Notes

Bentham, Jeremy: Anarchical Fallacies

Preliminary Observations: French Revolution’s product, The Declaration of the Rights of Man buses words, begging the question and is built upon abstract propositions. Such improper usage of language is unacceptable and has no place in constitutional and fundamental laws.

Article I: Men are born and remain free, and equal in respect of rights. Social distinctions cannot be founded, but upon common utility.

Sentence 1:

1. All men are born free. 2. All men remain free.

Problem 1. Men are not born free – they are all born in subjection to their parents, and are wholly dependent upon them for the sake of existence. In turn, mankind’s continuance depends on the individual’s survival too.

Problem 2. There is no clarification accompanying the statement on whether the claim is applicable to the pre-existence of political society (state of nature) or during the existence of political society. If it is the prior, the claim is then irrelevant. If it is the latter, then the claim is false.

Problem 3. As to why the claim is false if applied to the latter – certain men are born slaves. By Lock’s Second Treatise of Government, laws of being need to abide by laws of nature in order to be valid. In acknowledging so, laws of nature are sufficient determinants of the rights of men. However, a political law which supports slavery contradicts the laws of nature and thus is invalid.

Lord Bacon says that the judge who tortures laws to torture men is cruel. However, crueller is the anarchist who, in order to subvert the laws whereby subverting the legislators and men, tortures not only words of the law, but the vitals of language. Therefore, in accordance to Descartes’ maxim Whatever is, is, the key difference between the moderate man and the anarchist is the unjustified rejection of what is.

3. All men are born equal in rights.

Problem 1. Men are not born equal in rights. Consider the differences in the rights of the heirs of the most indigent family and wealthiest family. Since the French law has defined the law of universal independence, the fundamental rights of men, it is applicable to every single government. Therefore, the inequality in rights stands true for all governments.

Problem 2. In reference to Article 13 – A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means – the claim that men are born equal in rights is in variance with itself within the declaration.

4. All men remain equal in rights.

Problem 1. All men do not remain equal in rights, and will never be equal in rights. To presuppose the truth of this claim insinuates that the apprentice and the master are of equal knowledge and skills, that the wife and the husband are of equal status and say, and that the ward and the guardian are of equal wisdom and power. To exemplify the flaw in this claim, it supports the madman in confining people as much as people confining the madman. In reality, the government does not allow the society to function as such, therefore contradicting the claim.

More specifically with the case of the husband and the wife, the declaration is antagonistic towards marriage since no two differing wills can take effect at the same time and consequently, inequality within a marriage is inevitable.

In regard to the master and the servant, there is no compatibility between liberty and servitude – they are diametrically opposite concepts. Better a man should starve than hire himself; in doing so, he reverts back to the state of nature – as Aristotle states in Politics, a man who lives divorced from the exchanges of society and is completely self-sufficient (his own master and his own servant) can only be god or beast.

Problem 2. The extent of rights apply to property and wealth to – to say that a state provides equal rights to all men, the government then is claiming a state of communism which implies an equal distribution of all property and wealth.

Sentence 2: Social distinctions cannot be founded but upon common utility.

The statement is plagued by conjectures

What are social distinctions? Distinctions not respecting equality? It is in contradiction with the claims in the first sentence. Distinctions in respect of equality? It nullifies itself, and thus cannot be founded upon anything.

What is cannot? Does it mean no social distinctions, but those which it approves as having the foundation in question, are established anywhere? Or that none such ought to be established anywhere? The first makes appeal to observation. The second…

Article II: The end in view of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.

Sentence 1: implies a few claims:

1. There are rights anterior to the establishment of governments. Their preservation owes itself to the existence of government after the formation of political society.

2. These rights cannot be abrogated by government. 3. The governments that exist must have derived their origin from formal associations.

1. There are no natural rights. Thus, there are no natural rights opposed to legal rights. Anterior to the establishment of government, there are no laws due to the lack of property, liberty and security to protect, with the absence of laws, there are no rights.

2. A government cannot abrogate what does not exist. That which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction.

3. Governments are established by habit. Contracts are a product of government, not a foundation for government.

Sentence 2: assumes unbounded rights

Although no bounds are assigned to any rights, it is to be understood that they are to have bounds that are set by the laws. It is contradictory with the writing of the declaration in the first place – which is to bind the people by a certain law. If the language is to be taken as it is, that all rights are unlimited, then that in itself is against the laws – if all men are to have full protection, liberty, property, etc., there will be no need for laws to reinforce them.

To claim absolute rights to property is to extinguish the existence of property. If any and every man can take any and every property for himself, the political state reduces itself down to the state of nature, where the earth is owned by mankind as a collective entity – if all land is owned by every man, then no land is owned by any man.

All rights and all laws are made at the expense of liberty – if all men are allowed to do what they wish, be it inflict pain on others or over-indulge in pleasure for the self, they are free to do so completely protected under unbounded security. However, the other person whom they are doing harm to would be consequently denied of his right to absolute security and resistance to oppression. Therefore, it is impossible for all men to have equal rights (sentence 1) and absolute rights in every single aspect possible. This follows the flaw with the husband and wife dilemma – no two differing wills can take effect at the same time.