The Conflict in Rights - Essay Example

The conflict in rights is actually the result when individuals or sectors in a democratic society begin to assert their respective rights that would result in the reduction or the violation of those of others. It must be pointed out that before rights could be identified and recognized there were the material bases for these, which were the diverse interests of different sectors in society. Aside from the diversity, there is also the reality of contradicting interests, such as that of the workers and the employers.

The labor sector’s interest is to achieve to get their fair share of the income resulting from their work in production. On the other hand, the business sector’s interest is to continuously increase their profits. These interests are obviously contradictory for when the workers insist on higher wages, the business sectors profits are reduced. If the business owners wish to increase their profits, the wage values also fall. This basic conflict of interest should well be considered as the very core of the conflict in rights.

The labor sector would insist that it is their right to push for higher wages since they are the ones who created new value. The capitalists, on their part, would insist that it is their right to peg wages at a certain level which they think does not badly affect their profit targets. They would insist that they, after all, are the owners of the machines that the workers use. The conflict in rights between the workers and the capitalist is not only evident in the economic sense. This contradiction between the two parties could also be seen in the political and cultural senses.

In politics, the workers establish their own political organization and parties for the purpose of having their own center of gravity. The capitalists, on the other hand, also establish their own parties or spread their influence on those that are already in existence. The result of these actions is that the respective sectors in society now have the means for asserting their respective rights not only as dictated by law but also as mandated by the fact that they are bigger in numbers. Since the capitalists, although fewer have been able to establish a foothold on government, they would naturally anchor their concepts of rights on what is provided by the laws which they themselves made.

They would then insist that since there is already a law on wages and on how these should be increased, the workers are morally bound to oblige to such laws. Kant articulates that “nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will” (55). However, Kant’s standard of good will is the law to which people, including workers, should obey. This Kantian perspective on the workers’ movement for the promotion of their rights could then be viewed as immoral and utterly wrong.

The workers, on the other hand, would naturally embrace a utilitarian viewpoint. It is act-utilitarianism that they would tend to grasp, which is “the view that the rightness or wrongness of an action is to be judged by the consequences, good or bad, of the action itself” (Smart 9). Such mindset when first asserted at time when capitalists are considered as sent by the heavens in order to provide opportunities of livelihood to those who do not possess the means of production would indeed seem a case in ingratitude.

The Kantians