ABOUT LASKI

Harold Laski (1893-1950), a theoretician of the English Labour

Party, an influential figure and creative writer of political
science, who authored about 20 books, has expounded the
theory of rights and it is in many respects a classic
representation.
He describes rights as “those conditions of social life without
which no man can seek, in general, to be himself at his best”.

NATURE OF RIGHTS
Laski’s views on the nature of rights run as follows:
* they are social conditions, given to the individual as a
member of the society
* they help promote individual personality, his best-self:
‘those social conditions without which no man can seek to be
his best self’
* they are social because they are never against social
welfare;
they were not there before the emergence of society
* the state only recognises and protects rights by maintaining
them;
* rights are never absolute: absolute rights are a
contradiction in terms
* they are dynamic in nature in so far as their contents
change according to place, time and conditions
* they go along with duties; in fact, duties are prior to rights;
the exercise of rights implies the exercise of duties

Laski calls rights as conditions of social life. Rights are a social

concept and are deeply linked with social life. He places
rights, individuals and states on the same board in the sense
that they cannot be separated from each other and there is
no antagonism between them.

If Laski were to give rights to the individual, he would give

them in this order: the right to work, right to be paid
adequate wages, right to reasonable hours of labour, right to
education, right to choose one’s governors, followed by other
rights.
Laski’s argument is that without granting economic rights
first, an individual cannot enjoy his political rights: political
liberty is meaningless without economic equality: ‘where
there are great inequalities, the relationship between men is
that of the master and the slave’. Equally important, but
lower in order is the right to education: education alone helps
an individual exercise these other rights properly. With the
economic and social (education rights) at one’s disposal,
there is a greater likelihood of the individual exercising his
political rights in the right earnestness.

On legal theories of rights, Laski examines the legal theory of

the state. The central principle of the legal theory of rights is
that they completely depend upon the institutions and
recognition of the state. An individual cannot claim rights if
those are not recognised by the state. Mere recognition,
moreover, is not sufficient for the exercise of rights. The state
must, through law and institutions, implement the rights.
The theory emphasizes the relation between right and duty.
He stated that Rights are correlative to functions. The
functional theory emphasizes that an individual is entitled to
claim rights only when he performs duty otherwise the claim
or demand for right cannot be entertained. This definitely
opposes the widely known theory of legal theory of rights.
But today, rights are recognised and protected mainly on
political considerations.