Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

214 W. J. M. Mackenzie
5. Personal rights
It wouldat this point be appropriate to introduce the philosopher and the lawyer
to analyse the different senses given to the word ‘rights’ and to indicate the
contexts in which each usage is appropriate. It is an advantage of the ‘constitu-
tional’ approach that it makes it necessary to note the junction of disciplines at
this point: but it is impossible here to pursue the issue, and the presentation
chosen is deliberately naive.66
There is an old distinction, made in various forms, between political (or ac-
ritive) ghts and private (including procedural) rights. The distinction blurs if
carefully analysed: but it serves to structure the present exposition.
a. Political rights. These are the direct conditions for effective political par-
ticipation: old Declarations of Rights spell them out at length, but perhaps they
can now (given the technological structure of advanced industrial societies) be
compressed under two heads.
Organizations. A number of philosophers, very different in other respects,
have pronounced that the State can admit no organization except its own:
Rousseau, protecting the general will from particular wills; the early political
economists, insisting that agreements in restraint of trade constitute a conspira-
cy against the increase of wealth; Lenin, insisting that the Party is the ‘leading
core’ of all admissible organizations. But the proliferation of organizations has
proved to be characteristic of technological societies in the West; each trade,
each specialization, constitutes an interest group, organized to maximize the
benefits received by its members, and the spokesmen of interest groups may
prove to be as influential in formulating decisions as are the spokesmen of politi-
cal parties.
So far, this is a statement of fact: beyond this, it would be contended (first)
that technological development in its nature creates special interests, and that
these interests cannot be reduced to servitude without delaying the advance of
technology; and (secondly) that this condition of pluralism is an ‘approved‘ one,
or at least is one to which the process of ‘modernization’ tends - it is perhaps
good, or at least all viable alternatives are worse.
The extreme view, that of A. F. Bentley, stands historically at the beginning
of the sequence: his book, The Process of Government, postulated, as long ago
as 1908, that the State has in fact withered away, or, to put it more strictly, that
it had always been an illusion; that nothing exists politically except interests,
their arguments, their pressures, including (of course) the interests of various
public bodies, which are supposed to be hierarchically subordinate to command
but in fact fight (by a law of their nature) each for its own bureaucratic interest.
Some 30 years later Chester Barnard and H. A. Simon added the ecological and
biological formulation, that any group or organization can be regarded as
a system surviving in an environment, and that if its inputs do not suffice to
balance its outputs it must switch to a lower level of activity, or perish.
These important insights have led to an enormous amount of work about
organizations, in all countries where political sociology is studied; and this
work continues. As was said earlier (p. 211) in relation to elections and assem-
blies, much work is needed simply to keep pace with a changing situation: and