The Global Concern Over Human Rights

Edward J. Dodson

[Reprinted from a special issue of Equal Rights, published in the Summer of 1984]

The Robert Schalkenbach Foundation film "One Way To Better Cities" first introduced to me the name of Robert M. Hutchins, an individual of remarkable intellectual depth possessed with deep concern for his fellow man. You may recall from the film his strong statement against America's property tax system, speaking on the grounds of his Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California. His words still carry the sound the conviction:

The real property tax, which is the main support of local governments, reflects and promotes every unsound public policy imaginable. It encourages urban blight, suburban sprawl and land speculation. It thwarts urban rehabilitation, construction investment in building and improving homes. And it prevents orderly development and planning.

Mr. Hutchins passed away in 1977. The Center he founded continues to serve as a unique forum for discussion on moral, political, social and ethical issues important to us all.

A CONFERENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS

A two-day conference on human rights was held in December of 1983 at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. More specifically, the conference title was "Human Rights and American Foreign Policy." Among the speakers and participants were Arthur Goldberg (Secretary of Labor under John F. Kennedy and later the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations), Henry Shue (professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland), and discussants from various other backgrounds. As you might expect, none of the participants are as far as I am aware were adherents to the Georgist philosophy.

For the past few years I have received The Center Magazine. An edited transcript of the above conference served as a major topic for the January/ February 1984 issue. The debate over human rights continues to be a fundamental concern of all reasoning people. Therefore, the editors of this publication are devoting Equal Rights to this subject and an analysis of the issues raised at the Center's conference.

ARTHUR GOLDBERG AND CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES

In the conference's keynote address, Arthur Goldberg described how it occurred that such diverse personalities as Clare Booth Luce, Alicia Patterson, Harvey Bundy and others, himself included, were brought together in the early 1950s by Robert M. Hutchins to fight for democratic principles then under attack by McCarthyism. They established the "Fund for the Republic" (the Center's predecessor) to, as Arthur Goldberg declared, "maintain, against any onslaught, the basic liberties of Americans as defined in the Bill of Rights." From this perspective, Mr. Goldberg attempted in his address to answer whether "the protection of human rights and the furtherance of our foreign policy goals are reconcilable."

He reminds us that at opposite extremes of the issue are first, those who "assert, as John F. Kennedy did ... that in the last analysis, peace -- the ultimate goals of our foreign policy -- is a matter of human rights" and, secondly, those "who dismiss the first concept as naive and unrealistic land rely on acceptance of realpolitik, the practicalities of international relations." As a consequence he says, which position we hold determines on what basis we choose our friends or foes among other nations. From the following statement, he makes clear his allegiance to the first group:

It is never easy to define what is moral, particularly in foreign policy. But at the risk of being simplistic, it appears to me that a foreign policy that is morally right protects human rights everywhere. It is a policy that is righteous rather than opportunistic, ethical rather than cynical, candid rather than secretive. It is a foreign policy that gives due respect to our own Constitution, because this is the document that contains the safeguards of our human rights, and is also a practical instrument of government.

From the Georgist perspective, Arthur Goldberg is being simplistic -- not because he believes "a foreign policy that is morally right protects human rights everywhere" but because he places so much faith in the Constitution. The weakness of the Constitution is that certain of its principle elements are traced not to natural law but to social "custom."

It must be stated that our American Constitution reflects the most remarkable voluntarily entered social and political contract ever conceived by man. Granting this as fact, there is a good deal of truth in Arthur Goldberg's contention that "failure to adhere to the Constitution is what got us into trouble." As evidence that our political leaders have from time to time violated the spirit of the Constitution, he points to excessive secrecy and immorality his specific word during the Kissinger/Nixon era as sending the wrong message to other nations of the world. The question raised deals with both our commitment and responsibility to the world's population as leader of the "free world;" and, on this issue, I am in agreement with his statement that "we are not the world policeman land we are not the world teachers, save for the example we set in this country by our dedication to the principles and practices of moral and human rights." To his misfortune, he has rested his argument on the essence of a document still under the pressures for evolutionary change, still flawed as expected of any moral and ethical code based even partially on human custom. Henry George offered his own observation in far better words:

