Social rights

“ Society thus becomes a co-operative scheme for securing civil freedom through institutions, economic freedom through capital and invention, social liberty through culture, and freedom from violence through police regulation.
Might does not make right, but it does enforce the commonly recognized rights of each succeeding generation. The prime mission of government is the definition of the right, the just and fair regulation of class differences, and the enforcement of equality of opportunity under the rules of law. Every human right is associated with a social duty ”

“ We will transmit to them liberty and equal rights, secured by laws respectable and respected; we will transmit to them a social organization in which every human being can enjoy the fruits of his labor with dignity and independence; we will transmit to them a full abundance of the means which promote the untramelled development of the moral and ideal element in human nature. ”

“ SOCIAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES.--Each member of society has rights as such, and these are called social rights. They include the rights of personal security and protection. They underlie all efforts for the improvement of the social condition of the people. Society is interested in better schools, in public health, in the reformation of criminals, in good highways and streets, in safe buildings, in well-lighted cities and villages, in the maintenance of charitable institutions, in the establishment of sources of harmless amusement, and in the preservation of peace and order. ”

“ From whatever side we approach our principle, we reach the same conclusion, that the social compact sets up among the citizens an equality of such a kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and should therefore all enjoy the same rights. ”

“ But have the world community and the nations of the world always drawn the lesson from this? Are human rights always observed in the light of the question asked by the most impoverished: In your eyes, who am I? Do our instruments for the protection of economic, social and cultural rights in particular, but also of civil and political rights, always reflect a fraternal purpose? ”

“ Conceptions of social rights and obligations and the institutions based upon them continue unquestioned for long periods as postulates in all discussions upon questions of government. Whatever conduct conforms to them is assumed to be right. Whatever is at variance with them is assumed to be wrong. ”

“ Beyond civilization lies the recognition and practice of the principle that the welfare of the whole takes precedence over the demands of any of its parts. At the same time, each part or segment of the social whole has specific rights that the directors of the whole are bound to recognize, respect, defend and implement. ”

“ In all social relations we should have the utmost liberty—but public duties should be discharged and public rights should be recognized, without the slightest discrimination on account of race or color. ”

“ Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equal possessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, on the contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simply impossible; that in human societies, as in animal societies, neither the rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments of all the members of a society are or ever can be equal. ”

“ In the last analysis civil rights depend for their maintenance and enforcement upon a realization of their value by the whole people and the willingness of every citizen to grant to others the rights which he claims for himself. ”

“ Briefly, a wholesome social condition implies that every social organ discharges a useful function; it renders some service to the community which is equivalent to the support which it derives; brain and stomach each get their due share of supply; and there is a thorough reciprocity between all the different members of the body. But what kind of equality should be desired in order to secure this desirable organic balance? ”

“ In place of the relatively simple and brutal capitalistic form of property, there will be substituted then an infinitely complex form, where the social right of the nation will serve to guarantee, by the intermediary of many local or professional groups, the essential rights of every human being—the free play of all activities. ”

“ Equality of rights, duties and responsibilities of the people in conformity with uniform constitutionality and legality; Solidarity and cooperation of the working people and working organizations, their interest and their unrestricted initiative in developing production and other social and personal activities in behalf of man and his social community; Economic and social security of man. ”

“ We may regard this complex of rights from the standpoint of the selves or persons who compose the community. It is in these selves, as we have seen, that the social good is actual, and it is to their differentiated functions, [1] which constitute their life and the end of the community, that the sub-groupings of rights, or conditions of good life, have to be adjusted each to each like suits of clothes. ”

“ You suppose a number of independent individuals, agreeing to join and expecting to receive a precise equivalent for every sacrifice that they make in consequence. The reply is, that the individual is the product of the society, and it is a mere fiction to consider him as possessing any antecedent rights whatever. His rights are to be deduced from, not to supply the premisses for deducing, the social order. The only considerations which are relevant are those which affect the welfare of the social organism, taken as a whole ”

“ And from this philosophical origin he traced society in the historical formation of an actual polity, describing how the social contract, while subordinating individual liberty to the collective will of a society, recompensed men by investing them with rights of civilization. ”

“ Government must keep the ring, and leave it for individuals to play out the game. The theory of the natural rights of the individual is thus supplemented by a theory of the mutual harmony of individual and social needs, and, so completed, forms a conception of human society which is primâ facie workable, which, in fact, contains important elements of truth, and which was responsive to the needs of a great class, and to many of the requirements of society as a whole, during a considerable period. ”

“ Individual Rights vs. Social Duties.—The greatest weakness to be found in twentieth-century society is the disposition on the part of almost all individuals to place personal rights ahead of social duties. The modern spirit of individualism has grown strong since the Renaissance and the Reformation. ”

