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Universal Social Right

Chapter 7

Seigniorial right as the first part of universal social right

154. I will now deal with the three parts of social Right already mentioned, and first, with seigniorial Right. I begin by distinguishing the concept of seigniory from similar concepts.

155. Four kinds of rights must be carefully distinguished: the right of superiority, of seigniory, of government and of jural claim. Because they are similar, they can easily be confused.

156. The right of superiority is the right we acquire over others who are guilty of definite, acknowledged jural harm. It endures as long as they persist in wanting to harm us and refuse to give just satisfaction.(30) I call right of superiority the right pertaining to the person offended relative to the offender who has degraded himself by his fault. In so far as he has made himself blameable and remains so, he has lost personal dignity and in this state has lost a part of the essential, fundamental right annexed to person. This dignity is so great that it requires the respect expressed in the following jural-moral precept: `Do not cause pain resented by person.' The reason for the precept, which is the foundation of the corresponding right, is simply that person is ordered to eternal being, and eternal being is in itself inviolable, the seat of all dignity and worthy of all respect; it is truth, moral good, God. Clearly, if person itself turns away from and opposes this eternal good, it renounces its dignity and degrades itself. There is no longer any reason to respect it while it remains torn from the being that gave it dignity.
On the contrary, it now deserves pain proportionate to the good it has so wickedly abandoned and outraged.(31) Because person itself is debased by this fact, there exists between human beings a true right of superiority whose origin is from above.(32)

157. Seigniory is simply a right to the labour of a person who retains all his dignity. Relative to both bond-servants and all other human beings, the master is subject to the jural-moral precept (`Do not cause pain resented by person'). Consequently no master can, without guilt or real jural injury, cause pain to an innocent bond-servant who refuses the pain. The right of seigniory is not a right of personal superiority; master and bond-servant are perfectly equal, relative to person.

The immense difference between the right of superiority and the right of seigniory can be better understood if we consider the case of a master who has neglected the respect owed to the personal dignity of his bond-servant and, having inflicted unjust suffering on him, has persisted in the injury without making any satisfaction. In such a case, the right of seigniory would remain in the master; the right of superiority with the servant.(33) - I leave aside the question whether and to what extent it would be suitable for the bond-servant to use this right relative to the master.

158. Government differs entirely from seigniory.(34) The governor of a society has no proper right over the actions of the associated persons. His sole right lies in using the means necessary for the end of the society. This right is itself limited according to the nature and form of the society, and according to the tenor of his mandate. Thus, the right of government confers no benefit on the governor; it is a ministry exercised for the benefit of the society. On the other hand, the right of seigniory is entirely for the benefit of the one who has it. This difference is so true and clear to human beings that the governor of societies is recompensed for his burden.

159. If however people ambitiously seek to govern, they do so 1. because they want the recompense that comes with the burden (poorly-paid offices and positions are not greatly desired; well-paid posts are); 2. because they desire the honour always given to a governor; 3. because they want to use the noblest faculties of the human spirit to which human beings are inclined, and employ them in government; 4 because they desire the order and good obtainable by governing; 5. because they desire to be independent and follow their own judgment rather than another's (a privilege of governors); and finally, 6. because of the defective morality of some who, giving no thought to the grave responsibility of governors, are not adverse to turning government to their own benefit rather than that of the society.

160. If the right of government arises from a source other than that of the will of the members, the nature of the right certainly does not change to seigniory. Such a society however would lack full freedom and remain at the first level of servitude relative to the person who independently disposes of its government. The governor's duties and jural, moral obligations would be completely the same, nor could he use the government for his own particular benefit to the cost of social benefit. But the society, which lacks the right to change its governor, would still have the right to require him to fulfil the duties indivisibly connected with his office. The right of governing would always be an individual right, essentially different from the right of seigniory; as proper to a person not elected by the society, it would pertain solely to the right of jural claim.

161. Finally, we must not confuse the right of seigniory with this last right, which I call jural claim and consists in the complex of obligations proper to others because of the right or rights of an individual. These obligations seem to make one person dependent on another in certain circumstances. Certainly, although such relationships give rise to a kind of dependence of one human being on another, this dependence differs entirely from the three kinds we have discussed, which arise from the rights of superiority, of seigniory and of government.

