by Jason Kantz
A hunter, who is a member of the NRA, claims he has a right to
bear arms. What if animal-loving vegetarians object? Larry
Flynt, claims a right to publish pornographic magazines. What if
the local Baptist congregation doesn't see it that way? By what
standards does one decide wether to sanction or prohibit claims
like these? For example, many families would claim their
children have a right to a public education financed by public
taxes. But suppose a childless local retaurant owner claims she
has a right to spend the profits from her restaurant on
something other than public education. How do we settle the
conflicts?
Conflicting claims are only settled when one party yields to persuasion or force. This is a fundamental choice in human relationships--voluntary cooperation or forced cooperation.
An extreme example of forced cooperation: in 1933 The National
Socialist German Workers' Party decided certain people were a
danger to state security, and made the claim that these people
had to be kept in concentration camps. Members of the
Schutzstaffel forced people at gunpoint onto trains destined for
these camps. Individuals had two options--comply or resist and
be shot.
A less profound example of forced cooperation: a thief decides the money in 7-11's cash register is the easiest route to wealth. He could walk inside and try to persuade the clerk to turn over the till contents. Instead, he brings a gun. Likewise, the clerk can try to persuade the thief, citing a lack of any right to the store's money. Instead the clerk keeps a gun under the counter.
In situations like these one or both parties must yield to negotiation, or both parties must collide. But given a situation, and given a choice, who will we support? Who has a right to what? It is crucial to know why we would support a particular side in these situations. Only then can we say who really has a right to their claim. Only then can we decide in situations where it is less clear who we should support--should the childless local restaurant owner yield part of her profits to families claiming a right to public education? Does the community really have a right to a portion of her profits?
We must make a decision on the principles that will determine why in some cases we sanction claims that people assert and call those claims rights. We must also determine specifically why in other cases we don't sanction claims that people assert and call those claims crimes.
When people claim rights, the basic issue at stake is contained in the following principle:
Every man has a property in his own person.
This no body has any right to but himself.
Coming from the political philosophy of John Locke, this principle is an important starting point. Who owns you? Who has first claim on your time and the products of your labor? Locke's answer to that basic question is that you own you. This is radical because historically the answer has been a variation of the assertion that somebody else owns you: the king owns you, the state owns you, your master owns you, the community owns you, your family owns you, etc.
Do we each and every one of us really have a property in our own person? All of us? Why? Because Locke said so? What if the Senate votes and passes a bill that says that we don't? We can validate the reality of Locke's principle by referring to what Victor Frankl called "the last of the human freedoms". Frankle was a Jewish psychiatrist who was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany.
"The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." (Frankl)
Frankle's experience refers to the truth that thoughts,
emotions, attitudes, choice of action, and the like occur within
and belong to the individual and no threat of force can take
them away. In the same respect, functions like breathing,
digesting food, and circulating nutrients, take place within an
individual. Can those functions possibly belong to another?
Beyond the level of thoughts, subsistence, and biology, should
we compromise the principle of self-determination and
self-ownership in favor of some other more important principle?
Maybe we each have a property in ourselves, but designated
experts should always decide what medicine we buy. Maybe we
each have a property in ourselves, but should be controlled by
restrictions set by others when it comes to behaviors related to
sexual orientation or prostitution. Maybe we each have a
property in ourselves, but also have certain natural obligations
and duties to others when we are born into society. Maybe we
each have a propery in ourselves, but sometimes it is necessary
to make some sacrifices. Or maybe not. Consistent with the
principle of self-determination, each person will want
to draw the line in a place fitting to their own perspective.
The story of forced cooperation is a hard one to escape. It plays out over and over again in many ways. For example, in America the popular perception of Christopher Columbus is that he was an explorer. However, Howard Zinn paints a picture of Christopher Columbus as a conqueror who promised his Queen that he'd fill her ships with gold. Zin points out that Arawak Indians fourteen years or older had to collect a certain amount of gold every three months. "When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death" (Zinn,4).
Or consider the story of American independence: revolutionaries
fighting for their freedom from Great Britain, who end up with
American institutions of government that permit the buying of
African slaves, and subsidize the conquering of Native
Americans.