“ In the eye of the law they have rights of appropriation, but in fact they have not the chance of providing means for a free moral life, of developing and giving reality or expression to a good will, an interest in social well-being. ”

“ Legal rights must be granted, and since the law is the child of the fundamental principles of human justice, legal equality should follow. Social and political rights also must be given; but why social and political equality? ”

“ In regard to the right of teaching or harbouring the slave, he must appeal to the actual capacity of the slave for community with other men as evinced in the manner described above, to the recognition of this capacity as shown by the actual behaviour of the citizens in many respects towards the slave, to the addition to social well-being that results from the realisation of this capacity in all who possess it through rights being legally guaranteed to them. ”

“ The formation of all that is meant by social order, the bringing about of a state of things in which men can meet habitually without fear or precaution, counting with complete confidence upon the absence of any hostile intention, is, obviously, an essential condition of everything that makes life worth living in a civilised country. ”

“ The doctrine, however, that institutions must in the course of generations slowly change to conform to social conditions and social forces, according to the mature convictions of great masses of men, is a very different thing from the notion that rights and duties should be at the sport of all the crude notions which, from time to time, may gain the assent of even an important group of the population. ”

“ Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition, and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery. ”

“ From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live; and, as at the instant of birth we partake of the rights of citizenship, that instant ought to be the beginning of the exercise of our duty. ”

“ Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. ”

“ Liberty is an affair of laws and institutions which bring rights and duties into equilibrium. It is not at all an affair of selecting the proper class to rule. ”

“ If we trace out the laws that govern human life in society, we find that in the largest as in the smallest community they are the same. We find that what seem at first sight like divergences and exceptions are but manifestations of the same principles. And we find that everywhere we can trace the social law, it runs into and conforms with the moral law; that in the life of a community, justice infallibly brings its reward and injustice its punishment. ”

“ Look at the next safeguard of society. Setting aside the institution of Slavery, and the statutes relating thereto, I think we have the most righteous establishments in the world. By no means perfect, they produce the greatest variety of action in the individuals, the greatest unity of action in society, and afford an opportunity to achieve the purpose of social and individual life. ”

“ On the contrary, the communities in which the reason has been most cultivated, and in which the idea of social duty has been most powerful, are those which have most strongly asserted the freedom of action of the individual—the liberty of each to govern his conduct by his own feelings of duty, and by such laws and social restraints as his own conscience can subscribe to. ”

“ One of these relates to all the new or newly revived opinions concerning the condition of society, and the principles of civil and political laws, such, for instance, as the natural equality of mankind, and the abolition of all privileges of caste, of class, of profession, which is the consequence of that equality; the sovereignty of the people, the omnipotence of social power, the uniformity of laws. ”

“ The social organization system and legal regime, ranging from ancestral family and community principles and ethical and moral standards, passing through production and trade relations, solidarity and social responsibility, forms of community and state administration; up to a very complex system of laws, rules, uses and customs that embodied free work by the community, the stewardships and charges system, which allowed the orderly and balanced community life as well as relationships and exchanges with other communities or states. ”

“ But when men living in society once become aware that their welfare depends upon, two opposing tendencies of equal importance—the one restraining, the other encouraging, individual freedom—the question "What are the functions of Government?" is translated into another—namely, What ought we men, in our corporate capacity, to do, not only in the way of restraining that free individuality which is inconsistent with the existence of society, but in encouraging that free individuality which is essential to the evolution of the social organization? ”

“ What system of labor or what organization of society promotes best the moral and intellectual development of man? [Loud applause.] We cannot deprive a single individual of the privileges which protect him in the free exercise of his faculties, and the enjoyment of his rights, so long as these faculties are not employed to the detriment of the rights and liberties of others. Our organization of society resting upon equal rights, we find our security in a general system of popular education, which fits all for an intelligent exercise of those rights. ”

“ Whether it is a natural or a political right, one arising from social relations and duties, or a necessity incidental to individual protection and communal welfare, is immaterial to the discussion. Let the advocates of man's right to participate in governmental affairs choose their own ground and we will be content. ”

“ The first man you meet will undoubtedly tell you that there are a number of laws now in force in the United States which he does not think are consistent with liberty and (natural) rights—I who write this would say so of laws restricting immigration, laying protective taxes, etc. But it is to be observed that behind the positive law existing at any time, there is the moral reflection of the community which is at work all the time. ”

“ I shall end this chapter and this book by remarking on a fact on which the whole social system should rest: i.e., that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal right. ”

“ They who have been trained in the school of anti-slavery; they who, for the last thirty years, have discussed the whole question of human rights, which involves every other question of trade, commerce, finance, political economy, jurisprudence, morals and religion, are the true statesmen for the new republic—the best enunciators of our future policy of justice and equality. ”