I think Eric is trying to make the sort of point about rights that Marx makes On the Jewish Question, human rights, the rights of man, are a creature of capitalism. (Only be didn't call it that then.) Quite right, and that's a _good_ thing about capitalism, and as good Hegelians we should recognize that these right aren't stuck with capitalism, we can can should take them with us into socialism. Marx thought not, but he was wrong about that.
It is pernicious and even dangerous to say that rights talk is equivalent to dystopian fascism/totalitarianism or paternalistic authoritarianism. If you can't tell the difference between liberalism and a police state, you are fucked in the ass, and not in a nice way. Why do you think that we radical lawyers spend so much of our time defending liberal rights and rights even older than that, like the right to habeas corpus that the Barons wrung from bad King John at Runnymede in 1215?
--- On Sat, 5/17/08, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] negative freedoms
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Saturday, May 17, 2008, 11:46 AM
> Eric wrote:
> >
> > >I'm sorry, Ian, this is wayyy too glib. We
> don't go immediately
> > >from a right to a job or an adequate income, a
> right to a decent
> > >education, and so forth to an Orwellian nightmare
> or a Huxleyian
> > >dystopia. To get us onto the slippery slope, you
> have to show us how
> > >the first steps make the slide to the evil
> reductio plausible,
> > >likely, certain.
> >
> > I'm tempted to say this is complete nonsense.
> There's no sliding
> > involved, no step necessary to go from rights to
> dystopia, because
> > they are (of) the same regime. In other words, rights
> are not just
> > magically brought into existence. They are granted,
> secured, and
> > maintained by the same entity that ensures evil (as
> you call it,
> > though I would say control or something like that).
>
> I find this simply unintelligible. "Entity" is
> empty of content.
>
> Carrol
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk