Who Said It?

One of these quotes is from a Harvard Law professor, and the other is from the Chinese government. Can you tell which is which?

"When poverty and lack of proper food are commonplace, and people's basic needs are not guaranteed, priority should be given to economic development... the major criteria for judging the human rights situation in a developing country should be whether its policies and measures help to promote economic and social progress."*

And,

"What hope is there of effective participation in the political system without health and vigor, presentable attire, and shelter not only from the elements but from the physical and psychological onslaughts of social debilitation? Are not these interests the universal, rock-bottom pre-requisites of effective participation in democratic representation - even paramount in importance to the niceties of apportionment, districting and ballot access...?"**

When I read the Harvard guy I immediately remembered that the argument - that civil and political rights are subordinate to economic and social rights because Free Speech is meaningless when you're starving to death - was a favorite of communist China and eastern Europe from the Cold War era. Old Marxists never die, it seems, they just get tenure.

The argument is fundamentally deficient, of course, for two reasons. The first is that by depriving someone of civil and political rights (such as rights to associate with political parties, petition the government for redress of greivances, or vote in general elections) you deprive that person of the means of removing a government that impedes the remedy of economic and social rights. For example, maybe Chinese citizens wouldn't be starving to death and living in such squalid living conditions if they could vote out of power their oppressive government that puts ideology over a functioning economy.

The second problem is that if a country waits until all its citizens are well-educated, have good jobs, are free from all social inequity based on race, religion or class, and enjoy a minimum standard of sanitary conditions and medical care, you will never get to the point where you allow them to vote. China has been working in The Great Experiment how long now? If they haven't succeeded, it's not because Chinese people are dumb, it's because Maoism doesn't work. If Cuba is a squalid hell-hole, it's not because Cubans are morons or because JFK was a jerk, but because Cuban communism doesn't work. If the Soviet empire couldn't do it, it's not because the rodina can't produce some of the world's most talented minds and abundant natural resources - it's because Marxism-Leninism doesn't work. And in none of those three examples did the nations ever get around to granting basic civil and political rights.

In America, by contrast, where we have an (admittedly imperfect) well-developed history of civil and political rights, our citizens have been able to petition the government to increasingly satisfy the economic and social welfare goals of socialist-oriented theorists, while maintaining those same civil and political rights (leaving aside, for now, the question of whether it's a good thing that we've become a welfare state, the point is that we've done it). The lesson of history, then, is that using totalitarian tactics to force political stability for the sake of economic and social rights never ever leads to the development of civil and political rights. But then again, Harvard professors don't seem to intent on learning the lessons of history.

All that said, take a closer look at that second quote. It's one thing to argue that you need food and shelter before your free speech rights have any meaning, but our Harvard friend goes further than anything I've seen any Chinese communist claim. "What hope is there of effective participation in the political system without health..." Okay, we need universal health care. "...and vigor..." Check. I have a Constitutional right to a membership at Gold's Gym. "...presentable attire..." Constitutional right to a shopping spree at The Mens Wearhouse. "...and shelter not only from the elements..." I have a constitutional right to a house, on the government's dime. "...but from the physical and psychological onslaughts of social debilitation..." Whoa, the government needs to make sure I never get my feelings hurt before I can responsibly be allowed to cast a vote? That's hard core. Our Constitution must be a marvellous thing, if it allows Harvard professors to out-Stalin Stalin, or to out-Mao Chairman Mao.


* Quoted in 9 Touro International Law Review 1, 10, n. 23 (2001)(quoting Chinese delegate H. E. Mr. Liu Hiaqui).
** Michelman, Welfare Rights in a Constitutional Democracy, 1979 Wash.U.L.Q. 659, 677 (1979), quoted in Stone et al., Constitutional Law, 792 (2001).