Natural Rights, Social Rights, and Social Privileges

 

Natural Rights:

As I've written elsewhere, Inalienable rights are rights that cannot be taken away. They may be violated, but they cannot be morally eliminated.  A criminal person or despotic government might imprison an individual or even kill the person, but that does not diminish the person’s right to freedom or to life, even if death renders that right to the past tense.  Inalienable rights are perpetual except when forfeited due to criminal activity – violating the Natural Rights of another.  A religious person might say that such rights are a gift from God and only God can take them away; a secular person might think of them as rights that every person has by nature of being human. 

Thomas Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence that “Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness” are among the inalienable rights.  Going back to John Locke who was the inspiration for that famous passage we read of “Natural Rights” including “Life, Liberty, and Property”, with property in its broader sense including the other two – that is, each of us owns his or her life and liberty as well as our possessions and land.  “Natural Rights”, “God given rights” and “inalienable rights” are synonymous and they exist in what Locke called a “State of Nature” as well as in society.

 

Imagine a person alone on an island; that person possesses his Natural Rights no more or less than in the middle of New York City.  That person has the right to his life and the fruits of his labor.  If he gathers coconuts from wild trees and stores them away, he owns those coconuts and has a right to them.  If other people show up on the island they do not have the right to take his coconuts; he has the right to protect them and to defend his life, even at the extreme of taking theirs.  By attempting to steal coconuts or kill the owner of them, an aggressor puts himself and his intended victim into a “State of War”.  The aggressor in a State of War forfeits his inalienable right to life.   It may seem harsh that a person forfeits his right to life for attempting to steal coconuts, but such is life in the State of Nature where it is impractical for an individual to imprison an aggressor, and unfair for him to live under constant threat of aggression.  Of course in a State of Nature the victim is in danger of being overwhelmed or even killed and his coconuts stolen.  Mutual protection is one reason why people band together in society; another is that humans are naturally social and are likely to be willing to share coconuts along with the labor required to gather more.

In the second of his “Two Treatises of Civil Government” Locke discusses how societies form when people in a State of Nature voluntarily transfer their political power to a government in exchange for protection of their Natural Rights.  Along with Thomas Hobbes, his contemporary, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who followed in the next century, Locke referred to this arrangement as a “Social Contract” (sometimes referred to as “Social Compact”).  Hobbes* published his “Leviathan” almost forty years before Locke’s “Two Treatises of Civil Government” and is sometimes given credit for Social Contract theory in western philosophy, but the concept was not new, it dates back at least as far as Socrates.  In any case it was Locke’s writings on Natural Rights and The Social Contract that provided the moral justification for the American Revolution and inspired its leaders in the founding of a great nation. Yet when modern scholars think of the State of Nature and Social Contract, they are more likely to be thinking of Rousseau because his version was a wonderfully idealist and romantic one that appeals to most modern academics.  **

Social Rights:

Social rights are not natural, not inalienable – these are rights provided by government and are derived from a Natural Right.  The most obvious example of a Social Right is the equal right to police protection held by every citizen who adheres to the Social Contract of a society.  On the island each person has the Natural Right to defend himself as best he can, in society each person has the Social Right to police protection.  If attacked and in immediate danger a person in society retains the right to self defense or defense of his property and other persons, because waiting for society’s police to provide protection might mean irreparable loss of life or property.  But other than such cases of immediate danger people in society turn their Natural Right to self defense over to a law enforcement organization and receive in return the Social Right of police protection. 

Natural Rights exist on our island that lacks government; Social Rights do not.  Consider the examples in what are called Miranda Rights: “You have the right to remain silent… You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you…”  What could be more fundamental and natural than the right to remain silent – that is, the right to not incriminate oneself?  Certainly a person isolated on an island has the right to remain silent.  However, the right to speak to an attorney is not a Natural Right, for there are no guarantees of an attorney being available on the island, or if there is one that the attorney will choose to cooperate, but our society has established rules such that even those accused of the most heinous of crimes has guaranteed access to representation by an attorney.  The right to speak to an attorney is a right given by society based on the right of every accused person to have his side of the story heard, this derived from the Natural Right to defend oneself.  In effect Americans include in their Social Contract the agreement that each individual will give up his right to physically defend himself when accused in return for society providing him with a fair hearing.

Suppose I own some coconuts on the island and some other people show up.  They need food.   I’m a nice fellow, and am happy to see other people, so I show them where coconuts grow and even help them gather some, perhaps taking a fair share for myself.  That night they camp near my camp and the next morning I discover that my coconuts are gone, and I suspect one particularly nasty, ugly fellow of stealing them, so I accuse him.  What are my Natural Rights, and what are his?  I have the right to recover my coconuts and punish the perpetrator, but when we analyze the Natural Rights of accused and accuser we can assume neither guilt nor innocence.  I do not have the Natural Right to assume his guilt or to exercise my Natural Rights meant to be exercised against a perpetrator on one only suspected.  He on the other hand clearly has the Natural Right to defend himself, verbally if possible, physically if I initiate the use of force.

In giving the Social Right to speak to an attorney society is saying in effect, “The Natural Right of an accused person to defend himself in a fair hearing is paramount, and in modern society it’s necessary that the accused have access to an attorney to receive a fair hearing. Therefore we will give the accused a Social Right to an attorney by arranging a legal system such that there will always be a willing attorney available in order to preserve that natural right.” As demonstrated in this example, valid Social Rights are not rights on their own merit; they are derived from Natural Rights and exist to fulfill the society’s obligation under the Social Contract to protect the Natural Rights of its citizens.

What about the provision of an attorney at public expense if the accused cannot afford one?  This is obviously not a Natural Right, because no one can have a natural right to something that must be provided by someone else; that someone else may not exist on the island, and it cannot be considered a Social Right because someone must pay for the attorney which is in conflict with the Natural Right to property, and a valid Social Right cannot be in conflict with a Natural Right.  No one can have the “right” to something that must be provided by someone else.  Provision of an attorney at public expense might be called a “Social Privilege”. 

Social Privileges: 

The Department of Motor Vehicles makes the point that driving is not a right; it’s a privilege.  Of course this refers to driving on public roads because one certainly has the Natural Right to drive his own car on his own road, but the point is that many of the services provided to citizens by government and thought of as ours by rights, are actually privileges – gifts given by society for the good of the whole and justifiable to the degree that the whole of society benefits.  Another example is education.  Society may choose to invest in its future by educating its youth.  In The United States society has determined that it benefits society as a whole for young people to be educated at public expense through what we commonly call high school, and society also provides institutions of higher education though attendance is not usually free.  Cutting off free education at twelfth grade is arbitrary and someday the privilege of free education might be extended by society to include a college degree, but whatever the level, this is a social investment that provides the student with a privilege, not a right to education.  On our island one has the Natural Right to educate oneself with whatever means available, but not the right to teachers, classrooms, and study materials.  Further, education cannot be considered a Social Right because there is no Natural Right from which it can be derived and because it would be in conflict with the Natural Right to property; it is a socially sponsored privilege.

However, when an adult decides to include himself or herself in a Social Contract and be part of a given society, which each adult does in a free society whether we think about it or not, it’s done with the implied understanding of full rights and privileges of citizenship.  Therefore, while no citizen has a right to a free education, each citizen has the Social Right, derived from his Natural Right to choose a society to live in and therefore full citizenship in the one chosen, of having the privilege of education be applied equally to his children along with the children of all citizens of that society.  For the Social Contract that binds people together in a society to be valid, all laws, rights and privileges must be applied equally.  Unfortunately, not all societies meet this criterion nor do all societies allow choice regarding belonging or not belonging to the society; not all societies apply a valid Social Contract.  To the degree that a society does not apply a valid Social Contract its citizens are in a state of slavery.

Being a Social Privilege and not a right, society may disperse the gift of free education as it sees fit as long as the child of each citizen is given equal treatment, but that might mean that each child is given the same entrance exam, not that each child is included regardless of capability.  Perhaps the example of driving privileges better illustrates this concept: Every citizen has the Social Right to equal application of the requirements for driving on public roads, but not every citizen will qualify.  The visually impaired will not qualify; the habitual drunk driver will hopefully lose his qualification.  Both are treated equally with their fellow citizens, but neither meets the criteria required by society for the privilege of driving on public roads.  (Each retains the Natural Right to drive his own car on his own road.)

