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quote :That different political systems entail different paradigms, and that what is functional for one system is not for another. For example, at a very base level, I don’t believe in the concept of “human rights.” This doesn’t mean that I believe we can treat people however we want, or like garbage. Actually, I mean “human rights” is not enough. It’s like getting minimum wage and two fifteen minute breaks when I should be able to work my way to be a co-owner who decides to take his own breaks and shares the profits and losses. I work harder because I am invested in the business. Profile photo for Alexander Finnegan Alexander Finnegan I prune bushes with a chainsaw.Mar 19 Do we have an "absolute" right? “It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.” —Joseph Stalin “Rights” are a trap. Instead of accepting some crumbs of liberty while the bourgeoise gulp up most of the pie, we can do better. A standardized minimum is a cognitive frame. It trains us to accept less. We are human beings. We should treat each other as human beings, not commodified units of value. Prior to capitalism, there was “noblesse oblige.” There was a sense of duty. The existence of a shared commons meant there was a sense of relationality. Then these were enclosed. People were forced to become part of the industrial machine. They became cogs in a giant wheel. The modes of production influence the material consciousness of human beings. The ultimate goal of society should not be exploitation, alienation, and oppression. It should be shared mutuality. It should be to exist in dialogue. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” “Rights” have become the equivalent of being guaranteed a minimum 15 minute smoke break. But, ultimately, we don’t want more smoke breaks. We want to have workers own the shop. We want to be invested in the outcomes of our work. We will take breaks when we need them, balancing this against the work that is needed to be done. We are invested in each other as people. In the capitalist economic system: As workers, we produce most of the value. We are only given what the “market” will provide. That is theft. It is the expropriation of the unpaid value of labor created by workers. While the employer deserves to be compensated for his creation and assumption of risk, too, much of the time this is totally out of balance. It is outright unjust. We can do better. In a Marxist-Leninist state, the Communist Party represents the workers, organized by democratic centralism. The means of production are owned by the workers and the people, held in trust by the state. Surplus value that is created is reinvested in the industry, the workers, and in the society. A new metro rail that is itself a great work of art. Or the provision of guaranteed housing, free education, universal healthcare, and guaranteed employment. Instead of seeking profits and commodifying everything, we engage in a more humane relationship with our world. Not just the bottom line is the focus. We balance the interests of the people, the need for a sustainable environment, and a rational plan for the short, medium, and long term future is designed. We are more of a family instead of ticket holders at the bureau of motor vehicles, which has been privatized so you have to wait in line, forever. We live in strange, almost unbelievable, and certainly scary time. In a scene right out of the 1931 film Frankenstein, 70,000 Poles brandishing torches marched in protest of immigrants in Poland. Demonstrations like this are repeated in Germany, France, and much of Western Europe as right-wing (some say fascist) parties witness increasing support in local and even national elections. One Republican US presidential aspirant urges the use of torture and advocates the killing of families of known (and perhaps suspected) terrorists. Another claims the only way to control terror is to increase police presence and vigorously patrol Muslim communities in the US (never mind that there are no calls to do the same in right-wing Christian areas – a scan of murders will show that in the US since 9/11 more people were killed by anti-abortionists and anti-government activists than by Islamic extremists). France has considered revoking the citizenship of terrorists, broadly defined, while US politicians ponder the degree to which we might deport people and block all immigration from Muslim nations. Add to that, and much to the horror of most compassionate observers, millions of people displaced by the madness in Syria, Iraq and most of the Middle East and North Africa live in limbo as they must flee the warfare and destruction in their own lands but are shunned by countries in a position to take them in and offer safety and support. The United States, a country founded on the backs of immigrants, perhaps literally (and on the genocide of native peoples and African slaves), is increasingly sounding like a country trying to protect some sort of national identity (whatever that may be) through restrictions on immigration. Citizens of a country, where most don’t have to go back more than two or three generations in their own family histories to find immigrant tales of struggle and success, now pretend that they must protect the US from … what? In short, people in this country are defending rights and privileges they never had in the first place. The world is facing a crisis over human rights, whether it is about the treatment of minorities and women everywhere, about the plight of child laborers and the growing business of human (and mainly female) trafficking, about the access to clean and safe drinking water (see Fasenfest and Pride, 2016, for events in the US), or about problems facing people dispossessed of their homes, whether occupied by foreign forces (like Palestinians) or dealing with forces in opposition to their governments (for example, areas controlled by Boko Haram in Nigeria). Human rights include the right to work, to be free to express cultural differences, equality before the law, the right to self-determination, access to education, access to safe food and water, expectations of social security and many more rights, as outlined or implied in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet these seemingly basic standards are not being met, and so people suffer. There are no questions about the importance of human rights, and the articles in this issue of Critical Sociology and in earlier issues (see, for example, Engstrom, 2012; Martell, 2009; Critelli and Willett, 2013; Pereira, 2012; Gordon and Webber, 2014) explore this across a