Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1955. január-június (4. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1955-06-30 / 26. szám
THOSE UNALIENABLE RIGHTS June 30, 1955 ■ AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ Thoughts for the Fourth of July By JOSEPH GEREB The revolutionary fathers of the United States in justifying the separation of the colonies from the mother country wrote in the Declaration of Indepenedence: We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness. This famous document of 1776 was composed mostly by Thomas Jefferson, wrho wras a close student of the French Encyclopedists, but especially of Jean Jaques Rousseau, who in his controversial book, “The Social Contract,” talks a great deal about unalienable rights, or natural rights,—as he calls them. Man inherits those rights from Nature by birth,—he wrote,—therefore those rights are unalienable, that is, can not be taken away from man. Let’s examine then more carefully what are those natural rights? If there are such rights, surely they were in use long before there were man-made laws. But the laws of the primitive, uncivilized man are the laws of the jungle; to take and possess whatever you need to sustain life and comfort without any restrictions. Those rights were limited only by nature itself. But in civilized society man-made laws are necessary to regulate the relationship between man an his fellow’-man which becomes evermore complicated. We all know now, that at present only the wild animals can exercise such limitless natural rights. A fox for instance, will take all the rabbits he can catch and will remain hungry only, when he finds no prey. But we ought to ask the rabbit, what he thinks about such natural rights. Regardless what the rabbit thinks, man practiced such natural rights for a very long period, —ages and ages. First he took what he found in nature ready for use, then he cultivated plants, tamed the wild animals thereby forcing them to work for him. And when he became smart enough to produce more than immediately consumed, took the surplus products of his fellow-man. And still later on he discovered, that with might or with guile lie can force his fellow-man to work for him the same way as the domesticated animals. In other words he took possession of his own kind and that day man became property, same as the goods he produced. This,—as well known,—is called slavery. In such system the master owns not only the tools of production and the products, but the workers also. For thousands of years humanity produced life’s necessities in such a social system. In America this slave system was still in practice in 1776. But in Europe where the agricultural development kept the land the most important means of production much longer, the land ownership dwarfed all other rights and brought forth another social system, the one which is called feudalism. In America in 1776 we still had slavery, not only black, but white slavery too and that’s the reason why neither the Declaration of Independence, nor the Constitution defines or explains clearly what those unalienable rights are. In this sentence; “All men are created equal”,—they did not mean really ALL MEN, but only all FREE men. But in Europe, where feudalism took the place of slavery, just 15 years latter, in 1791, in the French Constitution adopted after the great revolution; they defined those rights very clearly. ' Just listen to it: 1. The aim of society is the common welfare. 2. Government is instituted in order to guarantee to man the enjoyment of his natural and im- presciptible rights. 3. Those rights are equality, liberty, security and property. 4. All men are equal by nature and before the law. There are 35 paragraphs enumerating these rights. No. 16 is rather interesting: 16 16. The right of property belongs to every citizen; to enjoy and to dispose of at his pleasure his goods, income and the fruit of his labor and his skill. But listen to paragraph No. 18. which is the most important part of that French constitution and I believe it is the key to understanding of modern human history. 18. Every man can contract his services and his time, but he can not sell himself, nor be sold; his person is not alienable property. The law knows of no such things as the status of fservant; there can exist only a contract for services and compensation between the man who works and the one, who employs him. In Europe this was the final death-blow to the slave system and partly to the feudal system too. For by that time a new way of production was born,—the one w-e now call capitalism. The last sentence of the above quoted No. 18, expressed the fundamental law of his new system, it legalizes it. Let’s quote it again: There can exist only contract for services and compensation between the man who works and the one, who employs him. The same interpretation was given to the American constitution much later, only in 1865 at the end of a very bloody civil war and since then our way of living rests on this law. But note, that the French document uses the singular form i. e. talks about the “contract between the man who works and the man, who employs him”. Probably at that time they could not foresee, tnat there will come the time when one employer will contract hundreds or thousands of werkers, But the time came and the workers found, that selling (or contracting) their skill or labpr in open competition with each other placed them into a very disadvantageous position because starvation compelled them to secure a job, so they underbid each other in the open, cut-throat competition. The result,—as you know,—wras the very low’ standard of living, the hight rate of exploitation of workers, as we say it now. To eliminate this mad competition the workers organized into unions for collective contracting. Of