In a just society Social Privileges are applied equally to all citizens regardless of social standing.  Returning to the example of the Social Privilege of public education, one might argue that Mr. Smith’s child has a greater right to the privilege of education than Mr. Johnson’s because Mr. Smith pays more taxes than Mr. Johnson, but while Mr. Smith may have a legitimate beef against the tax code, he has no greater claim to the privilege of education for his children.  Both choose to be citizens of a society that has decided to invest in educating its youth. Even Mr. Jones, who has no children at all, must help to pay the price of education if he chooses to be part of a society that has determined that it benefits from educating youth at public expense.

So Natural Rights exist in society and also in a state of nature; Social Rights exist only in society and are derivatives of Natural Rights, they exist to fulfill society’s obligation to protect its citizens’ Natural Rights; and Social Privileges are not rights, but gifts given by society ostensibly for the good of the whole of that society.  Natural Rights are as eternal as humankind; Social Rights are at the mercy of society but an existing one should exist as long as the social condition that makes it necessary to fulfill the society’s obligation to protect a Natural Right exists; Social Privileges are at the mercy of society’s whim but an existing one is likely to exist as long as society as a whole perceives its benefits.  The line between Social Privileges and Social Rights may sometimes be hazy, but the test between either of these and Natural Rights is very clear. 

No philosopher has attempted to compile a complete list of Natural Rights, but we have a definition so that any proposed Natural Right can be tested for validity.  Simply put, if a right cannot exist on our island without a society to provide it, then it is not a Natural Right.  Further, a Natural Right can never be in conflict with another; that would be, well… unnatural.  If a conflict exists between two concepts considered to be rights then one or both of them is not a Natural Right and if there’s a conflict between a Natural Right and a Social Right, then the Social Right is invalid as a right, but may still exist as a Social Privilege.

The Natural Right to Life:

Philosophers that think in terms of Natural Rights agree that one of them is the right to one’s life, but what does that mean?  Obviously it doesn’t mean that we all have the right to live forever.  It’s not a valid argument against a death penalty; virtually every philosopher that ever wrote of Natural Rights also wrote of forfeiture of an individual’s right to life for acts against other humans.  It’s not an argument for the Natural or Social Right to free universal healthcare – that obviously couldn’t exist on our island, and forcing society to pay the cost of healthcare for everyone is clearly in conflict with the Natural Right to property that philosophers also agree upon.  Universal healthcare, if provided by society, would be a Social Privilege – a gift given for the good of the whole of society, and it would be justified only if the whole of society benefitted.

It becomes clear when reading the philosophers that they consider the Natural Right to one’s life as the right to live it as one sees fit; to pursue happiness as one sees fit; to labor at obtaining the necessities of life as one desires, to own the fruits of that labor because a piece of one’s life was spent in the laboring – all of these as long as the rights of others are not diminished.  The Natural Right to life includes the right to property and the Natural Right to property includes the right to own one’s life.  Perhaps this Yin and Yang of Natural Rights is in fact THE INALIENABLE NATURAL RIGHT and all others derive from it.

* Hobbes wrote “Leviathan” during the turmoil of the British Civil war at least partially in support of the monarchy.  In his vision the State of Nature was a perpetual State of War with every human at war with every other and every one in a constant state of fear. He tells of a Social Contract based on the theory that men just naturally kill each other unless there’s a powerful government to prevent it, and then men settle down and enjoy being both restrained from killing and protected from being killed.  He wrote of the evils of a monarchy, but justifies it because it’s better than the alternative. He ridiculed religion and drew accusations of atheism.  He managed to anger everyone.

**These philosophers thought and wrote before Darwin suggested, and science for all practical purposes demonstrated, that humans evolved from a series of less sophisticated species.  This concept must certainly affect ones thinking about the State of Nature and especially the Social Contract, making it likely that human society evolved along with the species and virtually no thought processes or deal making was involved, but the theory continues to be a valid tool for analyzing humans in society just as the Conservation of Energy theory continues to be used by physicists in appropriate situations in spite of its absolute truth being disproven by Einstein.