162. The dependence imposed by the right of jural claim (an appendix to all rights) on other human beings consists:

1. in their obligation not to enter the sphere of rights of others; it therefore limits the sphere of their inoffensive freedom;
2. in their obligation to use their own right in the way least limiting others' rights;
3. in the obligation of both parties to draw up transactions regulating the modality of their mutual rights. The value of these rights is not to be diminished but rather increased through equable and wise use; both parties must also, whenever necessary, enter into stable conventions to avoid any future collision and use of violence.

163. We have seen that right, properly speaking, is a power. Whoever has right can require all these things from others and, if they refuse, can constrain them with force. Thus, a first level of superiority, of government and of seigniory exists wherever right exists. However, I think that for the sake of greater clarity and distinction, the first level of such rights, present as it is in every individual right, must have a special name, right of jural claim.

164. The right of jural claim therefore changes into the right of superiority, as soon as the fact of injury is verified. Prior to injury, the former right differs from the latter to the extent that jural claim allows us to ask and require others to fulfil the three already mentioned obligations, but without inflicting suffering on them. Suffering can be imposed solely on those who through their evil behaviour have renounced personal dignity.

165. Furthermore, the right of jural claim is a first level of seigniory because the person possessing it partly commands the actions of others by giving these actions a modality which hinders other modalities. It differs from seigniory because seigniory dictates not only the modality but the very actions of others, and uses these actions as an object of its own right. Jural claim regulates the modality of others' actions not because the modality is directly and per se the object of such a right but because it is the condition necessary for the more beneficial use of mutual rights.

166. Finally, the right of jural claim has something in common with the right of government in that both tend to regulate the modality of rights. But they differ as follows:

1. Jural claim to a right affects the modality of rights of anyone coming into contact with a person invested with the right. The right of government generally regulates only the modality of the rights of the members.

2. Jural claim is a natural consequence (a mere function or complex of functions) of individual right. But government is neither a natural consequence of individual right nor a function of right, but a right existing per se and coming to the governor from elsewhere.

3. Jural claim has as its purpose the benefit of its possessor. The purpose of the right of government is solely social good, and the governor need not be a member.

167. Hence, the right of jural claim, while it has an element common to all the three rights mentioned above (the right of superiority, of seigniory, and of government), differs noticeably from them.

168. The right of seigniory, that is, the right to certain prestations, can apply either to the society itself or to the individuals composing the society. It applies to the society when the collective person is obliged to the personal prestations encompassed by the seigniory; it applies to the individuals when they, but not the collective person, have obligatory prestations to the master.

169. If the society itself is obliged, there is communion of burdens. These burdens could themselves form one of the societies we have called society of obligations, or of unpleasant imposition.

170. The question now arises: must the individual members be considered obliged for each other? - If the prestation obliging the social body were indivisible and could not be collectively fulfilled by the society, no member would be obliged to it unless one of them received from the others an indemnification over and above his own prestation. If he did, the prestation would in some way become divisible, which is contrary to the hypothesis. However, if the prestation is divisible and the social body neither can nor wishes to fulfil it collectively, each member is held to his share, unless conventions or the particular title of seigniory have determined otherwise. In all these cases the servitude of the society would affect the members themselves.

171. Could the opposite ever happen: could the servitude of the individuals composing a society affect the society itself?
First, it is clear that if the society is freely willed but came into being after the right of seigniory over the individuals had already been posited, the fact of the individuals' association cannot in any way detract from the preceding right of the master. Hence the society must either be dissolved or submit to all the limitations and responsibilities that are necessary for preventing harm to the master's right.

172. However, if the society is natural or precedes the establishment of seigniory over the individuals, we must distinguish many cases.
Certain bonds exist in the natural society of the family which cannot be infringed without offending moral duty. No seigniory under whatever title may jurally infringe these bonds or destroy the duties and rights arising from them, although it could suspend the exercise of the duties and rights.

173. If the society precedes the establishment of seigniory over some or all of its members, its obligatory submission to some limitation or to direct or indirect dependence depends on an examination of the origin of the seigniory.

174. If the origin is the result of the members' will, such a will injures and harms the society whenever the members' voluntary submission prevents their fulfilling the duties previously contracted with the society. In this case the society has the right of satisfaction from its member, and may defend this right even against the master. The master, once he knows that the individual subject to him cannot use his freedom without injury to previous jural obligations, must abstain from every other claim. He may however take action against the member for indemnification of the harm and suffering he has caused.

175. If the seigniory is founded on a title independent of the member's will, we see at once an apparent collision between the rights of the society and those of the master. This conflict must be settled by an equable transaction, although the variety of the circumstances can make it difficult to find the desired equity.

