From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Rights and Revisionism (was Re: Social Democracy)
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 16:45:21 GMT


In article <1992Nov2.214711.12178@gordian.com>
mike@gordian.com (Michael A. Thomas) writes:

>In article <1992Oct29.130228.11923@macc.wisc.edu>,
>anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:

>Rights do not come from somewhere, they just are.  Just like
>the sky is (usually) blue.  Societies can only choose to
>respect them or repress them.  

I can't quite imagine where you started that you could land
in such an obviously absurd place, my friend, but however
you got there, that's certainly where you are now.  To say
"rights just are" is a statement of religious belief,
basically.  

If rights were a mammalian inevitability, hyenas would have
them.  If they were a primate inevitability, baboons would
have them.  Hyenas and baboons have societies, but they
don't have anything analogous to rights.  Rights are not
even endemic to human societies.  They're artifacts, at
best.

I would say that rights are a social construct with a
definite history.  They are the creation exclusively of
human beings.  They have no independent existence of
any kind, out there in nature somewhere.  And there are
in addition no universal rights; each community defines
for itself what it calls rights.

Such differences as these underlie our varying perceptions
about what is "right" and what is "equality" and what is
"oppression" and so forth.  There is nothing to be gained,
as far as I can see, from supposing that rights are somehow
_a priori_ in our deliberations about forming a just and
free society.

>In a very real sense, this is why rights must be "free" as
>in a potential, not a realization.  It is the same
>distinction which between the right to pursue your meal and
>the right to your meal itself: the first is natural and
>costs nothing the second is a realization of the first and
>costs somebody something.

>If rights are to occur in nature, they must be of the
>potential kind.  I agree that rights of the realization kind
>can only be "created" by society.  The open question,
>however, is whether there should be any rights which are
>realizations vs.  potentials.  I suspect that we both know
>where we stand on that issue.

I don't see much of what your point was here.  If you will
abandon the idea that rights are "natural," you will also
get rid of the potential/realized distinction, which I think
merely clouds the issues.  Potentials mean little, apart
from a certain symbolism, to people whose rights are
systematically denied by virtue of such social liabilities
as racism, sexism, and homophobia.  To use your (curious)
food analogy, food around the corner is not too useful if a
high barrier keeps you from rounding that corner.

Again:

>>Do you *really* mean to say rights come from nature?  I
>>think they come from people.  I mean, they're not some kind
>>of inevitability, are they?  Isn't their evitability the
>>very thing that concerns us?

>Yes.  I think they come from our nature, as in human nature.
>Humans have a specific nature which defines what is and is
>not in the realm of the possible.  Stopping to eat for a
>long period of time is not possible, for example.

The analogy to food is manifestly inadequate.  Not eating
kills your body; that's very simple.  Not having rights
injures (usually doesn't kill) your mind.  [Note: I don't
actually accept a mind/body division.] What happens then is
not simple at all.

>Rights are inevitable in the same sense that needing to eat
>is inevitable.  We can wish our nature to be otherwise, but

That's simply not true.  Don't eat and you die.  Rights are
not like that, not at all.

>we cannot change certain facts of it.  A society can only
>recognize or ignore our nature; it cannot make it be
>something other than what it really is (without using force,
>that is).

Nature cannot be ignored, by society or anything else;
that's what "nature" *means*.  No force of any kind can
change that.  Our understanding of it may change, but only
that.  In human-historical time scales, the only pertinent
natural facts are pollution and extinction of species.

Societies, of which rights and freedom are important
manifestations in our times, are not very much like nature.

>>More generally, when you start talking about "individual," I
>>start hearing the thud of those you abandon.  Maybe you have
>>a scheme -- I hope something a little better than
>>paternalism -- for addressing racism, sexism, and
>>homophobia.

>Indeed I do but that scheme is based on disinvolving the
>government from meddling in other lives and giving people
>incentive to be friends rather than enemies.

Naturally, I wish you luck.  The massiveness of the history
of failure to provide such incentives seems telling, to me.
You recognize this, but then start waving your arms:

>I really hate to argue by the negative, but the current
>system has utterly failed to address these issues.  In many
>cases the paternalistic system has engendered hatred where
>there used to be only a detached annoyance.

What on earth does "detached annoyance" refer to?  And I
would think "patriarchal" is what you mean to say, rather
than "paternalistic." At issue, I'd say, is not what has
been engendered (although that's a useful gloss in itself),
but rather what has been constructed so as to be systemic.

>Clearly we are not going in the right direction.  The
>question is, of course, which direction should we try now.

Rather than painting with too wide a brush, I'd say you are
gouging with too wide a shovel.  :-) We need to ask
ourselves: are we doing *anything* right?  If so, can we
keep it or extend it usefully?  If not, can we change it?
In either case, what and how, and to what effect?

>My answer is that individual liberty when given the chance
>has produced the wealthiest and most tranquil state known to
>mankind -- not utopia mind you but there is no serious other
>contender that I know of.

This is a most peculiar sort of historical revisionism.

You have, I gather, a somewhat rose-colored view of the
mythical United States at some mythical point in history
when it was "good." 

The great wealth you speak of did not some from some
nebulous goodness or rightness of our traditions: it came
from the Industrial Revolution, cheap energy, cheap and
plentiful raw materials, cheap labor, heavy government
subsidies of military and transportation infrastructures,
and geographical isolation from competing nationalisms.
That wealth did not redound to the use or benefit of the
masses of Americans, by and large.

The tranquilty you mention is merely relative.  If you went
looking for civil unrest in the history of the United
States, you would find it in all periods.  You can find war
*in* this country at most points in its history; of course
you will miss a lot of it if you look only for things like
the Civil War and the World Wars.  The country was founded
by war, has continued to prosper sustained in major part by
war.

I think you basically advocate a return to an ideal that
never was.

-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson
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