GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

SOVEREIGNTY AND NATURAL RIGHTS 569
to realize these values. Granted these or similar assumptions,
we may say that human beings have a right to pursue what
they ought to pursue, and that it is the business of the
State to provide them with the opportunity of exercising
this right. Any or all of these assumptions may, however,
be questioned and, if they are, the use of the word "right"
in the immediately preceding sentence is inadmissible.
In any event, the language of Natural Rights is a clumsy
and inappropriate mode of expressing the conclusions just
stated. If we conscientiously employ it, we shall find ourselves
committed to such statements as that a man has a
natural right to exercise his right to pursue the good life,
or, more precisely, a natural right to be given an opportunity
by the State to exercise his right to pursue the good
life, the purpose of the State being the safeguarding of
this right to the good life, or of the opportunity to exercise
it. The truth of the matter is that, with the abandonment
of the Social Contract theory, the ground for postulating
the existence of natural rights disappears. Green's conception
of teleological rights really presupposes a different
theory of the State, which will be examined in the next
chapter. It may, however, be remarked here that,
if the
implications of this theory are pushed to their logical
conclusion, they dispose of the doctrine of natural rights
altogether.
Transition to Marxist Theory. There is a further
reason for the gradual recession into the background of
contemporary political thought of questions relating to
natural rights. Under the influence of Socialist theories, a
growing body of thinkers came, during the latter part of
the nineteenth century, to regard the right to an economic
competence as a fundamental right of man. The posses*
sion of money was, they affirmed, that without which no
other right could exist, for money, as Bernard Shaw was
later to point out, is "the counter which enables life to
be distributed socially". The nineteenth century saw an
enormous increase in the wealth of communities;. but it