TOTW: Rights

you gotta fight for your right to party!?

Topic of the Week - This week we’re taking a closer look into anarchist ideas and their relationship to rights. There are many rights one might come across in daily life including animal rights, child rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, gun rights, human rights, natural rights, legal rights, property rights, student rights, housing rights, food rights, water rights, reproductive rights, digital rights, women’s rights, indigenous rights, voting rights, and workers rights to name some.

Many anarchists and their friends have written about the idea of rights including Lysander Spooner, Max Stirner, Dora Marsden, Benjamin Tucker and other American individualist anarchists, to more contemporary writers like Bob Black, Noam Chomsky, and ziq. How are they and other thinkers addressing the topic well and/or poorly? What is the anarchist problem of rights?

There are 22 Comments

RIP MCA.

Rights are incompatible with anarchyl. They are a moralistic fabrication that requires an apparatus of authority that is obviously undesired by any actual anarchist. If you want to have rights to you must first assemble the forces to enforce them. No thanks.

Upon reading the list of authors referenced in the TOTW, ziq squealed in impish joy.

i'm not sure that there's an "anarchist problem of rights" so much as it's very difficult to square the concept of rights with also being critical/rejecting the whole social contract.

i mean, if it's just a turn of phrase that people use casually to talk about being decent to each other most of the time, whatever but i always place a serious, combative anarchist politics way outside the sandbox of the social contract. it's off the edge of the map, where there's presumably monsters and dragons and stuff.

put another way, real politics is about who has the capacity to use force and as anon already said, a silly, utopian idea like human rights would just be a conditional and selective gift granted by the leviathan to its chosen patrons. the "in group" gets to have "rights", according to the whims of the leviathan, who enforces such things arbitrarily, by using a much more tangible and immediate power ... which is of course, violence. oh, and it can change its mind at any time too! actually fuck you, no more rights cuz reasons, since you have no real bargaining power anyway...

I like your definition of politics as the capacity to use force, but would extend it as the capacity to use force in service of the collective good, or the use of force binding the social contract (polis).

Whatcha think?

thx! hopefully neither as often as possible ... depending on how fucked up the situation is, you know? and yeah, complete rejection of the social contract is implied by the beautiful idea imo, total horseshit. rousseau can fuck right off.

there MIGHT occasionally be some compelling arguments for something like "the collective good" but everyone should obviously be very critical of such things, due to how dangerous that power becomes if it gets concentrated.

there's huge discussions to be had around how to square use of force with the beautiful idea. for me, it expands outward from the individual's right to defend themselves and those they care about as well as the nonaggression principle but i tend to mean something VERY different by those statements than the american "libertarian" crowd. devil in the details. monopolizing resources for example, means everyone should rob you, at the very least. if you're a greedy fuckhead, property means we should all take your shit and use your toothbrush. and not tell you about the toothbrush.

anyway, how each person builds a coherent understanding of their relationship to the use of violence tells you a lot about their politics and if they can't even reason it through, i'd argue they urgently need to do some work there but that's just the personal level.

what's more important is that if you and yours don't have much capacity to defend yourselves and present a credible threat to your enemies and would-be exploiters, you're not even at the bargaining table. you're just along for the ride, passive spectators to history. the weak suffer what they must, until they get sick of it and change things.

Standup comedy has a long historical context of being mostly populated by reactionary garbage. While carlin made some interesting social commentary, his basic worldview was antisocial and celebrated the death and misery of others, encouraging the audience to adopt such a cynical view as well. he also used racial slurs in a less than subversive way, among other choices that aged poorly over the decades.

You can argue whether carlin was anarchist or not, I think he was more cynical than anarchist. Certainly didn't see much point to insurrection *or* revolution, political or anti-political activity. But you can't really dispute the reactionary nature of much of his content that he signed his name to and performed for millions. it's just right there, staring you in the face.

Another example from the same discipline, D. Chapelle was pretty poignant and incisive with his commentary on race in the United States, from a black man's perspective. Pretty invaluable to culture of the 2000s in the USA, he isn't remembered for no reason. At the same time, he is definitely a reactionary, especially in his later career, you can tell from pretty much anything he has said about gender or sexuality.

