Chapter 6 RIGHTS AND FREEDOM * Natural Rights * There is no such Thing as Freedom * Natural Rights Consider the conditions which are required by man's nature for his proper survival. (By "proper survival" I mean a state of existence which maximizes the opportunity of each person to manifest his values in the external world. See the May, 1994, issue of FULL CONTEXT for a further development of this idea.) There are several categories of them - Physical, Chemical and Social, to name some. In the physical realm we can easily observe that there are several conditions which must prevail if a man is to remain alive. An example is the fact that he must maintain a certain environmental temperature range, outside of which he would either freeze or roast. If for any reason this environmental condition ceases to prevail, man's proper survival comes to a quick and drastic end. We can see other physical conditions necessary as well, such as a continual accomodation to the force of gravity. In the chemical realm also we observe necessary conditions: the existence of an oxygen gas environment, the avoidance from diet of certain chemicals (cyanide, arsenic, strychnine) and the inclusion of certain other chemicals (ascorbic acid). This last case is a good example of the fact that these conditions are necessary for man's PROPER survival, for without the inclusion of an adequate amount of vitamin C, life will not come to the same sort of immediate and drastic end as it would from the elimination of the oxygen gas environment. Nonetheless without the vitamin C man is not in a state of PROPER survival, even though his life does continue on a limited and retarded level. (He merely subsists, he does not flourish.) The point I am trying to make is that there are certain conditions arising from man's nature - unavoidable, uncompromising and absolutely necessary conditions - which must be accomodated in order for him to continue in a proper state of existence. Although this assertion is easily seen to be indisputable in man's physical and chemical life, I contend that it is equally, though perhaps not so obviously, indisputable in man's social life. There are certain conditions of SOCIAL existence which are necessary for man's proper survival. Conditions which, unlike the physical and chemical conditions, prevail only when man lives in a social environment. Obviously, when a man lives alone in the wilderness, or on a desert island, the physical and chemical conditions prevail just as much as they do when he lives in New York City or Tokyo. However, when he lives in society there are other conditions which prevail as well, conditions resulting from his interaction with other men. Just as he must accomodate interaction with a physical universe and with a chemical universe, so when he lives in a society he must accomodate the conditions of a social universe - a universe consisting of the relationships with other men in his environment. There is a name for this set of conditions. It is RIGHTS. Rights are the conditions of social existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. Man is a being of a specific nature; his life is contingent on specific courses of behavior. To live, man must choose to engage in rational and productive action. But he is also a social being, and since some men unfortunately choose to interfere violently with rational and productive action, it is therefore necessary for peaceful men to derive precepts for social behavior which allow each individual to maintain his own life free from force and fraud. These social precepts are identifications of human rights. Consider the most obvious example: the right to life. If the society were composed exclusively of murderers, the "proper survival" of each individual man, and therefore of the society, would come to an immediate and drastic end. It is clear that "life" is an unavoidable precondition of social interaction. If you kill everyone you meet, presently there will be no one left for you to meet anymore. There would no longer be a social existence at all, for the simple reason that one of the conditions prerequisite to that existence had been violated. That condition is the right to life. Another example: the right to property. One of the major reasons for social cooperation among men is the material benefit to be gained by each man from trade with other men. Both trade and the division of labor are devices for the production and exchange of property, and as you can observe from your own experience there is much less incentive to produce or exchange if you do not have the assurance of being secure in your ownership of the property involved. This security in ownership is the right to property. To the extent that this right is violated, by that much will be diminished the incentive of each man to maintain the economic basis of society. To recognize and enforce the rights of individuals is to recognize and enforce the conditions of proper social survival: the conditions that permit human energy to work effectively to satisfy human needs. We can see now that rights are not something that an individual "possesses" and that can be granted to him or taken away from him. They are conditions of existence which can be accomodated, ignored, or violated - with accompanying beneficial or detrimental results to men living in a social context. A right must be something embedded in the nature of man and reality, something that is applicable to his situation at any time and in any age. The right of self ownership, of defending one's life and property, is clearly that sort of right: it can apply to Neanderthal cavemen, in modern Calcutta, or in the contemporary USA. Such a right is independent of time or place. But a "right" to a job or to three meals a day or to twelve years of schooling is not the same phenomenon. Suppose that such things CANNOT exist, as was true in Neanderthal days or in modern Calcutta? To speak of rights as something which can only be accomodated in modern industrial conditions is not to speak of natural rights at all, but of figments of the imagination. Such "rights" are not embodied in the nature of man, but require for their fulfillment the existence of a group of exploited people who are coerced into providing them. "I have a right to speak freely" can hold true no matter how many people there are, but "I have a right to a comfortable income" can be asserted only when there are enough other people in society to provide it. If there are not enough givers