Individual Rights - Where DO they come from?

[Guest ArenaMan]

"Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. " -Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights,” The Virtue of Selfishness, 93 (see http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/individualrights.html)

Why does he have no means to sustain his life? There have been plenty of men in history who have "sustained their lives," in the literal sense, after renouncing their rights to their own lives. You could escape living in a social context, you could just be the strongest one in a power struggle and come out alive.

I think Rand means something else when she talks about sustaining life, but I don't think she is precise enough.

I've tried searching through existing threads but I just can't come up with a clear answer. It is clear that Rand doesn't think it involves any sort of social contract, but that rights are a direct consequence of man's nature. It just doesn't seem so direct to me... I've struggled with this issue for quite some time now.

[Pokarrin]

If a man allows others the right to claim the product of his effort as theirs without exchanging any value in return, he is trusting them to allow him to survive by their choice, not his. While it is technically possible for a man to survive without property rights(if those who own his effort are sufficiently benevolent), he has no power to sustain his life on his own, because he has surrendered his only means of doing so. It's even worse if this practice is forcibly applied to a large group of people. If you need an example of this, pick your favorite communist country and observe the rampant poverty and starvation that are the hallmark of that economic system.

Edited August 11, 2008 by Pokarrin

[Pokarrin]

I just realized I didn't answer your question completely. Regarding the person allegedly in 'power', the point of Atlas Shrugged was that a formalized system of looting established for the benefit of those who do not produce anything requires the consent of the producers. When that consent is withdrawn, the looters find themselves powerless. For a real life historical example, I submit for your consideration the French Revolution; the French people decided that the nobility that controlled the product of their labor was not contributing sufficient value to justify their existence, and demonstrated their power by violently removing said nobility.

[John McVey]

Why does he have no means to sustain his life? There have been plenty of men in history who have "sustained their lives," in the literal sense, after renouncing their rights to their own lives.

And such men lead precarious lives indeed - and that's irrespective of whether they're the king of the jungle or not. In the absence of protection of rights, society spirals downward, taking expected life-spans down with it and sending mortality rates skyward. At the absolute bottom, where daily existence has returned to the state of primitive pre-industrial hand-to-mouth existence, sure, people could stay alive (average life-span around 20 years or so) and eke out a miserable existence under constant threat of expropriation by the gang or ruler of the moment, or constant threat of having one's rule overthrown and life taken by one's victims at any moment, but that's hardly living.

I think Rand means something else when she talks about sustaining life, but I don't think she is precise enough.

No, she is spot on. Your problem in this matter is that you are trying to understand the concept of rights by deducing it "directly" from a single precept, divorced from the entire field of morality and lacking due recognition for the context for rights.

Rights arise from the application of morality to the particular question of life in society (see the second excerpt on the same Lexicon page). It is through the foundations of the science of ethics that rights are the consequence of man's nature, because our nature as conceptual and volitional beings makes morality applicable to us. The field of morality begins with the fact that life is an end in itself. In application to each individual, this means the proper beneficiary of one's own actions is oneself. Morality also begins with the fact that all life-forms have a definite means of survival, and that since for us this is the use of the mind, reason is our means of survival and so the primary virtue is the commitment to the proper use of reason: that is, rationality.

Morality then goes on to identify further virtues, and show that there are also a number of vices. The one of particular relevance here is the initiation of force against others; it is an assault on the reasoning faculty of both parties, is an action antithetical to every single virtue, and so necessarily undercuts the survival chances of both victim and perpetrator. An initiation of force is an attempt to violate the law of causality: for instance, the judgement of the mind to produce something includes consideration for the benefits to be gained (cause and effect), but initiation of force to steak that product takes away what was a precondition of that first party acting (a cause with no effect, or an effect in contradiction to the nature of the entity that was the cause). It is in relation to these facts that your comment about about men sustaining their lives without means is nonsensical. As Miss Rand put it in Francisco's money speech, "Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard—the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money ... When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter."

To begin to discover rights, one takes the facts of what is virtuous - of what one needs to do in principle in order to survive and pursue one's own selfish interests - and follows a series of recognitions. Since we are required to follow these principles if we seek to serve our selfish interests we are also entitled to do so and bear the consequences accordingly, because our lives are our own and we should be the beneficiaries of our own actions. That includes the entitlement to defend our entitlements to act on these principles and retain the consequences, against others. For instance, we need to act for our own benefit, so we produce food. Our need for food gives us the entitlement, in the context of us acting virtuously and having successfully exercised the virtue of productiveness, to protect our crops, cattle, stores, and so on, against depredation by others: we need to act (eg to produce) and bear the consequences (eg to be able consume what we have produced), and so it is right for us to do so and defend that against looters and moochers.

We then recognise that the same also applies to others on their own behalf, that they too have entitlements and are entitled to defend themselves against others (including us). We must recognise the same of others at the same time as we demand others recognising this of us. If we have certain moral entitlements because of key elements of our natures, so do others who share those same elements. In terms of theory, a violation of this is rank hypocrisy; and in terms of practice a violation of this endangers the needs of our own existences, as history amply demonstrates. For instance, we recognise there is no justification for getting indignant at another who defends his food as above, just as we have done. He is no more obliged to make sacrifices on our behalf than we are to do so on his behalf: we should not be a looter or moocher, either, and the attempt is not at all in our own selfish interests because it is attempting to obliterate a key condition for how what we would be looting or mooching came into existence in the first place.

Finally, we recognise the harmony if interests among rational men; it is not merely a matter of avoiding hypocrisy or thinking we're not cunning enough to be prudent predators. Instead, our interests directly lie in recognising the rights of others because of our need to act on principle, that these principles include recognising others' own moral entitlements and that the initiation of force against them in violation of those entitlements is contrary to our own needs. Action either to mutual benefit or of amiable parting of ways is that consonant with virtue, and initiation of force against others is a vice. In the context of normal society, this means that nobody acting rationally is inherently a threat to anyone else, and is instead a potential opportunity for great mutual gain. We then realise that our interests lie in the maintenance of that state of affairs, which means we must recognise the rights of others not just in our direct dealing with them and in more general terms when we empower governments to enumerate and protect everyone's rights as a matter of principle. We empower a government authority to recognise our property rights in our food and cattle etc, and also to recognise the same on the part of others and expect that government to protect others rights because if others' rights are threatened then so are our own: if we allow a looter or moocher to violate any one person's rights then everybody's are also in the crosshairs.

From there, one then goes on to show the fundamental rights. In particular, as per your question, the right to life comes directly from the foundations of morality: just as it is morally right to act to as to further one's proper self-interests, so too it must be a fundamental political right to pursue one's life and self-interests: it is right to live, so we have the right to life. Our selfish interests requires that we both demand recognition of our right to life and also cheerfully recognise it of others too. As a consequence, we all together enshrine that right in a founding document that is binding upon the agency empowered to protect all derivatives of that right.

JJM