Might is Right!

Guest article from Katrina Angus

Rights are constructs, illusions shaped by those in power to give us a false sense of security and fairness. We speak of human rights, natural rights, property rights, employment rights, contractual rights, legal rights and so on. Most of these rights are contractual rights, an agreement between two or more parties to a contract and rights that fall from that. The other rights derive from a contract we have with government. An apparent social contract that we enter into by virtue of being born.

Rights are either positive or negative, with the former placing an obligation on another and negative rights placing no such obligation. Positive rights inevitably create conflict, as they require others—typically through government coercion or force—to act on your behalf. For example, when people talk about the right to an education. A positive right to an education places an obligation on another to educate you. A negative right to an education means no one has the right to stop you pursuing education.

Contract rights can be positive rights as these are agreements reached between individuals with rights and obligations agreed in advance. The agreement will include the length of the contract and termination terms, along with a method of dispute resolution usually including which law the contract is acting under. In the example of education, a tutor may agree to provide tuition to a student on payment of a fee. The details of where, when and for how long will all be agreed in advance. Employment rights are a form of contract rights that have more recently become more of a legal right.

Legal rights are essentially coerced contracts with the state, where terms are dictated, money and liberties are taken, and safety is promised in return. In reality, it’s a protection racket disguised as governance. Only a cursory glance around the world shows that this model doesn’t benefit all. Those that are supposed to protect us are often those inflicting the harm. A wise man once said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” Do we get the government we deserve? The state in return for being chosen bestows ever increasing positive rights, using taxation and coercion to redistribute wealth and power to its favoured group at the expense of the rights of everyone else.

Human rights such as the UN declaration of human rights and the European Convention on human rights are legal rights, you don’t need to read very far into either document before rights begin to conflict with each other. The state proclaims the right to life—until it decides otherwise. Whether through war, capital punishment, or police force, they claim the authority to revoke this most fundamental right. We all kno this, yet some people still hold on to the belief that without the government we wouldn’t have roads, and the world would descend into anarchy! The statists.

Natural rights are the inalienable human rights that we are born with. These rights exist without the law. Some believe they are derived from God, some as a form of social contract. Natural rights, if they exist, must be negative, requiring nothing from others but non-interference. Anything more is a constructed, positive right, which by its nature depends on force. I argue that if only negative rights exist, then in practice, no one truly has enforceable rights at all.

There are some people who do not wish to grant the state or any other body this power, these people are anarchists. Contrary to popular belief anarchism is not chaos and a world without roads, it is a way of people organising themselves without a hierarchy of power, force or coercion. Anarchists come with a wide variety of adjectives and going into these in detail is outwith the scope of this article. The differences between anarchists centres around disagreement about what is force and whether property rights create or remove power structures. On one extreme, some anarchists believe owning land and capital is inherently coercive. On the other, anarcho-capitalists have invented property rights to legitimize their system, deluding themselves that these are natural rights. It is a contract right and you have the use of your land only if your neighbours agree to it. There are arguments in the middle about occupancy and use but again unless everyone agrees this isn’t a right either.

At the core, the only right is the one you can defend. Throughout history, those in power have always defined which rights exist and for whom. In the end, might is right.

Views submitted are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Scottish Libertarian Party.

Katrina is a veteran activist of the SLP and she loves dogs.