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Ron Peters's Reviews > The Rights of Man
The Rights of Man
by
by
This book is a riposte to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and a statement of Thomas Paine’s liberal, republican beliefs and how these beliefs should be put into practice.
In the end, I don’t hold with either Burke or Paine, since I am neither an affirmed conservative nor a classical liberal, but both books are worth reading by anyone who wants to gain familiarity with these respective modes of thought and rhetoric.
The first part of the book is a rebuttal of Burke plus a commentary on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens. The second part elaborates on how these rights should be implemented in practice by the government.
The first part is less interesting. Paine makes arguments, repeated in the second half, on the illegitimacy of inherited power, the evils of taxation, and the legitimacy of republicanism, but the interminable arguments over the adequacy of the finances of England versus France are of little interest today.
In reading the second half, I often agreed with Paine’s policy goals but rarely with his views on how they are to be achieved. This is where his classical liberalism (more truly, libertarianism verging on anarchism) comes in.
For instance, Paine argues that extremes of poverty should be eliminated through resource distribution. But he believes this is a one-time event to be funded for all eternity by repatriating the wealth of aristocrats. He refuses to believe that significant structural inequality can be brought back into existence by the normal operations of liberal capitalism (i.e., a new 'aristocracy'), so he also refuses to believe that anything other than a trifling tax levy is ever needed in democratic republics. This is where he and I part company.
In the end, I don’t hold with either Burke or Paine, since I am neither an affirmed conservative nor a classical liberal, but both books are worth reading by anyone who wants to gain familiarity with these respective modes of thought and rhetoric.
The first part of the book is a rebuttal of Burke plus a commentary on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens. The second part elaborates on how these rights should be implemented in practice by the government.
The first part is less interesting. Paine makes arguments, repeated in the second half, on the illegitimacy of inherited power, the evils of taxation, and the legitimacy of republicanism, but the interminable arguments over the adequacy of the finances of England versus France are of little interest today.
In reading the second half, I often agreed with Paine’s policy goals but rarely with his views on how they are to be achieved. This is where his classical liberalism (more truly, libertarianism verging on anarchism) comes in.
For instance, Paine argues that extremes of poverty should be eliminated through resource distribution. But he believes this is a one-time event to be funded for all eternity by repatriating the wealth of aristocrats. He refuses to believe that significant structural inequality can be brought back into existence by the normal operations of liberal capitalism (i.e., a new 'aristocracy'), so he also refuses to believe that anything other than a trifling tax levy is ever needed in democratic republics. This is where he and I part company.
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