and too many takers, the principle becomes impossible to apply. One way to consider these issues is through the realization that rights impose no obligations on other men except of a prohibitive nature. Each man is obliged only to AVOID the violation of the rights of other men. He has no obligation to provide other men with the means of accomodating rights. Thus there is no such thing as the "right" to an education (self-education is a moral imperative but it imposes no ethical obligations) or the "right" to a job (every man must be free to engage in productive activity according to his own choices, but this does not give him a claim to the use of another's property). Rights are not a claim to affirmative action imposed by some men on others, therefore any condition which contains such a claim cannot be a right. The right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self- generated action. A man has the right to support his life by his own work but this does not mean that others must provide him with food, clothing, shelter or any other necessity of life. The right to property means the right to take the economic actions necessary to earn property and to use it and to dispose of it; it does not mean that others must provide the property. The right to free speech means the right to express ideas without danger of suppression, interference or punitive action by government. It does not mean that others must provide the means through which to express one's ideas. Thus, for any man to claim the "right" to violate the rights of another man is a contradiction in terms (a denial of the Law of Identity). One cannot claim that a condition of proper human survival necessitates the negation of a condition of proper human survival. Therefore there can be no rights to rob, enslave, or murder. Such "rights" are merely stolen concepts. Your recognition of an inalienable right of another man is not a compromise between two rights, his and yours, but a line of division that preserves both rights intact. A difficult question is that of the ethical status of retaliation and self- defense. If one person violates rights, is the situation rectified by another doing likewise? Do two wrongs make a right? The foundation of all human behavior - both moral and ethical - lies in the Law of Identity. Proper behavior is that which is consistent with this Law; improper behavior is that which attempts to contradict this Law. I asserted above that the violation of rights involves a contradiction of the Law of Identity. It is consistent, however, to take an action which eliminates such a contradiction, even if that action, when considered out of context, could itself be a negation of the Law of Identity. In ethics, as in the propositional calculus, one negative cancels out another. (I find it personally distasteful, but I can see no way to avoid the conclusion that two wrongs do indeed make a right.) Thus to lie to a man who is trying to rob you, or to kill a man, when defending your own life against his aggression, are ethically legitimate (i.e., logically consistent) actions. Even if this argument is accepted, there still remains the question of degree. Would it be proper to kill a man who has merely stolen an apple? The principle I have described above would make it seem so, but surely such a degree of retaliation would be repugnant to a civilized person. The issue of degree must be dealt with in the context of value-balancing. As Rand has shown, there are rational means of establishing value hierarchies, and it is with reference to such hierarchies that the proper degree of retaliation for particular aggressive actions should be determined. This determination is one of the proper functions of a legal code, and here you can see the major reason why an explicitly formulated framework of justice must lie at the foundation of any social organization. If the determination of "degree of retaliation" is left to the personal judgment of the individuals involved, or to the multitude of their hired (or elected) agencies, then it is very unlikely that widespread adherence to rationally-derived principles of justice would exist in society. This would hardly be a suitable context for the ensurance of rights. A closely related problem is the punishment of criminals. If criminals have intrinsic rights to life, liberty and property, then are not capital punishment, incarceration, and fines violations of the criminals' rights? If this is the case, then the implication is that there is no ethical difference between committing a crime and punishing a criminal. This seems to be a plausible argument, but observe that it is based on the assumption that a criminal must be "punished" for his crime. Restitution (instead of punishment) for much criminal behavior has two important beneficial consequences for social order: 1) it ameliorates the condition of the victim and tends to reduce his desire for violent revenge, and 2) it benefits the offender by enabling him to restore his place in society. Indeed, the creation of punishment law appears to have increased social disorder precisely because punishment law precludes both of these alternatives. * There is no such Thing as Freedom There are three aspects to the idea of freedom: Physical, Psychological and Social. In physical terms, freedom - or the lack of it - refers to the constraints imposed by the laws of nature. For example: you are not free to flap your arms and fly through the sky. You are not free to breathe water, like a fish. This is not the sort of freedom I am going to talk about. In psychological terms freedom refers to the constraints you may impose upon yourself because of your state of mind. For example: you may not be free to get a broken tooth fixed, simply because you dread going to a dentist. You may not be free to learn how to ski, simply because of your lack of self- confidence. This too, is not the sort of freedom I will deal with in this essay. It is freedom in the context of interacting with other people that is my concern. I will try to make a precise statement of just what that kind of freedom is. Consider these pairs of terms: Light - Darkness Sound - Silence Heat - Cold Slavery - Freedom Let us examine the first of these pairs, light - darkness. Light is defined as electromagnetic radiation in a certain range of wavelengths. As such, we can easily understand and deal with the characteristics of light. We can measure stronger or weaker lights in terms of candlepower or lumens. We