When I speak of rights, I am generally speaking of recognized liberties. Liberties are natural freedoms, whereas rights are protected freedoms.[1]
Our liberties are unrestrained, excepting for our endowments and environments. That is, our liberties are our capacities. We are free, in a state of raw nature, to do whatever we may accomplish with our bodies and our surroundings.
Our capacities, then, appear twofold in a sense. We can act and can be acted upon. And so we do have positive and negative capacities. But can these two, mutually-defining acts exist in an isolated state from one another due to eradication of the other? I reckon that this is unlikely, much as a negative and positive pole or charge in magnetism requires its opposite to exist somewhere.
Consider a farmer on his homestead. In a state of isolation, he has socially unlimited capacities. He can act and is not acted upon. But here comes a fellow, perhaps a herder who wishes to graze his flock on the same land. Here, we have one man who has already been here producing, another who has not. The first wishes to assert his negative liberties, and flexes his capacity for defense. The second wishes to assert his positive liberties, and flexes his capacity for aggression. What shall the outcome be?
Moralistic libertarians and Christians might assume the second party will share their deontological sentiments in the end, and will see things their way, but the naturalist must surely resist this error. Naturally, we have a draw of sorts, to be sorted out in combat and judged according to its capacity to exist. The party whose existence continues on their desired path has their way. Might makes right(s). Natural selection is the Great Dictator.
The farmer can assert his liberties, but they do not become rights until they are acknowledged. In requesting negative liberty, though– the freedom from–, as a right, this places a restraint on the liberty of the other, and so the claim is itself an act of positive liberty, the freedom to (restrain). The positive liberties– freedom to– are limited by the negative liberty—freedom from– of another, but this restriction is a positive action to the benefit of a negative passivity. All negative liberties are passive liberties, dependent upon the niceties of others. And what does this negative liberty consist of anyway? The freedom to be unimpeded in one’s positive liberties, the freedom to use one’s property claim. And the positive, active liberty of the herder? The negative freedom to use that property without hindrance. These are mirror claims.
And so we see that negative rights consist of positive liberties, and vice versa. The farmer’s negative rights– freedom from– protects his positive liberty– freedom to. And the herder’s positive rights– freedom to– protects his negative liberties– freedom from. Societies that favor and grant negative rights, freedoms from, do so positively by asserting their positive liberties, freedoms to, to that end, to refrain others from impeding on negative liberties. This was the great realization of ordoliberalism and ordolibertarianism. Those that favor and grant positive rights do so negatively, as might be realized through “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
And so we see everywhere that rights are developments of conflicts in liberties, some into victories and others into compromises. Some tend to negative and others to positive rights. But most tend to some sort of mixture of the two. This results from each party’s wishing to forgo the costs of conflict when tolerable, producing compromise, and, sometimes from that, collaboration. And each have elements of both. This results from the magnetic nature of our Universe.
Thus, society moves, however slowly or quickly, toward mixed government and mixed economies that represent the interests of no single architect, but instead the aggregate and amalgamated but competing interests of the whole of its members.
Today, the major conflicts are between ideologies such as anarcho-capitalism or national anarchism and anarcho-communism or social anarchism, representing the extreme poles of libertinism, with societal elites gaining power by riding the waves of tension as moderates. Ancaps or annats wish society to positively grant their ideal of negativistic society, ancoms the opposite. The conflict between these two vices floats the ruling class, forever dependent upon war and turmoil.
The elites of the ruling class position favor synarchy and agonism, while the elite abiding class position favors anarchy and mutualism. The enduring conflict has resulted in federalism, or limited government in the manner of oligarchic republics restrained by courts of common and natural law. Further, anarcho-mutualism represents the single Truth, whereas synarcho-agonism represents the many falsities. Among these falsities are false conceptions of anarchy and mutualism, such as ancap, ancom, Libertarianism, and social economy, and all of the agonisms between them. Mutualism alone reconciles positive and negative liberty, allowing no waves for the state to move upon.
Maximum liberty cannot be found in either pure negativistic or positivistic claims, because these claims are both natural and conflicting claims. They are persistent, each of them, but place limits on one another. Where the natural limits are not acknowledged, and where ignorance persists, disequilibrium arises. This is not the elimination of positive or negative claims—for this is as impossible as eliminating a positive or negative polar charge—, but is the confusion surrounding these claims; for instance, in communism, where negative claims persist on behalf of the rulers in the name of positive claims; or in capitalism, where positive claims persist on behalf of the rulers in the name of negative claims. In each case, winners and losers are enacted, and a ruling party is established in the name of minoritarian or majoritarian interests. When the ruling party rules to the benefit of the majority, the minority is exploited; when to the benefit of the minority, the majority is exploited.
The answer to the problem of the apparent conflict between positive or active and negative or passive liberties— wherein one liberty exists to the expense of another, thereby not achieving maximal liberty— is the equality of liberty, considered organically, with both its active and passive forms intact. In equal rights can be found maximum liberty, where the only constraint upon liberty is the boundary of the liberties of others.[2] If a liberty impedes upon another’s equal liberty, it is not to become a right.
Equality of rights must consist of both positive and negative liberties. Among the positive rights must be a claim upon the liberty to the natural resources of the Earth and, where association is desirable, the liberty to think and deliberate freely, to assemble, and to make suggestions and motion for actions and resolutions. Without these, many will have no property in the use of the Earth, nor in their associations, to passively enjoy. Among the negative rights must be a claim upon the liberty to solely and exclusively control one’s own labor and property without interference. Without these, the use of one’s efforts and one’s fruits cannot be actively secured to any end.
Maximum liberty of such a sort must be desirable for all, though it is unfortunately not desirable to all. To desire such a liberty requires rational thinking and compassion which might be reduced to Conscience or Wisdom. Such is an attribute of the Highest Power, which reconciles polarity into a monopolar existence. This requires a spiritual awakening, which cannot be effected from without, but must come from within. Until such time that human individuals have developed their consciences to such an extent that the waves upon which state and government sail, limited government is the best that can be hoped for. Unfortunately, this does not make the anarchist argument against reform any less potent, for we gain no agency in statecraft by admitting the inevitability of the state. Still, we remain outsiders to the apparatus, and so the method of revolution must persist, even to the expense of its wielders. This establishes a scenario in which there is a war between the good and the evil in who will most persuade the ignorant. But the effort of persuasion is limited to those whose souls have opened to the message. Nonetheless, we must continue to desire liberty for all, including for those to whom maximal liberty is not desirable.
Anarchy is not a subjective condition, in which all are satisfied, but is the objective condition in which there is no ruler. Unfortunately, some want a ruler, and though this is irrational it means that anarchy may not always be satisfactory to all, particularly to those who benefit from the inequality of liberty. This includes the ruling class as well as the ignorant multitude they encourage. To these individuals, anarchy might feel something like domination. Bullies never like playing fair, and the smart ones share their loot with the incredulous, who deny that this is what is happening and take to defending the bully as their trustee, as if they are the beneficiaries. In this way, the interests of the poor, ignorant commoner is pitted against that of the lucrative and informed one; the vice of the street urchin is pointed against the virtue of the owner-operator; the idler of the lower and middle class is sicked upon the producers of the same.
[1] I may not always be consistent in my usage, sometimes making common colloquial use instead
[2] Herbert Spencer, who coined the term Equal Liberty or Equal Freedom, was an avid and explicit supporter of negative rights and opponent of positive rights, but tacitly was a supporter of both in his support of the Right to the Use of the Earth and in his support of cooperative associations.