176. In all these cases the society has no direct obligation of dependence. At most, it has a choice between dissolution and a certain limitation of its rights. The limitation does not oblige it to any prestation of the members to the master but simply requires the society not to impede its members from giving him their due.

177. We have seen that a society can exist whose members have a relationship and bond of subjection to a master. This is true whether the subjection causes a collision or not between the rights of the society and those of the master. There would be no collision, for instance, where the subjection were limited to some particular prestation, and the society were also limited in such a way that the common thing to be contributed could exist alongside the prestation. In the case of collision, the subjection must be removed by means of an equable limitation of the rights of both parties.

178. But would a society of bond-servants still be possible in the case of maximum servitude?
According to jural reason, servitude is the obligation to perform certain personal actions for another person, called `master'. The seigniory of one human being over another (and therefore, its co-relative servitude) will be maximum when the seigniory extends to all possible personal actions that one human being can render to another.(35)

179. From this concept of maximum servitude we derive the following:
1. Prestation of real things constitutes a simple jural debt, not servitude.
2. Whatever the degree of servitude, it can never remove a person's freedom in certain actions.
3. His person and his personal feelings always retain the essential freedom and independence with which they are endowed.

180. Granted all this, we immediately see that no kind of jural servitude, even the greatest, can ever remove from a human being the right to possess.
The reason is clear: because person as the subject of the right of ownership does not cease in a bond-servant, the faculty to possess always persists. Moreover, although a person's action can be alienated (servitude consists in this alienation), that person can still possess. External actions are not required for possession; the administration of possessions can be carried out through others.

181. Again, if the reasonable and truly jural servitude we are discussing does not exclude the bond-servant's faculty to possess, possession can be extended to all those rights whose essence does not contradict the concept of servitude, which consists solely in the obligation to commit one's work.
The bond-servant can therefore possess not only real things but any other right whatsoever. He can even have seigniory over other human beings. In this case we see preserved in the bond-servant that radical equality with his master which is founded in their having the same intelligent nature.

182. Finally, the bond-servant who possesses can, in virtue of the right of jural claim (cf. 160-162), redeem himself at any time. If he possesses sufficient to give his master the equivalent value of his action, the master is obliged to this contract of exchange or sale. This is not a case of rights but of modality of rights, which must be jurally settled between the parties with the greatest utility to both, or to one of them, provided the other does not lose. Granted the third constitutive element of right,(36) a human being has a right to something only in so far as it has value. Hence, if all the real value of the thing is preserved, that is, the value it really has for himself, he must give up whatever exceeds the nature of right.

183. Granted this knowledge of the inalienable rights of bond-servants, we have the following results, whatever their servitude:

1. Bond-servants always have the right to associate in societies where they place real things or any of their rights in common, but not in societies where they place in common the action owed to a master. Within these limits the master cannot deprive them of their freedom of association.

2. Bond-servants can also belong to the moral-religious society (the Catholic Church) whose membership is necessary for the attainment of their end, after the present life. The master cannot deprive them of the freedom to belong to it, and must allow them the time necessary for satisfying all the obligations resulting from membership.

3. Furthermore, because bond-servants can always dispose of their internal feelings, they can also come together to fulfil in the best way the service owed their master. The master however remains the competent judge concerning the fullness of service they must perform for him. It is also fitting that bond-servants keep their master informed about every society they want to contract, if his rights should be involved in such a way that he would be reasonably interested in knowing.(37)

4. Finally, bond-servants can form a society by putting together what the master gives them, and the free time he allows them.

184. Bond-servants are therefore as capable of society as they are of friendship. In Christianity they belong to the supreme society whose object is absolute good; the rights of this society impose limits to any jural seigniory whatsoever.

185. Can there be a society between bond-servant and master? Yes. As we said, there is a society to which both bond-servant and master can and must belong, that is, the Church founded by Jesus Christ.

186. It is true that the concepts of master and bond-servant do not contain any social relationship. But the qualities of master and of bond-servant are only mere accidents added to human nature. Both master and bond-servant are human beings. In addition to the relationships and bonds of servitude and masterhood, both can have relationships and bonds of a totally different kind, that is, social bonds; in Christianity they must have them.

