Our Natural Rights

Harry Pollard

[Reprinted from The Good Society, May 1983]

Let's assume that we are the island castaways. We have recognized the fact of our unique individuality and we appreciate our similarities. Urged by the profitability of cooperation, we are obliged to search out the extent and limits of our individual rights. The implicit contracts, or negative understandings, such as 'we won't kill, maim, or otherwise injure each other' have already been accepted, or our conference would be stillborn.

It is likely that our first concern will be to make the implicit contracts into explicit contracts. These are protective agreements and include the idea of enforcement via penalty. If such protective contracts sound like laws, they should. Though contracts are individually agreed, people can easily contract in concert for their mutual protection.

Once we feel safe, we can look to the more positive advantages of cooperation. As we make our claims, it becomes apparent that every right we claim is actually an assertion of ownership, 'what is mine and what is thine'. We are trying to establish what belongs to whom.

However, we need not study every instance of property right. Instead, we may use the conclusions of the classical political economists. They separated everything in their universe into three classes -- people, natural resources, and their products.[1] We may conveniently examine each in turn.

The aspect of people that is our specific concern is exertion. Exertion is the external manifestation of humanity. How you act and what you do is a resultant of all that goes to make you a person.

Meaningful Exertion

Yet, exertion is not always the same. Some is more significant. We may discard the less important by giving our attention only to exertion whose result is measurable in the market place. (Sand castles and mud pies may be artistic, clever and even socially redeeming, but they are likely also to be both ephemeral and unmarketable.)

So, the essential characteristic of this concept named 'Labor' is meaningful exertion and this will become the first focal point of our quest for 'rights', or 'warranted claims'.

Exertion connects each person to the outside world. A favorite, though rather weak, assertion of libertarians is "I own myself". It would seem that 'I' is 'myself'. If 'myself' means me in the corporeal sense, it seems unfair to point out that 'myself' is a nuisance that no-one would volunteer to own. 'Myself' (the body) requires attention or it dies. It needs sustenance, care and a place to sleep, or it may fall prey to ills, agues and injury. At times, 'myself' seems to cost rather more than it is worth.

A slaveowner cares little about the slaves he 'owns'. After all, what could be more ridiculous than to own people. Bodies come with needs and requirements -- and occasionally with dangerous inclinations. Bodies must be confined, perhaps manacled, certainly guarded, probably punished, sometimes chased. Ownership of bodies is a headache to be avoided. Although leg-irons may ensure a reluctant cooperation, they weigh as heavy on production as on the captive.

At the slave auction, the slave-owner does not buy a body. Rather does he try to acquire the capacity of a mind and body meaningfully to exert. A slave's attraction rests not in what he is, but in what he can do. Profit builds not with the body count, but with effective expropriation of the body's effort.

When the 'meaningful exertion' of a slave can be appropriated without need to secure, protect and discipline him, slavery becomes markedly more attractive. That is why it is so prevalent in the modern world.[2]

Who Claims Exertion?

Exertion is the external manifestation of each person. So, in our free community, to whom does it belong? Who may assert a right, a 'warranted claim' to it? It probably requires a less than profound philosophical insight to award ownership of exertion to the one who exerts.

But, philosophy is buttressed by an intrusive pragmatism. Exertion is a drag. The mind grows weary and the muscles suffer only so many contractions before they ache. The one who exerts is also the one who tires, who drops from fatigue, who requires rest to repair and renew. It is not without reason that 'we seek to satisfy our desires with the least exertion'.

We are also pressed by 'unlimited desires', but we find their satisfaction is married to exertion. Although exertion is not enthusiastically sought after, we must play out the scene. But, we act only as a means to receive. A successful alien claim to our exertion will promptly end the effort. In our free community, exertion will occur only when Labor's claim to it is clearly accepted.

However, libertarians unhappy with the self-ownership argument should note the Von Mises assertion, "Ownership means full control of the services that can be derived from a good". Perhaps it could be said that when you own your exertion (service) - that establishes your ownership of you.[3]

Political economy is a social science. Scratching my back is not within its province. But, if I scratch your back, the action has become 'social'. It is properly part of the study. Yet, the service would remain unperformed if you failed to agree that the exertion is mine. Should you not concede that the scratching (exertion) is mine, your back will be left to itch. Indeed, if you do not contractually accept my complete 'right' to the exertion, it will not enter the market.[4] The performance of a service provides transitory satisfaction. Your itch has been treated. You are the direct beneficiary of the exertion. However, you may also enjoy my exertion at secondhand?

For example, my exertion may be used, not to provide you with an immediate service, but to bake for you a cake. When you buy the cake from me, you are receiving (in a sense) my congealed exertion, given substance by this material product. The question again arises. How may we establish the right to trade the cake?

The argument for the right to one's exertion applies also to the right to the products of exertion. Just as exertion would not exist without a person, so also would not the product. The exertion is traded for the product. Labor may satisfy another's desire directly with service, or indirectly with a material construct. The grounds for yielding ownership of exertion to the exerter also support ownership of the product by he whose exertion creates it.

Exertion will not be applied if ownership of its results is denied. This is the problem faced by a voluntary socialist collective. As Man 'seeks to satisfy his desires with the least exertion' any member of the collective who receives more exertion than he gives will enthusiastically commend the arrangement. But better producers, who lose exertion to equal shares' will tend to withdraw. As average production falls with the loss of the more productive, the collective will usually fail -- unless coercive restraints are introduced.

A voluntary collective can prosper and remain free when its members are indifferent to material returns. Psychological rewards may take their place, such as a the warm sense of belonging to a collective family or satisfaction from an active commitment to a religious or philosophical belief or even, perhaps, the exciting attention of a charismatic leader.

However, on the island our association rests on personal contract, so our first imperative was to determine warranted claims. We should feel rather content with the results of our heavy session, for we seem clearly to have confirmed a person's right to his exertion (Labor) and to the products of his exertion (Capital and Wealth). In each case, the creation belongs to the creator. Which leaves to be settled only the right to natural resources -- the ownership of the island.

And there's the rub, for we are about to run headlong into the arms of another Creator! Tomorrow's parley is likely to take us on another long day's journey into 'right'!

NOTES

1. 'Political Economy' is a social science. Indeed, 'political' refers to gatherings of people, and 'economy' is a word for organization, or system. Interaction between people means exchange and the marketplace. Also, because exchanging requires time, it implies production that is not immediately consumed. Those products still involved in the process of production and exchange are called Capital, while those in the hands of the final consumer are called Wealth. In the view of classical political economy, all things fall into one or the other of four mutually exclusive classifications, People (Labor), Natural Resources (Land), and their products (Capital and Wealth).
2. A convenient measure of your 'enslavement' is the percentage of your exertion which is taken without compensation. However, slavery is not determined by the amount of expropriation, but by its fact. If 1% of a person's exertion is taken non-contractually, he is enslaved. The house-slave enjoying a cot inside the mansion was not less a chattel than the field slave sleeping on an earthen floor.
3. Economic classicists including both Adam Smith and Henry George have suggested that exchange is really the trading of exertions. George further pointed out (SPE p. 497) that the value of one's exertion is subjective and therefore difficult to use as a common measure. Hence, in the marketplace, it is usual to compare products -- the results of exertion.
4. Time is also a factor. One exerts only because desires are expected to be satisfied. If this reward is delayed, Labor demands compensation. Thus is born 'Interest' -- the reward for 'delay of satisfaction'.