That alone is wise which is just; that alone is enduring which is right.[1]

In point of fact, our Constitution (even as amended) has undergone continuous interpretation over the centuries, particularly by our nation's jurists; and, as former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes declared: "We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is."[2] Quite simply, we are as citizens at the mercy of the aggregate wisdom and sense of morality of nine individuals whose responsibility it is to determine what is and what is not the law. One need not be a Georgist to recognize the Constitution's frequent failure to protect even the basic human (i.e., natural) right to survival. One reason is clearly evident. "These rights are denied," wrote Henry George, "when the equal right to land -- on which and by which men alone can live -- is denied." And further, "political rights will not compensate for the denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature ... political liberty, when the equal right to land is denied, becomes, as population increases and invention goes on, merely the liberty to compete for employment at starvation wages."[3] With nothing further upon which to base an opinion, I must conclude that Arthur Goldberg's position substitutes subjectivity for objectivity by basing human rights not on an acknowledgment of natural law but on the Constitution. In doing so he inadvertently contributes to the gradual but ongoing historical shift from humanitarianism to humanism as the foundation for "ethical" action.

HENRY SHUE / UNALIENABLE RIGHTS

Henry Shue took the conferees on somewhat of an historical journey over the ground covered by the philosophers, a journey described by him as one of discontinuity. Significantly, he recognizes that along the way "the notion of self-evident truth has been rejected by "pragmatists," thereby moving the discussion between contemporary philosophers from a treatment of "natural" rights to "human" rights. Despite this trend, Henry Shue contends there are in fact certain basic principles universal in nature, one of which is his concept of "limited sovereignty."

It is not for governments to select, as suits their own goals, which rights they will respect or promote. On the contrary, rights constitute the standard by which governments are to be judged. It is for the purpose of securing rights that governments are instituted; and although 'governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes', any form of government that is destructive rather than protective of universal rights may be altered or abolished. Indeed, it is not merely 'their right, it is their duty, to throw off such governments'.

Similar criteria were used by Henry George in defining the natural role of government in a great cooperative society (what George interpreted to be the "ideal of Jeffersonian democracy"). Thereunder, George offered the following as legitimate functions and responsibilities of government (funded, of course, by revenues raised from the taxing of land values for "the common benefit"):

… public baths, museums, libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, music and dancing halls, theatres, universities, technical schools, shooting galleries, play grounds, gymnasiums ... heat, light and motive power., as well as water might be conducted ... at public expense; ... discoverers and inventors rewarded, scientific investigations supported; and in a thousand ways the public revenues made to foster efforts for the public benefit.[4]

One may argue over the wisdom or desirability of spending public revenues for public baths, or that a good deal of George's suggestions could be better provided by the private sector. What is not arguable is that all of these suggestions represent opportunities for positive government action. Thus, Henry Shue's definition of limited sovereignty And George's view of responsible government are in harmony. (As a brief aside, I have come to believe that those Fabian socialists such as George Bernard Shaw who harshly criticized Henry George for failing to provide a detailed spending program for government, fall into that category of casual intellectuals who expound on subjects superficially studied.)

Continuing the comparison between George and Shue, the former would certainly voice agreement with Shue that "the doctrine that municipal law is definitive -- that citizens have no rights except the rights their current municipal laws grant them -- is false." Moreover, says Shue, " ... national legal systems themselves may be judged by moral principles, especially theories of universal rights." Relating this position to present day actions, Henry Shue strongly criticizes what he observes as an attempt by the Reagan administration "at selective enforcement of human rights" as a foreign policy strategy.