This "I'll wait" snideness is like saying assassin's creed is anarchist because the A is in a thing that looks kind of like a circle if you squint at it appropriately. The arrogance of this statement is absurd. of course carlin's material includes reactionary stuff. in fact, the entire worldview is misanthropic in a way that is incompatible with any recognizably radical worldview. He would mock anarchists, for the futility of their struggle for freedom, just as he would mock communists, liberals, and conservatives.

This comes across like ben shapiro asking people to explain how he could be racist, as if the burden of proof is on others and all previous discourse on the topic is just gone, never happened. Carlin's problematic stuff has been infinitely dissected, this stuff happened LIVE ON TV. people have been explaining this for years. so this attitude you have...it's weird assumptions at best, and at worst is used by people to advance a cynical ideology based around celebrating people being hurt. I'm going to disengage now, but hopefully you consider the points I brought up and it brings you to a greater understanding of yourself and others. Take care.

george carlin:

- claimed anarchy in his autobiography
- was anti-political, did not vote, explained why, and ridiculed those who do
- loved dealing with individuals, hated groups and their labels
- was anti-racist, anti-misogynist
- critiqued language in ways chomsky could only dream about
- despised "society" and the status quo
- was my second favorite comedian of all time (after richard pryor)

clearly you do not know his perspective very well. i have been watching/listening to him since the early 70s (when a good deal of his comedy was admittedly silly). give "it's all bullshit and it's bad for ya" (his last hbo special) a watch.

your argument seems to be "everyone knows this."

that is not convincing.

signed, a different anon

First a definition: Human rights, or the standards of a system, which dictate what is right and what is wrong. Also defined by Spike Lee in the 1989 comedy drama “Do the Right Thing.”

Throughout the past, rights – specifically human rights, have seemed to develop in the community. Now in the postmodern globalized world [society!], with its impact upon culture, collective identity, and the decline of the nation-state, have formed new global institutions that mold the power of human rights to the liberal Western thinker. Everyone’s favorite non-anarchist thinker, Foucault might have said something like: with the creation of regulatory powers, the power to regulate, you create standards of what people find as acceptable ways to behave or interact in society. Human rights have largely been influenced by the liberal Western standard of ideas.

The regulation of power also brings along a certain form of accepted knowledge, with power and knowledge becoming closely intertwined in a symbiotic-style relationship, feeding off each other like Pizza the Hut eating himself to death in the classic 1987 sci-fi “Space Balls.” The unfortunate game of Politics will always produce subjective knowledge, or the type which it finds itself best suited for. The creation of a universal form of Human Rights and related ideals have helped to bolster the neo-liberal Western capitalist world. The normalization and standardization of human rights is meant to create the ideal environment for capitalism to flourish via the spectacle and a life centered around work and a thin moral code to protect oneself from “Others,” feed capitalism, and still be able to come home and have a couple of beers while watching the Knicks lose.

We can now add to the definition of Human Rights that we mentioned at the start. Human Rights are created by institutions to strip-mine productivity and the human-strike as laid out by the standardization of global institutions by a general moral code associated with human beings that are universal in their applications and directly related back to the ideals of human flourishing (whatever that means[1]).

So, how did we get here? A global hegemony of ideals has created the forces which aim to normalize ways of life. In 1215, the Magna Carta stated rights for a certain group of people. Taking the giant leap forward, after World War II, Europe was a wreck and the USA asserted itself as a global force by creating institutions to help rebuild Europe. In 1944, the World Bank along with the International Monetary Fund were established at the Bretton Woods Conference. The Geneva Convention originated in 1864, but was significantly updated in 1949 after World War II. In 1965 there was the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, in 1966 there was the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the international Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, in 1979 there was the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, in 1984 the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and in 1989 the Convention of the Rights of the Child. And so on.

What do anarchists want? Know your rights and fight for your right to abolish everything! Or at least have an okay understanding of the world-changers in play around you.