187. In addition to this essential society, there can be friendship between bond-servant and master, and societies of other kinds, without detracting in any way from servitude and its total prestation. Just as bond-servants can put their rights into communion with other persons, whether servant or free, they can do so with their masters. In these new relationships bond-servants are equal to their masters, and as free as they are. Their freedom and equality is that found among members of societies, which I have described elsewhere.(38)

188. Finally, the master himself, even if not obliged, can constitute his bond-servants into a society. He can administer it himself or put some other ruler in his place.

189. The purpose of such a society must be:

1. the greatest possible benefit of the bond-servants as the result of their association whenever they place in common both what they have received from their master, and the action itself they render to him, or
2. the greater benefit accruing to the master from this kind of association, or finally
3. the sole benefit of the master, provided the bond-servants are not harmed in their inalienable rights as a result of their association.

190. The compatibility of all these different, contrary relationships and bonds between human beings deserves the greatest consideration. One source of the innumerable injustices that have so cruelly scourged humanity and contaminated legislations is the inability of human beings to see how such servile and social relationships can exist side by side, how they must be distinguished without sacrificing one to the other, and how they must all be preserved, regulated and protected.

191. It is clear per se that no one owes service unless the title of the other's right of seigniory is certain.

192. Thus, seigniorial rights must be demonstrated, not supposed, in societies, although prescription can partly constitute the demonstration (cf. RI, 1047, 1049).

193. All societies must therefore be considered free as long as their servitude and the degree of servitude are not demonstrated.(39)

Notes

(30) Cf. RI, 1995-1999.

(31) Civil legislations have often inflicted corporal punishment on debtors unable to pay. Are such laws just? - Granted that the debtor does not pay or has become culpably incapable of paying, such laws are certainly just (provided they are also politically useful), but they are just only because the right of superiority is involved, that is, because inflicted on a culpable person, not on a debtor. If the debtor does not pay because innocently incapable, neither the creditor nor the civil government has any right to inflict punishment. Those ancient legislations that inflicted punishment indiscriminately on an insolvent debtor, considered him guilty by the fact itself of non-payment. But this must be proved: if the insolvent debtor is found innocent, the creditor can exercise only the right of jural claim and impose an equable satisfaction through certain personal tasks or work, but without punishment.

(32) Anyone whom we imagine to have sunk irremediably to the lowest level of evil could be subject to all external superiority. This is how Christian faith presents the state of the damned relative to the blessed in heaven.

(33) St. Augustine nobly distinguishes between external, material inferiority in fact, and internal, spiritual inferiority of right. He explains Christ's words to his ministers: `You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men' (Mt 5: 13), by noting that according to these words inferiority lies in the tasteless salt, that is, in immorality, not in suffering pain or outrage. He says: `It is not the person who suffers persecution that is trodden under foot by men but the one who is mocked because he fears persecution. Only an INFERIOR can be trodden under foot, but no one is INFERIOR who, although suffering greatly in his body on earth, has his heart fixed in heaven' (De serm. D. in monte, c. 6).

(34) Cf. SP, 111-131.

(35) `All possible personal actions of a human being on behalf of another' because the exercise of the greatest seigniory is jurally limited by ethical duty, which requires human beings to leave their fellows entirely free in actions necessary for their safety, morality and attainment of their destiny after this life.

(36) Cf. ER, 253-255.

(37) This last reason is acknowledged in civil codes, but is not considered of such great value that it invalidates society when those who associate fail in this duty. However, members must accept the harmful consequences which may result from the owner's right to make his own case prevail, regardless of the society about which he was not informed. One example is agistment, that is, a society in which one party agrees to share his cattle, the other to look after them. This kind of society cannot be made between one tenant and another without informing the owner, on pain not of dissolution of the society but of sequestration of the cattle in the owner's favour, if the tenant is in debt to him. The Albertine code says: `When hire by agistment is contracted between one tenant and another, it must be notified to the owner of the goods whose hire he holds. Otherwise, the owner of the goods can have the cattle sequestrated and sold in order to receive satisfaction to the amount owed by the tenant' (Art. 1837). Hence, if the tenant pays his debts, the owner has no right to harm the formed society. Here the freedom of the tenant to associate in the way indicated is acknowledged, even without the owner's knowledge.

(38) Cf. SP, 102-110.

(39) This logico-jural principle is universally admitted. Zeiller writes: `The concept of a society formed for a purpose contains no subjection at all. A being who has the use of reason is not subject from the beginning to the authority of another. Hence legal presumption always supports equality in a society until subjection is factually demonstrated' (Diritto naturale privato, §151).

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