We Have Contractual, Not Natural Rights

Harry Pollard

[Reprinted from a Land-Theory online discussion, June 2000]

I have long disagreed with the notion we have Natural Rights - Bret likes them, even Chodorov said something to the effect that though we can't prove them, we have to believe in them.

For an equally long time I've argued that the rights we possess are "contractual".

This is my emphasis in the InterStudent course. In society, we agree what our rights shall be - using the gamut of contract - from written forms (the Constitution?) to "understandings" or "implicit contracts" between people.

But, how can we make contracts? Presumably, because we are individuals. Do we get our right to make contracts from our individuality?

Some libertarians say we own ourselves, which appears to be a statement rather than a proof. How can we show we "own ourselves"?

I've concentrated on human exertion. This manifestation of individual characteristics (manifest : "Clearly apparent or obvious to the mind or senses.") seems to me to be at the heart of "Rights".

I should mention I use exertion as the entrance to Political Economy. I also believe it provides an "anchor" for the Austrian subjective value system, which at present kind of floats in relativism.

I would argue from the basis of a fundamental Assumption of human behavior that precedes all social sciences (or should precede them): "People seek to satisfy their desires with the least exertion." In almost 50 years of teaching, I have never met an adequate denial of this Assumption. It implies that we prefer less exertion to more exertion. Value is another name for preference.

But, back to basic individuality.

I'm pursuing the line that a human being has no validity, unless he exerts. He will simply die.

His contact with the outside world is through exertion. We are fond of stressing "mental or physical exertion" in the HG School courses - probably because we want to include scientists, and entrepreneurs along with laborers and artisans.

Yet, mental exertion is nothing without some manifest physical activity. The two exertions are inseparable - yet the demonstrable indication of thought is through actual physical activity.

We can see physical exertion. We can only infer the mental.

So, I would argue that our individuality begins with our first physical act, something no-one else can do

Continuing, we can argue that ownership begins with exertion.

"Whose exertion is it?" - which sounds like a TV show.

Who else can own our exertion, but us? Our exertion is ours. And by extension, who else can own the results of our exertion but us? Those results are a consequence of our exertion. No-one else is concerned in those results but us. Without our exertion they wouldn't exist.

Essentially, it seems self-evident that the product of our exertion belongs to us - to use, or not to use, to sell or give away, to destroy.

Now we are unlikely all the time to move tortuously through this argument. We simply say - I made it, so it's mine, which is called the "Labor Theory of Ownership".

However, it is important to any discussion of rights. One of the physical things we do is decide on "contractual rights". The first such right will probably be survival rights "I won't harm you, if you don't harm me." The rest follow.

I've been arguing that all "rights" are contractual. in fact, I would argue that all human rights are contractual - none are "Natural".

However, from where do you get the authority to contract?

I suggest it arises from the foregoing analysis.