slippery slope from an emergency-style safety net (what else is "safety net" supposed to connote? it's not supposed to mean a hammock, as many conservatives like to point out) to government taking up half a country's (it's citizens' lives) in GDP?
Okay, to wrap this up: There's a lot of reason to believe that the libertarian principle, widely adopted in all its implications and grounding principles, would be a route to optimal human problem-solving across a vast range of cases (particularly in regard to what I take to be its Randian grounding principles about the free exercise of the human intellect - which adopted/applied universally would meet by definition for an end of history, i.e., a universally or perhaps only near-universally adopted principles of a perfectionistic or 'Aristotelian' approach to human rationality or problem-solving. I've found the tendency for the most accomplished libertarian theorists (the Aristotelians and Randians) to be barking up that tree quite a bit more than I've been seeing the other libertarians or the non-libertarians doing so. Communicative rationality, justice-as-fairness, or even the basic libertarian principle itself describe roughly the "form" that human reasoning ought to take on ethical (more specifically, moral or universalistic) grounds - ideas that fall more or less into the Kantian tradition of theorizing. But the Randian-Aristotelian ground of the libertarian principle is a principle of intellectual perfectionism that applies not only to thinking in terms of mutual deliberative rationality and that cluster of Kantian-ish theories (with reasonabless front and center), but at least as importantly to the issues about how to live one's life and fulfill one's wisely-formed goals, expressed in terms of rationality (preference-satisfaction) and well-being (objective flourishing/actualizing of potentials). (This is often associated with 'Aristotelian,' teleological, eudaemonist or happiness-oriented, self-actualization (like in David L. Norton's magisterial if not monumental Personal Destinies), perfectionism (the Dougs Den Uyl & Rasmussen; Thomas Hurka), virtue-ethics (a huge field of authors such as Anscombe, Foot, Rand, Veatch, MacIntyre, John M. Cooper, Nussbaum, Annas, and basically a lot of the moral philosophy faculty at places like Arizona and UNC-Chapel Hill.) That is to say, the intellectual perfectionism applies to the content of one's ends over and above applying the proper form of reasoning. The very interesting question from this point on, explored in places like Gewirth's Self-Fulfillment, is how mutually reinforcing these reasoning-stances are or might be. We can have Kantian-ish constraints informing us about the reasonableness of ends to adopt as examined from the flourishing-angle - to both reasonably and rationally incorporate such contraints into one's (wisely-formed) preference-set, as it were. And it seems to me that whatever else intellectual perfectionists ought to be, they ought to be libertarians who also recognize the problem-solving power of human intellect with all this entails. (And it's hard to see how Rand doesn't earn high philosophical marks on this count, although I would like also to single out Gewirth - a good man, and thorough.)