It is not for governments to judge rights and omit the rights that they do not find useful. Each government is to be judged by rights irrespective of whether their government acknowledges the rights. This is the principle of limited sovereignty ringingly expressed in the Declaration of Independence.[5]

As to the charges leveled against the Reagan administration, I am in agreement. For this reason. Systems of government based on man-made law are, in effect, impositions upon the true political economy. As such, they are both evolutionary and reactionary in nature, their longevity a matter of delicate social balances and controls. The underlying principles of human rights do not change; therefore, the support of human rights as a universal decree is required of a society characterized by limited sovereignty as just.

The history of European man in America has, unfortunately, been a far cry from this ideal. As Henry George observed, we have from the beginning of our national experience followed the course of adhering to human law, in direct opposition to principle. "Our boasted freedom," wrote George, "necessarily involves slavery, so long as we recognize private property in land ... until that is abolished, Declarations of Independence and Acts of Emancipation are in vain ... so long as one man can claim the exclusive ownership of the land from which other men must live, slavery will exist, and as material progress goes on, must grow and deepen!"[6]

The current philosophical debate is, on the other hand, an argument over whether the guarantees necessary to protect rights are in themselves onerous. Or, asks Shue, "would the cure be worse than the disease?" Here, Shue introduces an argument raised by some that only a government totalitarian in power can effectively guarantee rights. In response, he points to the European "social democracies" as examples of societies where basic economic and social rights are protected. While I agree with his conclusion, his point is poorly supported by the above example.

The argument fails to answer the challenge because the comparison of political economies is a comparison of degree rather than kind, flawed to the extent that one is hard pressed to reconcile his statement with the continued existence of poverty therein.

To his credit, Henry Shue recognizes that "some of the worst threats to human rights are also social institutions, political and economic." While he does not detail those "social institutions" at issue, he lists a number of "subsistence rights" as basic: "unpolluted air, unpolluted water, adequate food, adequate clothing, adequate shelter, and minimal preventive public health care." These are the things he feels are "needed for a decent chance at a reasonably healthy and active life." During the discussion session, Virginia Held (Professor of Philosophy at City University of New York) expressed also that "the failure of the United States to recognize economic and social rights as genuine human rights is a problem not just for our foreign policy, but also for our entire domestic political, legal, and economic system. So, it must be attributed to far deeper causes than any given national administration." The fact that these problems are recognized, that our distance from the ideal of limited sovereignty is far indeed (and probably growing), is a step in the right direction toward finding the root causes. Professor Held also offered this:

The American ideology -- that people should provide for themselves -- is still well entrenched. What is not acknowledged is that today people are expected to provide for themselves out of thin air. The fact is that the unoccupied territory or the 'fruits of the common' which our political ancestors assumed supplied the means by which citizens could provide for themselves no longer exist. Rights to property, for those who do not already have property, have become worthless. Yet our views have not caught up with this reality.

The explosion of world population and the growing demand for land and natural resources has brought this dilemma to the forefront of discussion. What is still to be recognized and acknowledged is that these effects have an identifiable cause which can be treated. All that is necessary is to examine closely the relationship worldwide between the concentration of landownership (by the state or by individuals) and the denial of human rights; the greater the concentration of landownership, the greater the fundamental injustices experienced by the people. On this, Henry George's analysis proved prophetic:

From the fundamental injustice of the appropriation, as the exclusive property of some, of the land on which and from which all must live flow all the injustices which distort and endanger modern development, which condemn the producer of wealth to poverty and pamper the nonproducer in luxury ... [7]

My quote of Robert M. Hutchins at the beginning of this writing gives George's words a familiar ring. Moving away from the conference for a moment, philosopher Mortimer Adler in a similar statement on the constitution of a "just" society, also attacked privilege (and what else but privilege is the private appropriation and ownership of nature?) and, I suspect, would concur with Henry Shue's offering of limited sovereignty as a "real good." Added to Mortimer Adler's words are two bracketed phrases. George would certainly approve of the revision Of Adler, I am not sure.

