Rights, privileges and freedoms
viking_sec • 15 May 2022 •
Reading anarchist literature has become one of the more enriching daily habits of mine, and it has most recently made me think about the concepts of rights, privileges and freedoms. George Carlin, an American comedian who was definitely at least close to a left-libertarian, if not an anarchist, talked about rights and how you essentially don’t have any if they’re freely taken by a government. I tend to agree: take abortion here in the states for example. Women hardly had the “right” to an abortion if the government, upon reaching a critical mass of evangelical conservative court justices, is able to take them away so easily.
In these cases, you have privileges, which are explicitly easy to take away as they’re given to you by the state and can be freely taken. Rights, supposedly, are static. You can always depend on having them, and the only changes that are supposed to come to your rights are, supposedly, getting more of them.
Anarchists posit that rights are about as valuable as the paper they’re printed on. They believe that as long as there is a state and state-privileged hierarchy, there are no rights or guaranteed freedoms, because the rights supposedly guaranteed by the laws and institutions of the state can be arbitrarily changed and removed, especially since the citizenry are held as hostages by the state at gunpoint at all times. Anarchists believe in a world made up of true freedoms that are guaranteed by the nonexistence of those who would bestow those freedoms and take them away, maximum freedoms guaranteed to and protected by the individual and her community with no state or privileged, unjustified hierarchy to take them away.
My takeaway: the only true freedoms and rights come in the complete absence of those able to take them away.
Comments
That’s a good way of framing it. So true - those freedoms aren’t absolute. It gives an impression of an entitled right but it’s only within a box pre-determined by someone else with legal access to guns and violence (i.e. the state).
@jasonleow bingo. If the state has a monopoly on violence, especially political violence, then rights are exactly as strong as the state’s intent to actually defend them institutionally and legally.
As we’re seeing in America with voting rights and abortion rights and privacy rights and all, those rights aren’t guarantees.
Yeah it’s still whoever is the biggest thug with the most guns wins. Despite how much we think humanity had progressed. Sigh.
It’s an interesting perspective. I think I see the argument. When I allow a government to define my rights, I grant them power and they can always choose to impinge on my freedom. Like choosing Gozer’s form in the original Ghostbusters. What damage could the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man do?