liberal democracy

dlawbailey dlawbailey at netzero.net
Thu Mar 7 03:11:24 PST 2002


The intent of the liberal-democratic state was clearly to create a society of relative (to feudalism) equality, liberty, compassion and trust *among capitalists*. If the intent was never anything but pro-capitalist, that does not mean there has not been major trickle-down benefit from the liberal state and even some intended benefit. It is responsible for our whole notion of law and rights. The liberal-democratic state must extend its benefit to the extent that peace is kept amongst the population. It is intended to extend the benefit of rights to the extent that workers believe themselves to be free contractors. It has had to extend the benefit of law and rights to some extent because the logic of the words delineating law and rights demands it for consistency's sake (although the Scalia-Renhquist court has done what it can to limit that).

Socialism will have to involve the extension of new rights and I think socialists have though this out very poorly if at all. Rights are not positive obligations but negative obligations. There cannot be a right to healthcare, for example. Such a right would imply that a sick person may legally force a healthcare worker to do work for him which would obviously reduce the rights of one class of workers in favor of another. There can be a right not to be refused healthcare on the basis of some social category, provided the healthcare workers retain the right to freely contract and demand just recompense for their work. Many of the so-called rights in the universal declaration of human rights are not rights at all but positive obligations of government that might, in fact, be met in other ways.

At some point in its development, socialism will have to demand and codify positive obligations among citizens but it must start from the idea of rights we have now. I think the we may decide that legal rights are not the way to go at socialism at all, at first. I think socialism may start from expanding, for example, the legal ideas underlying the corporation - a more syndicalist than immediately socialist approach.

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