The equation of citizenship with the exchange of rights and duties received its classic statement in the much-repeated formula of the First International: 'No rights without duties, no duties without rights.' The implications of this were spelled out in the Soviet constitution of 1918. Work was the duty of all citizens: 'He who does not work shall not eat.' The conjunction was echoed in the Nazi programme of 1920. The ninth point was that 'All citizens must possess equal rights and duties'; the tenth: 'The first duty of every citizen must be to work.' Arbeit macht frei.
Where there are no rights without duties, and no duties without rights, it is axiomatic that those who do not perform duties relinquish their rights. Jews, the handicapped, and others who supposedly did no productive work, were the victims of this particular equation in Nazi Germany. But they were only the last in a series of victims of the attempt to co-ordinate rights and duties. From 1918 to 1936, the Soviet constitution disenfranchised employers, speculators, clergy and others not engaged in 'productive and socially useful labour'. Even colonial genocides were justified by the supposed failure of native peoples to exercise the duties incumbent on the holders of property rights. The underlying fear was always the one Rousseau first articulated: that someone 'might seek to enjoy the rights of a citizen without doing the duties of a subject'.
---SPSmith
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