Have You Heard? – Folha de S. Paulo, January 6, 1974
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Paradoxical as it may seem, fog is one of London’s attractions. The heavy mist that descends on the frozen city at the end of the year, for example, contrasts with the brightness of illuminated shop windows overflowing with a wide variety of goods, the warm, comfortable interiors of homes and offices glimpsed through countless lit windows, and the powerful headlights of vehicles moving continuously through the city streets. This contrast highlights the coziness of London life and gives people a pleasant sense of easy mastery over nature’s adversity.
However, at the end of 1973, the fog ‘mocked’ London. Dimly lit shop windows, insufficiently heated homes and offices, and scarce vehicles in the frightening darkness suddenly gave Londoners (and everyone around the world accustomed to seeing London’s greatness as one of the pillars of human order) a sense of the fragility of all things earthly. On this gray, melancholic New Year’s Eve, oil blackmail kept London in the dark.
Yes, oil blackmail, but also another type, the one I want to discuss.
I am referring to labor-related blackmail. To secure higher wages, coal miners took advantage of the oil crisis to refuse to work overtime. Not content with that, they now threaten to call a general strike, which would plunge England into a Dantesque fuel crisis.
The right to strike is indisputable when workers have exhausted all other means of securing a fair wage.
I do not know whether English miners’ current wages are fair or should be adjusted. What I do know is that this method of imposing a wage increase is more than a mere demand: it is an assault. It is equivalent to putting a gun to someone’s head or a knife to their throat. One does not have the right to act this way toward one’s country.
Where would civilization end up, for example, if doctors or nurses decided to systematically demand wage increases like this? What do coal miners have that entitles them to this privilege?
Work gives rise to sacred rights. This important truth has been repeated so often that it has become a cliché.
On the other hand, every right is limited by a social function. This notion has also become commonplace in property law. No leftist priest or barroom orator fails to puff out his chest and proclaim it.
But if an owner’s right is limited by its social function, why shouldn’t a worker’s right be limited as well?
This question may irritate leftist priests and barroom orators, but anger is not the answer. The question remains.
Leftist priests and barroom Demosthenes repeat at every opportunity that every right is limited by its social function. They add that property is a right and conclude, triumphantly, that this right must be limited by its social function. Put in these terms, they are right.
But then I add: every right is limited by its social function. Work gives rights. Therefore, these rights must likewise be limited by their social function.
Where am I wrong? If I am not wrong, how can one explain that those clergymen and those Demosthenes continually speak of the social duties of owners and never, or nearly so, of those of workers?
Have you ever heard them talk about this last point? What a lucky reader… It’s like winning the lottery!
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Isn’t the silence of so many responsible people about the social function of workers’ rights the main cause of what is happening in London? I raise this issue to help ensure that something similar does not happen in Brazil.
