Private property is a construct.
Natural rights is a construct.
Neither represents a transcendent truth.
The best account for natural rights is that it provides elegant packaging for values and norms already shared. The danger emerges because whoever controls the packaging also controls what becomes elegantly packaged.
jlou@mastodon.social 1 year ago
In a sense, all ethics are constructs of our minds. If this were grounds to reject human rights (it isn't), it would be a reason against any reason to do anything (i.e. abolish capitalism) including egoism. The transcendent truth about ethics is unknowable. The best we can do is build moral theories on appealing moral principles. Inalienability is a theory not merely a catalogue of personal views. Hegel's inalienability critique of slavery shows this with nonsense added to not attack wage labor
unfreeradical@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No one is rejecting human rights in the sense you are suggesting, but some may object to human rights in the sense of its being merely a packaging for norms and values that are generally shared, as would be the same sense of an objection against moral theories.
Ellerman appears to be rejecting private property by replacing it with a construct designated as inalienable responsibility. He assumes we will accept the construct, but ultimately, he gives us no reason more convincing than that it affirms the conclusion he wishes to uphold, and that he assumes we will want him to reach, of equitable relations of production.
Ultimately, there is little to be remarked about one or the other, except whose interests they serve, or which consequences they produce.
The rulers’ function has been to repress workers.
The workers’ struggle has been to protect each other while seeking to overcome the conditions of oppression. In that, I see no need for us of either particular construct, private property or inalienable responsibility.
jlou@mastodon.social 1 year ago
Responsibility's inalienability is a descriptive fact not a moral claim. Giving up de facto responsibility is impossible. The moral basis here is the principle that legal and de facto responsibility match. The legal system applies this principle when it holds the person that actually committed the crime legally responsible for it. When an innocent is held legally responsible, that is a miscarriage of justice.
The fact that the workers are oppressed is what the argument is establishing
unfreeradical@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I am not rejecting the sensibility or agreeability of the principle on its merits as a moral principle, but I do reject your characterization of any representation of responsibility as being a “descriptive fact”.
I feel, unfortunately, that such conflations represent a thematic flaw latent throughout the argument.
Simply because we approve of particular facets of social relationship and social structure, we may not assert them as facts, transcending our preferences, whether individual or shared, except as that they are facts of our preferences.