by Eric Sommer
Gandhi once received a letter urging world leaders to draw up a charter of human rights. “In my experience,” he replied, “it is far more important to have a charter of human duties.”
Gandhi’s point is well taken. Progressive theory and practice, whether involving peace movements, civil liberties movements, the anti-imperialist movement, the labour movement, women’s movements, the anti-poverty movements, the social democratic, socialist, anarcho-cooperative, and communist movements, has had one element in common: It has revolved around a ‘discourse of rights’, not a ‘discourse of duties or obligations’.
The overwhelming thrust of progressive movements has been to strive to extend the ‘rights’ of ordinary people through struggles against dominant power groups. These struggles have gone under the names of, and have striven to extend the realms of, ‘freedom, ‘democracy’, ‘equality’, ‘independence’, ‘self-determination’, and the like. To the extent that progressive movements have emphasized ‘obligation’ at all, it has been almost exclusively in terms of the obligations which the state, capital, patriarchal males, or other currently dominant social forces ought to assume vis-a-vis society or the oppressed.
In short, progressive theory and practice has been a theory and practice of ‘what we are owed’, either by other individuals or by the ‘powers-that-be’.
In fairness, progressive movements have to some extent also emphasized ‘fraternity’ or ‘solidarity’. Expressing a positive thrust towards caring and mutual support, the principal of ‘solidarity’ has been indispensable in building cooperation within and between social movements. Solidarity has proven its value in such areas as: building support for trade-union job actions and strikes; building support for progressive movements in the third world; and building mutual support within oppressed groups through institutions such as women’s consciousness raising groups and black consciousness raising groups.
Beyond such important ‘movement uses’, however, existing notions of solidarity have proven unable to extend into everyday life: For these notions have never been concretized in terms which would allow them to serve as the basis of sustainable obligations or agreements through which groups of people might work together to meet one another’s needs on an ongoing basis.
ORIGINS OF THE BLIND SPOT
To fully understand the nature of the ‘obligation blind-spot’, we must look back to its historical origins. At the beginning of the modern era, a great ‘revolt against tradition’, involving European thinkers like Rousseau and Voltaire, and the rise of the capitalist and industrial working classes, coincided with the rise of modern ‘economic culture’. This revolt, which threw off the fetters of the obligations which had been imposed under serfdom and feudalism, took place under the names of ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, and ‘equality’. These three watchwords were, and remain, essential elements in all attempts to secure greater social justice. But they are simply not enough. For in advancing freedom, democracy, and equality, and in throwing off the bonds of tradition, and of traditional and imposed forms of obligation, the European Enlightenment, and the movements which came after it, left only the market-place to fill the void of connectivity between people.
Today, we can see the consequences of this historical development in the utter attenuation of meaningful committed connectivity between human beings in modern societies. Modern people have become ‘market isolates’, able to combine their powers to produce the goods, services, and being-promoting experiences necessary to sustain their lives solely through business corporations and the marketplace.