Looking at ourselves

In 1910, the novelist Anatole France wrote of his country, "We in France are⋯ citizens. Our citizenship is [an]⋯ occasion for pride! For the poor it consists in supporting and maintaining the rich in their power and their idleness. At this task they must labor in the face of the majestic equality of the laws, which forbid rich and poor alike to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."¹ Only the poor were inconvenienced by the prohibition on sleeping under bridges. Anatole France's aphorism shows the danger of assuming that equality before the law can result in an outcome that satisfies common-sense ideas of substantive material security. Indeed, his comment reflects an earlier observation by Karl Marx. In unequal economic situations, said Marx, an "equal" right was a right of inequality. "Right by its very nature can consist only in the application of an equal standard: but unequal individuals⋯ are measurable only by an equal standard in so far as they are brought under an equal point of view⋯ and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored⋯. To avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal."² The only right that made sense to the proletariat (the working class) according to Marx's collaborator, Friedrich Engels, was the "spontaneous reaction against the crying social inequalities" that characterized life in their times.³ The debate about the relationship between equality of opportunity and substantive material equality has continued since Marx and Engels's time. In human rights terms, we are now interested in minimal economic security, recognizing that economic equality is impossible. The international human rights regime includes a set of laws regarding economic rights, most especially those that are enumerated in the 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (hereafter ICESCR), included in this book as Appendix 1. These include inter alia the right to work and to just and favorable conditions of work (Articles 6 and 7); the right to join and form trade unions (Article 8); the right to social security, including social insurance (Article 9); specific rights for the family, special protection to mothers before and after childbirth and to children and young persons (Article 10); the right to "an adequate standard of living," including food, clothing, housing, and "the continuous improvement of living conditions" (Article 11); and the right to the "highest attainable standard of physical and mental health" (Article 12). This volume contains chapters on how Canada and the United States realize-or violate-these rights. In law, there is generally an expectation that once a rule is made, it should be respected. International human rights lawyers try to establish economic rights as justiciable rights, as firmly protected as civil and political rights. Standards can be changed and made law. For example, David Weissbrodt, the author of Chapter 2, was elected chairperson in 2001 of the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, which deals especially with economic rights. The philosophical justification for economic rights is still not as robust and widely accepted as is the justification for civil and political rights, but progress is also being made in that direction. Brian Orend, in Chapter 1, offers a strong defense of economic rights, rooted in his conception of the vital needs and fundamental interests of all human beings. For many countries, it is difficult to provide economic rights because of shortages of three kinds of resources-(1) material; (2) institutional; and (3) organizational. Therefore, as Weissbrodt explains, the ICESCR stresses "progressive implementation" of economic rights, rather than immediate. States are required to implement economic rights as their resources permit. It would seem, however, that Canada and the United States should be able to implement the full range of economic rights immediately. Both are extremely wealthy countries. In 2002, the per capita gross domestic product of the United States was US$36,300, while the comparable figure for Canada was US$29,300⁴. Copyright © 2006 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved.