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
4 - Who Pays?
Social Rights and the French Revolution
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
This chapter traces the rise and fall of social rights in the French Revolution. In 1789, economic liberals proposed them, but failed to persuade the National Assembly to include them in its Declaration of Rights. Nevertheless, invocations of them persisted. Their advocates, however, imagined achieving them through the voluntary means of free markets and charity; the state might manage charitable endowments, but it was not to finance them with taxes. The latter prospect eventually gained ground by 1793. Still, the National Convention declared ‘society’ to be the duty-bearer of social rights in its new rights declaration, not the state. During the Terror (1793–4), officials frequently conflated charity and taxes in their efforts to finance social assistance, creating a sense of arbitrariness. Social rights, now associated with the Terror, were suppressed in the rights declaration of 1795. Henceforth, the Revolution’s fundamental problem of obligation was often recast as the problem of social rights.
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- Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History , pp. 63 - 81Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022