Book contents
- Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History
- Human Rights in History
- Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Not ‘Second-Generation Rights’
- Part I Religion, Markets, States
- 2 The Rights of the Poor
- 3 Public Welfare and the Natural Order
- 4 Who Pays?
- 5 The Haitian Revolution and Socio-economic Rights
- 6 Of Rights and Regulation
- 7 Socio-economic Rights before the Welfare State
- Part II Race, Gender, Class
- Part III Social Rights in the Age of Internationalism
- Index
3 - Public Welfare and the Natural Order
On the Theological and Free-Market Sources of Socio-economic Rights
from Part I - Religion, Markets, States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2022
- Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History
- Human Rights in History
- Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Not ‘Second-Generation Rights’
- Part I Religion, Markets, States
- 2 The Rights of the Poor
- 3 Public Welfare and the Natural Order
- 4 Who Pays?
- 5 The Haitian Revolution and Socio-economic Rights
- 6 Of Rights and Regulation
- 7 Socio-economic Rights before the Welfare State
- Part II Race, Gender, Class
- Part III Social Rights in the Age of Internationalism
- Index
Summary
It is now well acknowledged that socio-economic rights were already recognised and defended at the time of the French Revolution. The aim of this chapter is not simply to extend the genealogy of socio-economic rights farther back. I wish to show that both socio-economic and political rights, during the French Revolution, came from the same intellectual source, namely the belief in a naturally regulated economic sphere. This belief would find its peak expression in Physiocracy, but it also informed a number of other liberal movements. Going back to the late seventeenth century, one even finds the assertion of socio-economic rights before that of political ones. Economic liberalism, in this sense, came before, but also paved the way for, political liberalism. This process extended up to the French Revolution, where it was deputies with strong Physiocratic attachments who pushed for both socio-economic and political rights.
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- Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History , pp. 47 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022