The Goal Is Freedom
A Revolutionary for All Seasons
Thomas Paine and the Rights of Man
Sheldon Richman
Posted March 11, 2011
If it hasn’t been done already, I hope someone is translating Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (particularly part 2) into Arabic. People rising up against dictators throughout the Middle East and North Africa should be reading that book; it will come in handy when they’ve driven the dictators from power (as in Egypt and Tunisia) and are wondering what comes next. (It wouldn’t hurt for Americans to read it.)
Paine, the soul of the American revolution, wrote the book in 1791 and 1792 in response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Burke, a Whig member of the British Parliament, had sided with “the American English” in their dispute with King George III (though he argued for reconciliation), but felt differently about the events in France in 1789 and onward because of the revolutionaries’ embrace of abstract rights and their repudiation of what he saw as a society’s bond “not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
Paine, the radical republican, would have none of this, and he directed his renowned writing skills to refuting Burke: “That men should take up arms and spend their lives and fortunes, not to maintain their rights, but to maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new species of discovery, and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke,” he wrote in Part I. As for Burke’s belief that past generations can bind future generations, Paine wrote,
- There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a
Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any
country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling
posterity to the ‘end of time,’ or of commanding for ever how the world
shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such
clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do
what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to
execute, are in themselves null and void.
- The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most
ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man;
neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to
follow.
Rights and Government
In Part II Paine offers his own philosophy about human rights and proper government. Since he favored a modest tax-financed safety net for the poor and the elderly, a libertarian will have difficulty embracing all of the book with enthusiasm. One wonders why he didn’t consider mutual aid as an alternative. Nevertheless, the beginning of Part II contains refreshing and profound insights about society that most people – including most advocates of liberty – fail to fully appreciate it. Specifically, Paine understood what Pierre-Joseph Proudhon would later express: “[L]iberty not the daughter but the mother of order.” ([L]a liberté, non pas fille de l’ordre, mais mère de l’ordre. Hat tip : Shawn Wilbur.)
A few choice quotations will make this clear. Paine begins chapter one with these words:
- Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect
of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the
natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would
exist if the formality of government was abolished.
- Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and
the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the
laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost
everything which is ascribed to government.
- If we examine with attention into the composition and constitution of
man, the diversity of his wants, and the diversity of talents in
different men for reciprocally accommodating the wants of each other, his
propensity to society, and consequently to preserve the advantages
resulting from it, we shall easily discover, that a great part of what is
called government is mere imposition.
Yet he appears to withdraw the concession quickly: “and instances are not wanting to show, that everything which government can usefully add thereto, has been performed by the common consent of society, without government.”
Why, then, his modest welfare state? Paine then turned to history to substantiate what he has written:
- For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American War,
and to a longer period in several of the American States, there were no
established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished,
and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention
in establishing new governments; yet during this interval order and
harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe. There is
a natural aptness in man, and more so in society, because it embraces a
greater variety of abilities and resource, to accommodate itself to
whatever situation it is in. The instant formal government is abolished,
society begins to act: a general association takes place, and common
interest produces common security….
- It is but few general laws that civilised life requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense men into society, and what are the motives that regulate their mutual intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what is called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by the natural operation of the parts upon each other.
- It is but few general laws that civilised life requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense men into society, and what are the motives that regulate their mutual intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what is called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by the natural operation of the parts upon each other.
- But how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or
destroyed by the operations of government! When the latter, instead of
being ingrafted on the principles of the former, assumes to exist for
itself, and acts by partialities of favour and oppression, it becomes the
cause of the mischiefs it ought to prevent.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/revolutionary-all-seasons/ --
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