Forced cooperation stems from compromises on the principles of self-ownership and self-determination. Forced cooperation proceeds when relationships are based on sacrifices and there is no one willing to be sacrificed. As mentioned above, a sacrifice can only be made through persuasion or force. Offering a million dollar salary could persuade a man to work like a slave, but he could still walk away from the deal. This however is not a sacrifice--there is no force involved, and the million dollar salary is chosen as a worthwhile exchange. A gun could also persuade a man to work like a slave, but one party will not gain anything chosen in exchange and may not be walking away from the deal alive. Persuasion without force acknowledges that each person involved has a property in himself. The need to use force to gain coopertion is an indication that the initiator would like to dismiss with the reality of self-determination. When this happens fight or flight is the ultimate outcome that demonstrates self-determination as an essential part of human nature that must be respected and not contradicted.
Consider the violation of the rights of Africans in America:
"From the beginning, the imported black men and women resisted their enslavement. Ultimately their resistance was controlled, and slavery was established for 3 million blacks in the South. Still, under the most difficult conditions, under pain of mutilation and death, throughout their two hundred years of enslavement in North America, these Afro-Americans continued to rebel. Only occasionally was there an organized insurrection. More often they showed their refusal to submit by running away. Even more often, they engaged in sabotage, slowdowns, and subtle forms of resistance which asserted if only to themselves and their brothers and sisters, their dignity as human beings.
The refusal began in Africa. One slave trader reported that Negroes were "so wilful and loth to leave their own country, that they have often leap'd out of the canoes, boat and ship into the sea, and kept under water till they were drowned" (Zinn, 31).
Kenneth Stampp writes:
A wise master did not take seriously the belief that Negroes were natural-born slaves. He knew better. He knew that Negroes freshly imported from Africa had to be broken into bondage; that each succeeding generation had to be carefully trained. This was no easy task, for the bondsman rarely submitted willingly. Moreover, he rarely submitted completely. In most cases there was no end to the need for control--at least not until old age reduced the slave to a condition of helplessness.
Naturally, slave owners feared a forceful rebellion--Zinn:
It was the potential combination of poor whites and blacks that caused the most fear among the wealthy white planters. If there had been the natural racial repugnance that some theorists have assumed, control would have been easier ... Racism was becoming more and more practical. ... The answer to the problem, obvious if unspoken and only gradually recognized, was racism, to separate dangerous free whites from dangerous black slaves by a screen of racial contempt.
Use of racism as a form of persuasion failed. The slave-owner's claim could not be disguised as a right. Fight or flight was the only resolution. Blacks risked their lives fleeing to the North. The fight finally erupted into the American Civil War, and the the slave-owner's claim was rejected and prohibited through force. Human history repeatedly shows the willingness to fight for Locke's principle: a property in one's own person. No claim which would force one man to sacrifice himself for another can be a right. Rights do not belong to conquerors.
We can see the fight or flight play out in many other ways.
When the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics claimed a right to people's labor and profits, black markets developed, and many people fled. When people had a choice between belonging to the state or themselves, so many people chose themselves that a wall had to built around East Berlin to keep everyone from leaving.
When townships in the U.S. place zoning restricions on property, businesses either violate the zoning law, persuade someone to give them a variance, or go somewhere else.
We can separate the problem of conflicting claims into two broad issues. First there is the matter of deciding whose claim is objectively right. Given the sheer number of possible claims and contexts, there are many ethical, legal, procedural issues to weigh in each case that could arise. But every claim will have at its core a basic relation to the choice between voluntary cooperation or forced cooperation.
Returning to the example of a childless local restaurant owner, does she have a right to choose not to yield part of her profits (in the form of property taxes) to families claiming a right to public education? Taking the basic philosphical approach argued for up to this point, the answer is yes. If self-ownership, and self-determination are indeed such an essential part of human nature, then it follows that, as no one had a right to cut off the hands of Arawak Indians found without a token, no one has the right to strip the property of proprietors found to be without a tax receipt. The claim that contradicts the self-determination of another and requires forced cooperation to implement is never a right.
The second set of broad issues surrounding conflicting claims are the technological issues of gaining and protecting claims (persuading, enforcing contracts, fighting, or leaving). While the basic philosophical principle for validating claims is that every man is an end in himself, the basic, most primitive, technology for securing a claim, whether it is a right or not a right, is a showing of superior force. However, superior force has just as little ability to ensure that a claim is right, as philosophy can ensure that a claim is protected. Might does not make right. Every man's property in his own person, the last of the human freedoms, does.
Frankl, Viktor E. "Man's Search for Meaning".
Locke, John. "Second Treatise on Government".
Stampp, Kenneth M. "The Peculiar Institution".
Zinn, Howard. "A People's History of the United States".
© Jason Kantz