[1] Emile. “Confusing Figureheads for Fountainheads”

Can people just stop hating ziq for a few minutes? lmao it's crazy how the single mention of them is enough to trigger a worthless debate (or stream of insults). Personally find their texts good. I haven't seen any critique of ziq that wasn't either "uses alt", "edgy nihilist", "lifestylist", or shit like that. Grow up ffs.

yeah, you don't have to agree with someone fully, to get something out of interacting. The defensiveness with which people react to anti civ ideas in general, is rather telling to the confidence they have in their own ideas.

Yeah Ziq has rights, people should respect them and leave them alone!

i’ve read all their stuff and their writing is bad. but their underlying points i agree with and they seem to be improving their arguments/writing

any anarchists that believes in rights is bullshit 'rights' do not exist and never will because you will always need a person or a state or government or a god or something that you believe gives you these rights and enforces them, or you could say everything is a right

that doesn't mean you have to believe in some fascist or reactionary "anti"-x position, because fascism believes in the concept of 'rights' too, they just want authority over it, the same way communists or neo-anarchists want

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/

"Rights are entitlements (not) to perform certain actions, or (not) to be in certain states; or entitlements that others (not) perform certain actions or (not) be in certain states.

Rights dominate modern understandings of what actions are permissible and which institutions are just. Rights structure the form of governments, the content of laws, and the shape of morality as many now see it. To accept a set of rights is to approve a distribution of freedom and authority, and so to endorse a certain view of what may, must, and must not be done.

This entry begins by describing the nature of rights: their classification, their composition, and their function. It then reviews the history of the language of rights, and various relationships between rights and reasons. The major contemporary philosophical approaches to the justification of rights are compared, and the entry concludes by surveying criticisms of rights and “rights talk.” The focus throughout is on general theoretical issues (what rights are) and not on arguments over specific rights (what rights there are)."

U.N.: https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/human-rights

"What Are Human Rights?

Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. Human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many more. Everyone is entitled to these rights, without discrimination.

International Human Rights Law

International human rights law lays down the obligations of Governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups."

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights

"Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.[1] Rights are of essential importance in such disciplines as law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.

Rights are fundamental to any civilization and the history of social conflicts is often bound up with attempts both to define and to redefine them. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "rights structure the form of governments, the content of laws, and the shape of morality as it is currently perceived".[1]"

The Free Dictionary: https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/rights

"n. 1) plural of right, which is the collection of entitlements which a person may have and which are protected by the government and the courts, or under an agreement (contract). 2) slang for the information which must be given by law enforcement officers to a person who is about to be arrested, is a prime suspect in a crime, or is officially accused of a crime. These "rights" are short for "Miranda rights," which the Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), required be read to alleged criminals, including the rights to remain silent and to have an attorney (and if the suspect cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided), and warning that anything the suspect says can be used against him/her in court. Failure to recite these rights means that a confession may not be used as evidence. (See: Miranda warning)"

Instead of rights, codes of community behavior, morality, privileges, and an authoritarian restriction on the free expression of opinion, an aesthetic of emotional knowledge and response could be nurtured into the infants vocabulary of feelings. Throughout hominid history, the negativities of physiological desire have been given free reign and constituted into all cultures, particularly the toxic masculine aggression and pride of victory instituted into sport, politics, war and domestic relationships.
One must develop a discipline, akin to yogic meditation, to invert the negative into positive, and express beautiful emotional acts gestures and humility, and only in deadly self-defence should one unleash the stockpile of rage that one has put aside.

It seems like most anarchists should reject the notion of “rights” as part of a universal, assumed natural political substrate, for reasons which should be too obvious to bloviate about. On the other hand, social ties to others always imply specific rights and responsibilities which an autonomous dividual is best off respecting your the degree that those ties matter.

Sometimes bloviating is necessary because many folk are hungup on rights and they just have to be treated as stupid, and being pompous whilst engaging with them in social ties that one has somehow found oneself involved in with these fools, has to be accepted as an appropriate stance to take, or else those ties will be severed immediately. True anarchs do not suffer fools!

this is @news comments damnit! wtf else are we doing besides bloviating?! it's called "engagement"

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