can identify different wavelengths of light and call them colors. We can produce light by means of light bulbs and torches. Light is a real existing thing. What then is darkness? Darkness is not a real existing thing. It is merely a term of convenience which we apply to a situation from which light is absent. You will observe that there are no units of measurement for darkness. There are not greater or lesser darknesses (what is greater or lesser in this context is the amount of light present) nor are there different characteristics of darkness - there is only one kind of darkness and that is the complete absence of light. So long as there is any light at all present we cannot truthfully say that we have darkness but rather that we have a greater or lesser degree of illumination. Now consider the second pair, sound - silence. Sound is defined as a certain sort of motion of the air. Sound comes in various degrees, namely louder and softer. It comes also in various types, namely of a higher or lower pitch. As with light, you can see (or rather, hear) that sound is a real existing thing. Silence, however, is not. It is merely a term of convenience which we apply to a situation from which sound is absent. And as with darkness, there is only one degree of silence, the complete absence of sound. So long as there is any sound present at all we cannot speak of silence but rather of more or less noise. Now on to the third pair, heat - cold. Heat is a manifestation of the molecular energy in an object. We can make a measurement of heat by means of a thermometer and we can see (or feel) that heat comes in various degrees of temperature, and thereby we know that this energy content is a real existing thing. So what is cold? Cold is the absence of heat. Cold is not a real thing. You might now be tempted to say: "Humbug! I know cold is real. My refrigerator makes my milk cold. I know this because I drink the cold milk." Well, your refrigerator does not put cold into the milk. What it does is to take heat out of the milk. The refrigerator is a "heat pump" which pumps the heat from the inside of the box to the outside. (You can feel the heat coming off of the radiator on the back of the refrigerator.) You will note that we have thermometers for measuring heat, but there is no device for measuring cold. You will note that heat is measured in degrees (fahrenheit or centigrade), but there is no unit of measurement which indicates coldness. Strictly speaking, there is only one degree of cold, and that is absolute zero, the point at which all the heat has been removed from an object. So you can see that it is not cold that is a real existing thing, but rather heat. Now consider the fourth pair of terms, slavery - freedom. Keeping in mind the previous three distinctions I made, let us see what, in this context, is the real existing thing and what is merely a term used to indicate an absence. Consider that we can take a man and by the application of physical force we can compel him to submit to our will. We can also compel him to submit by threatening him with force. We can bind a man in chains; we can lock him in a cage. Or we can threaten to deprive him of his property, his liberty, or even his life. And thus we can force him to submit to our will. Surely you recognize this as the imposition of slavery. And you can see that slavery is a real existing state of affairs. There are degrees of slavery: some men are completely enslaved, such as negroes in the pre-civil-war South. Other men are more or less enslaved according to the amount of force or threat of force to which they are subjected. So, if slavery is a real existing thing, what then is freedom? Is it not a real thing? After all, men have been willing to fight for it and to die for it all through history. Do they fight and even die for a nothing? For a notion that does not exist in reality? Is it not true that a man will go out and fight against tyranny, and when he has destroyed the tyrant does he not smile and say, "Now I have freedom!"? Doesn't he have something that he did not have before? Namely freedom? Well, let us see what he does have and what he does not have. Before, when he was living under the tyranny, there was imposed upon him a force or a threat of force, to which he was compelled to submit. Then, when he fought, his objectivie was to destroy the tyrant. When he fought he did not take some thing away from the tyrant; rather, he destroyed the thing that the tyrant had used against him. The thing destroyed was the tyrant's ability to compel. And then, after his success, when he said, "Now I have freedom!" did he possess any real thing as a result of his fight? Obviously not. No real existing thing has come into his possession which he did not previously possess. What has changed is that he is now living in a different situation. Whereas before there was force now there is not. And this situation is what he calls freedom. Freedom is the absence of slavery. Freedom is not a real existing thing, it is rather the term we apply to a situation from which compulsion is absent. I want now to make the most critically important point of my essay. I have maintained that darkness, silence, cold and freedom are not real existing things. What I have said is true. But what I have said, if not properly understood, can be fatally misleading. Consider one more example of the same nature as those I have illustrated: You can pluck a rock out of the ground, leaving a hole, and you can say that it is the rock that is the real thing and that the hole is merely the absence of the rock and therefore not real. That is the frame of reference I have used throughout this essay, and it is correct, as far as it goes. But it is certainly not complete. Just as you might stumble over the rock and break your leg, so you might fall into the hole and break your leg. Your relationship to the hole, you see, is a rather important situation. Even though we may consider the hole as being merely the absence of the rock, it certainly does have relevance to your life. And although I have said that darkness, silence, cold and freedom are merely absences, I do not mean to deny their relevance to life. The absence of light which is a blind man's darkness is crucially important. The absence of sound which is a deaf man's silence is very relevant. The absence of heat which is a dead man's cold is undeniably significant. And the absence of slavery which means the freedom of Man is the basis of all human progress.