The institutions and operations of organized society always affect a number of individuals -- in fact, all the individuals who comprise it. In saying this, I do not mean that society always provides the conditions of a good life for all its members. On the contrary, it never has done so in the course of history so far. Up to the present, organized society, at its best, has always favored some [the large landowners] and disfavored others [unpropertied wage earners]. The numbers of those whom it has benefited, by helping them to lead good lives for themselves, has varied from the few to the many, but it has never been all.[8]

As further support for this writer's contention that the concentration of landownership is the root cause of human rights violations, Professor Tom Farer (Rutgers School of Law) commented during the conference that as a result of a 1978 Inter-American Human Rights Commission visit to El Salvador, they reported that "the singular concentration of landholding in El Salvador was a principal cause of ... social polarization, in turn leading to the violation of rights of personal integrity and political and civil rights."

That the people of the so-called "Third World" suffer dearly under the weight of tyrannical leadership (whether identified with the Left or the Right) is shown in every television news story. The Rightist military dictatorship (or, military-backed civilian dictatorships) make no pretense to have political and economic justice as the goals of leadership. Whatever the humanitarian ideological goals of the Leftist / nationalist / socialist / marxists as a cooperative body, their leaderships have almost without exception proven to be as callous toward human rights as have their Rightist counterparts. Where does this leave the people? Professor Farer:

Where a large mass of the population has no capital, or no established legal rights to capital -- particularly land --the people do not produce a reformists kind of politics, even in countries with competitive political parties. The peasant classes, because they have no established rights, are extraordinarily vulnerable and are led to the ballot box by the landowners to vote for conservative parties. The peasants have no effective autonomy within the political process. That is not to say that you can never find campesinos who have some autonomy. But their lack of capital and land are a significant inroad on that autonomy.

Here, again, is a conference participant pinpointing the fact that access to land and capital (and, seemingly recognizing a fundamental difference between land, the product of nature, and capital, the product of man) is crucial to the maintenance of human rights in society.

Professor Lowell Livezey later raised a question heard by Henry George many times during debates with members of academia:

My question concerns how you relate logical disputes and practical consequences. For example, subsistence rights often imply a rather radical redistribution of wealth. How does such a redistribution affect the prospects for growth and the subsequent ability of a country to feed its people? In principal at least, there can be a trade-off between savings and investment strategies for development. I know that this can be used as an excuse to do nothing about subsistence rights but here we are playing philosopher for the moment, and we have to ask whether there are not situations in which land redistribution will prevent the kind of savings necessary for the growth of an economy so that it can feed its people.

For the very reasons put forth by Professor Livezey, Henry George considered and rejected all of the socialist plans for land nationalization or land redistribution. Instead, recognizing the potential benefits to society of permitting individuals to retain "legal title" but not "communitycreated values" in land, George proposed to utilize government's proven capability of raising revenue through taxation as a means of collecting the rental value of land to support the programs of a true limited sovereignty. To free the individual to pursue his desires according to his character and abilities, George further proposed that what was really produced by man, the products of labor and capital, were by natural law the private property of the individual producer and should not be treated as common property by the imposition of taxation. Thus, in one bold and imaginative stroke, George captured the essence of a truly humanitarian political economy based on first principles, assuring both the just distribution of wealth and the preservation of human rights.

There are, of course, many reasons for our failure to adopt measures in accord with natural law. The world economy suffers many distortions imposed by reckless and destructive foreign policies on the the part of all nations. Above all others is the endless conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, which has the promise of even more terrifying results. To a very large extent the issue of human rights, particularly the right to survival, is in the hands of our respective leaderships. Again, I find myself in agreement with Henry Shue and have a sense of his deep concern:

There is a disturbing parallel in the kind of transitional arguments one finds some Leninists making and the kinds of arguments that one hears from some people in the Administration. Of course, I am not claiming that anybody in the Administration is a Leninist. But the argument on the Communist side, for example, is, we don't want to hear about human rights now. We first have to build a socialist society. Then we will take care of the human rights.

Now there is a disturbing echo of that kind of argument in this Administration. It says, first we have to stop Communism. Then we will take care of human rights.