Social Welfare Theory Of Rights

Its advocates hold that rights are essential for social welfare. Man must possess rights to be of service to society. They are socially useful or socially desirable, because they promote the greatest good of the greatest number. It was on the basis of social welfare of the greatest number that Bentham and Mill justified rights of the individual. Laski also holds a similar opinion. He says that rights are related to the functions one performs for the society. My rights, he says, “are built always upon the relation of my functions has to the well-being of society, and the claims I make must be clearly enough claims that are necessary to the proper performance of my functions. In brief, only those rights are recognised by the society which contribute to public good.

Yet they are related to individual happiness and personality, because the welfare of the community is built upon the happiness of the individuals. On the other hand, one cannot have rights against public welfare because it is to give him rights against welfare which is really and ultimately his welfare also. Hence, rights are not independent of society but inherent in it. They are correlative to such functions as contribute to the well-being of the society.

There is much to command in the Social Welfare Theory of rights. By relating rights to social function and social welfare, it gives us a better criterion of personality than the Idealist theory. Personality is not to be understood in the sense of an allotted or fixed station in life, as the Idealists believe, but as the function which an individual performs in life. Any theory of personality which starts with the notion of an allotted station in life is unprogressive and unacceptable: it turns society into a caste society. The Social Welfare Theory avoids this pitfall. It takes a dynamic and progressive view of society by relating rights to functions. It has, however, one shortcoming. It does not provide us with the criterion of defining social welfare. As society is divided into classes it identifies social welfare with the welfare of the dominant classes. Moreover, sometimes under the pretext of social welfare the rights of the individual are taken away and his individuality suppressed. The result is the revolt of those persons and classes whose rights are thus denied or suppressed.

Conclusion

We have considered several theories of the nature of rights. None of them explains rights adequately, but each of them has an element of truth. The theory of natural rights and the idealist theory provide us with the necessary basis of personality and the worth of the individual on which rights must be founded. But the rights must be related to social welfare, if personality is to develop properly. Rights exist in society and for its common good.

This aspect of rights is emphasised by the social welfare theory. This theory shows us that rights must be historical, that is, they must be found necessary in the given conditions of time and place as shown by the history of the people in question. Lastly, the legal theory emphasises that moral, historical or functional aspects alone will not turn a claim into a right until and unless it is not recognised by the State and embodied in and enforced by law. If not, they are only moral rights, but not legal.

    1. Ahmed Badshah

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