Discussion Six: Rights Theory
   (Locke, Hobbes, Marx, & Mill), 18 Oct 2013

John Locke:
Rights are: Our Lives. By extension, this includes our Liberty to be as we choose, and to own what property we create, but our lives are our rights, first and wholly.
Opinions for: I agree with Locke's assertion of our natural right to live, as our lives come to us from beyond us without our provoking, and we do make and posses what we are, and deserve to do as much. If this is governed or given over to a king or community, it is first possessed, and a part of us. That it should freely remain as such would be ideal, in a world that is about development, and not ideals. As an ideal, if not as a possibility, he mostly reaches the mark.
Opinions against: A bit too optimistic in his views that we naturally cooperate and negotiate with others. If Hobbes is all horror, then Locke is seemingly candy-land. Reality has both and more, and is neither a dystopia nor utopic. We surrender our rights in some ways, and demand their acknowledgement in others.

Thomas Hobbes:
Rights are: Powers. What you can take, you have a right to, and would naturally be compelled to take if not restricted by some greater power taking and selectively granting those rights or powers for his greater interest. A king increases his powers by keeping a social contract amongst his subservients, allowing individuals only enough powers to keep them in check. Allowing a king to do this keeps us all secure.
Opinions for: Hobbes is quite astute in his observations of greater and lesser powers, and his instrumental analyses of them, such as friendship, reputation, servants, influence, forces, and favor. If seeming inhuman, his observations are true to our animalistic and fearful nature - one he believes we at best keep at bay by consolidating these strengths. I can see how Hobbes thought about civilisation may have greatly influenced the growing of the Commonwealth, and have justified it's influencing of the Savages, or natural man. I also agree that democracies may tend to be watered-down versions of this power-dynamic Hobbes presents.
Opinions against: I disagree with Hobbes that a monarch should and can have every right or power within his grasp, including our religious beliefs and hierarchical authorities. The existence or tolerance of a black market in any system defies this reasoning, and reveals Hobbes' idealism that a king has every power. He cannot reasonably allow powers to work against his powers as a means of obtaining more power. While not so explicit, I also disagree with his view of uncivilised men of foreign lands being so favored by the imposing of such civilised rule as he supposes. Lastly, the concept of there being no justice or injustice, or morality outside of government is something I find repugnant, believing as-I-do that all men must first and lastly govern themselves: “You can't have a cop on every corner, but you can have a father and mother in every home”.
General opinion: Rights being Powers, and Powers Rights, morality doesn't seem very important to man's nature in Hobbes view. We have centralized government then as a necessity of nature, ala Dog-Eat-Dog, where a monarch is the Alpha and secures and consistently imposes his position, and the pack allows this for the order it provides for everyone. Our American democracy so often resembles this, especially in the case of empowered popular opinions being unanswerably wrong.

Karl Marx:
Rights are: Alienating and Divisive. From the onset, he attributes Being – in this case the divisions of social classes – not as an opportunity for shared growth, but as a stage for oppression that grows ever-more sheer between the haves, and have-nots. All men should govern and use (if not necessarily own) goods equally and together.
Opinions for: An ideal that might have been useful, if it could manifest through our limited human context; something Marx does not seem interested in. Who takes from me does not permit me to give. Who proffers me stolen means denies me my power to share of my vulnerablity for the redeeming of the strong through their own charity – the little power I yet have that touches the great ideal Marx grasps at – without molesting any.
Opinions against: Just as Hobbes' and Locke's, Marx' vision is a fancy apart from reality.

Who best understands rights?
Marx sees rights as divisive, and in an ideal where all men and none are king, power is distributed and must also be governed my all. Yet we fail. Corruption enters, and abuses and tyranny follow. What cannot be known as true communism comes to attain and sustain unrepresentative centralized powers that yet claim it to be.

Hobbes' King is the alpha-dog running the pack – for better or worse – who the pack allows to rule for it's own benefit. All fine and good if not for illegal actions and the black market. A king or kingdom divided against himself is not really then the Alpha, and a society functioning in accord with this model can never be a peaceful one.

Locke's society – attempted in the Great Experiment of the United States – may be one of the most free states between communism and monarchy. Still far too often,though, we vote ourselves and our idyllic and seeming-democracy further and further from our own freedoms, our property, and our self-ruling ideals, as if our harmony exists not in them, but in just that one law that would bring us closer to not having to think and be responsible for our lives, criminalising a bit more of our freedom each time so as to, somehow, be more free. As a friend and teacher of mine was wont to say: “America needs a Statue of Responsability in San Francisco Bay to even us out!”. If we value our Lockean liberty so, we must remember it is not a Liberty-From conscious thought and examined living, but a Liberty-For right and free actions.

John Mill has the quietest and yet most-coherent voice of these four. By the zealous guarding of our most fundamental and necessary right and responsibility to speak and debate freely, arguments such as these about “What government is best?” are possible, and may come to their most inclusive and useful ends. His view is both more prudent in scope, and more realistically and immediately attainable, inclusive, and beneficial than any of the other views' ideals. It is the most readily useful, and best represents an understanding of what rights are.