course,, the employers also formed their associations and at present in the United States the wheels of productions are kept in motion by the contracts based on the collective bargainings of these institutions. But these bargaining are not always peaceful, therefore the 3tate set up certain laws limiting the powers of these most important groups of production. And that is why we call such social system controlled capitalism. In the United States right now we are living under such controlled capitalism. In Europe, where the capitalist system did not develop so fast fast and didn’t reach the high level as it did here, the control device were not evolved either. In the countries of Eastern- Europe the state power has been used only to defend and enforce the sanctity of the contract, thereby serving only the employers’ interests and resulted in ever accelerating exploitation. The workers soon discovered, that the political freedom they gained by the abolition of slavery become quite worthless without economic free dom. The right of contract robbed them of that freedom. Realizing this,, they started the movement commonly called socialism. The final aim of this movement,—as we clearly see now,—is 'to abolish the right of that free contract between man and his fel low'man, the same way, as they abolished the right of buying and selling man. It took over a hundred years to evolve and to put into practice this principle, but they did, naturally at the cost of revolutions, because the employing classes cling wdth all their mights to the rights securing their very valuable privileges. They believe that the right of contract is unalienable, just the same as the slave-owner thought about his right of owning his fellow-man. If you will study the constitutions of these new states,—they call themseves “Peoples Democracies”,—you will find, that their basic principle is to eliminate the right of an individual to hire other man. In justifying this they reason somewhat this way: Man in his daily life by eating, clothing, lodging or at entertainments uses the products of other man. It is just then, that he should repay these necessities of life with some useful work. In other words, he has to work for a living, he ought not live from unearned income. They claim that in such system the workers produce the commodities for use rather than for profit. The individual owns only the consumer goods, but the natural resources, the factories mills, mines, transportation, banking, etc., etc. are owned either collectively by cooperatives, or by the state. In such system everyone works either for himself, or collectively in the cooperatives or in the state enterprizes and receives his renumeration according to his work. Is that all!—you may ask.—Is it possible, that over such trifling issue the people of the world are divided into antagonistic camps ready to destroy each others? Well, first of all, this is not a small issue. Remember, that the fight for the right of owning a fellow-man culminated in a very great w'ar. And this problem is not as simple as I stated. I over simplified it in order that I could present it in a short essay. Then again I have to remind you, that the technical advancement made manufacturing, commerce and banking worldwide interwoven through all countries. By abolishing the rights of contracting in same countries wdll stop some profit privieges on the other side of the Globe. Furthermore this new system,'—as all new systems,—brought into practice by minorities, by force, revolutions or by dictatorship. It is natural, that -by such a thorough change of the social system large bodies of people lass their priviledges or their livelihood even if the transformation could be directed only by public- spirited idealists, but its a well known fact, that such periods bring many opportunists into power whose aim is only to serve their own selfish interest. The harsh actions of these opportunists drive more people into the rank of the opposition, which is determined to regain the lost power even at the price of a very bloody war. In comparing these different social systems I tried to describe them without adjudging them, that is, without telling which is better or worse, because that depends on with whose eyes we look at them. Instead I can state: The nature of the social systems is that they are subject of constant changes; they are born, grow old then die, —this is the evolution. They claim that even now the embryo of a future social system is in the womb of history already and in that future system man will receive hii share from the collectively produced commodities not according to his work, but according to his need. Now let’s summarize what we said: We are living in the greatest transition period of human history. The nucleus of this social change is the elimination of the right of man to buy the work (or ability) of his fellow-man and moke him work by contracts. The same way as slavery was stop-' ped by prohibiting the sale of man, now is the fundamental issue the elimination of the right of buying others work and make profit on such transactions. There is a new system in the making, where a man can use his labor only for himself, or only collectively with his fellov/ workers. In other words, we are deciding now’, whether man’s labor and skill are alienable or not? Over this issue we fought the cold war, the “police action” in Korea and this issue1 divides the people of the world into two antagonistic camps ready to destroy each other. All the dei tails and episodes are only to alter public attention. And in case we still will be smart enough noli to destroy ourself in resolving this issue, history will describe our time as the age of the fight for economic freedom by eliminating man’s right to buy his fellow-man’s work or ability and gaining personal profit thereby. 23