range of considerations: limits to and implications of the pursuit of human rights politically, economically and socially. But there is some confusion over whether Marx supported human rights in his writings, and whether Marxism fails to take on this important aspect of capitalism, especially in this neoliberal period of expansion and austerity. Three problems confound this question: a) Marx had little if anything to say about human rights, b) the concept of human rights was not a well-developed idea at the time he wrote (as a creation of the French and American revolutionary period), and c) there is little consistency in how Marxism is understood or what is written under its banner.1 The notion of human rights coincided with the emergence of capitalism as the dominant mode of production that propelled both human rights discourse and Marxism itself. The claim that Marx did not advocate human rights is situated in his response to Bruno Bauer’s assertion about Jews in Germany. Marx (1843a) rejects the notion of individual human rights and Bauer’s call for political emancipation of the religious person. Marx points out that political freedom does not ensure individual freedom (Engle, 2008). Guarantees to religious freedom are implicit in rights more generally: that is, a person has the right of equality, liberty, security and property. For Marx, the right to liberty is an expression of human separation rather than association; the right to equality is little more than a right to equal liberty; the right to property is the expression of self-interest; and the right to security is simply the egoistic assurance that as individuals we can count on all the other rights being inviolate. Human emancipation is not secured by the freedom and right to engage in business, but as a result of freedom from business. For Marx (1843b), political emancipation may have value as the first big step forward towards, but not a guarantee for, human emancipation (Swanson and Buttigieg, 2004; Gordon et al., 2014). The failed revolutions of 1848, and the killing of thousands and deportation of many more thousands in Paris, led Marx (1871) and Engels to point out contradictions between the rhetoric of political freedom on one hand and state actions in the face of popular discontent on the other. In his later writing, Marx implies a social theory of rights, though not central to his overall critique of capitalism. Social relations of production generating the value form of human labor give rise to modern notions of rights. The right of ‘private’ property emerges with the capitalist mode of production. The loss of control over one’s own labor, its commodification, brings forth the immiseration and loss of rights of the working class. All that remains are the rights of property over the rights of the individual. As he and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, law (as historical accidents) and morality protect bourgeois interests. Brad Roth (2004) points out that Marxism offers a normative project which illuminates and unpacks the divergent views of freedom within the rights discourse. Without insuring the ability to procure food and shelter, a legalistic rights narrative is a sham. What Marx contributes, Roth argues, is that neutral and harmonious political efforts at human rights ‘cannot be realized so long as a society’s class antagonisms have not been transcended’ (2004: 53). He goes on to state that in any class-based society, ‘the promise of legal protections from arbitrary imposition and of legal implementation of collective empowerment go largely unrealized’ (2004: 54). Unequal power relationships are the hallmark of any class-based society, relationships that limit the kinds of issues that could be raised in the political arena and privilege outcomes of political engagement to those benefiting from those relationships. Marx’s fundamental critique of human rights under capitalism implicitly is that there can be no human emancipation under a system that inherently privileges one part of society (property holders) over another (those without the means of production). Through a critique of capitalism, Marxism offers a vision of human emancipation post a class-based society; laws passed by class-based societies will not ensure human rights. Globalization creates new challenges and offers new opportunities for advancing a human rights agenda. Marxism provides the language of and mechanisms for resistance to neoliberal agendas that strip human rights, and promotes common cause with all who struggle for human rights.[1] Notes 1.What follows is based, in large part, on my earlier essay (Fasenfest, 2013) References Critelli, FM, Willett, J (2013) Struggle and hope: Challenging gender violence in Pakistan. Critical Sociology 39(2): 201–221. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Engels, F (1847) The principles of communism. Available (consulted 15 March 2016) at: The Principles of Communism Google Scholar Engle, E (2008) Human rights according to Marxism. Guild Practitioner 65: 249. Available (consulted 12 February 2011) at: Human Rights According to Marxism Google Scholar Engstrom, P (2012) Brazilian foreign policy and human rights: Change and continuity under Dilma. Critical Sociology 38(6): 835–849. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Fasenfest, D (2011) Engaging Social Justice: Critical Studies of 21st Century Social Transformation New York, NY: Haymarket Books. Google Scholar Fasenfest, D (2013) Marxist sociology and human rights. In: Brusma, DL. (eds) Handbook of Sociology and Human Rights. Herndon, VA: Paradigm Publishers, 440–448. Google Scholar Fasenfest, D, Pride, T (2016) Emergency management in Michigan: Race, class and the limits of liberal democracy. Critical Sociology 42(3): 331–334. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Gordon, T, Webber, JR (2014) Canadian geopolitics in post-coup Honduras. Critical Sociology 40(4): 601–620. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Martell, L (2009) Global inequality, human rights and power: A critique of Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitanism. Critical Sociology 35(2): 253–272. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals Marx, K (1843a) On the Jewish question. Available (consulted 15 March 2016) at: On The Jewish Question Google Scholar Marx, K (1843b) Introduction to ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’. Available (consulted 15 March 2016) at: Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right 1844 Google Scholar Marx, K (1871) The Civil War in France and Other Writings on the Paris Commune. Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Google Scholar Pereira, AW (2012) Continuity is not lack of change. Critical Sociology 38(6): 777–787. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI Roth, B (2004) Retrieving Marx for the Human Rights Project. Leiden Journal of International Law 17: 31–66. Google Scholar | Crossref Swanson, GN, Buttigieg, J (2000) Is the struggle for human rights a struggle for emancipation? Rethinking Marxism 12(3): 1–22. Google Scholar | Crossref Footnotes [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0896920516645720#:~:text=For%20Marx%2C%20the%20right%20to,we%20can%20count%20on%20all 1.2K views7 upvotes6 shares4 comments Profile photo for Alexander Finnegan Alexander Finnegan · Mar 18 Was Marx right when he said “need creates rights”? Marx believed that the concept of “human rights” was actually deceitful. “It reduces to “the rights of egoistic man, of man as a member of bourgeois society, that is to say an individual separated from his community and solely concerned with his self-interest”. [3] Karl Marx, La question juive [1843]… Read More The concept of “human rights” is really just a cookie, when the owners of property own the main course. What really matters in a capitalist society is who owns capital, the means of production. This enables you to earn money while you are asleep. It scales. Your children earn from your ownership rights. If you merely rent your labor to someone, you are only able to make money as you labor. If you try to save your money after working, inflation consumes most of it. So you are fighting a losing battle. Most people barely have enough to survive, let alone, invest. We should treat people as things in and of themselves, not commodities. The problem with capitalism is that it commodifies everything—people, the planet, etc. Human life is ascribed a “value,” based on whether it is a good “return on investment.” That is why older people in our society, and the disabled, are often disregarded and marginalized. A culture of youth is celebrated. The capitalist worldview is that we are rational, self-maximizing, market actors. When we act in the aggregate by trading, an “invisible hand” of the market guides the economy in the direction of the efficient allocation of goods and services. Competition is said to drive down prices and bring about efficiency. For some goods, like TV’s, this is true. But for many other items, this is not true. Part of the reason is because it would be inhumane to have a medical system solely based on free market principles. Some people would die because they would be too poor to receive care. And the standardization and credentialization of medical professions helps protect the public from charlatans. In functional nations, they have a universal, single-payer healthcare system. It works. In the U.S., however, our medical system is a highly regulated business that happens to offer medical care as a service. Insurance companies are used to buffer between the doctor and the patient, because it is supposed to charge premiums. It is highly inefficient and adds 33% to the overall cost of care. To survive capitalism, we must be thrown a bone. We have to endure the nightmare of a barely functioning social safety net in the U.S. So we are permitted to have a lot of guns and more freedom of speech than most countries. These are great, but a gun doesn’t provide housing if you are homeless. It is no guarantee against unemployment, lack of healthcare when you most need it, or affordable education. We have none of these protections. Contrast the capitalist system with a socialist system. A socialist state is one in which the workers own the means of production and manage themselves. A communist society is one which is moneyless, stateless, and classless. Workers own the means of production and manage themselves. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” There has yet to be a communist society. A Marxist-Leninist socialist society is one based on democratic centralism. It is a one-party state. The means of production are publicly owned, and held by the state for the benefit of the people. A revolutionary vanguard helps lead the people to overturn capitalism and implement socialism. There is a planned economy that uses modern technological methods of logistics and feedback systems. Wal-Mart and Amazon are modern day, privately owned, planned economies. The technology to operate these could have only been dreamt of in 1991. Profile photo for Jim Farmelant Jim Farmelant · 1y Can central planning work? Several other Quorans have made some interesting points. Both Kenneth Mark Hopkins and James Harbaugh express skepticism concerning the viability of a centrally planned economy. Their answers echo the arguments that Austrian School economists, Ludwig von Mises (“Economic calculation in the socialist… Read More The Soviet Union collapsed not due to socialism, but the move away from socialism after 1953. It would have survived but for Gorbachev taking power. His “reforms” were too fast, and caused a cataclysmic collapse of the entire system. Does Alexander Finnegan think the USSR had no problems or that the standard of living was superior to American living standards? https://www.quora.com/Does-Alexander-Finnegan-think-the-USSR-had-no-problems-or-that-the-standard-of-living-was-superior-to-American-living-standards Of course, the Soviet Union had problems. But it is unrealistic to have expected it to catch up to the U.S. within a few decades after WWII. However, within 40 years, it went from wooden plows to space satellites. It electrified, industrialized, defeated Hitler, overcame illiteracy, became the world’s second largest industrial Superpower, provided free housing, universal healthcare, education, guaranteed employment, and other benefits. In a Marxist-Leninist system, you give lesser freedoms to gain higher ones. You lose the right to free speech but you get the right to guaranteed employment, universal healthcare, free education, free housing, and living in a society which is directed toward people, not toward competition with others to own more shit you don’t need. Competition still exists in sports, games, in seeking mates, etc. Incentives and bonuses for innovation were used during Stalin’s period, but these were eliminated by Khrushchev. Profile photo for Alexander Finnegan Alexander Finnegan · 1y What does Alexander Finnegan think of freedom of speech in Marxist-Leninist countries? To properly understand the nature of this question, first we must examine the implications of Glasnost for the Communist Party and the fall of the Soviet Union: Glasnost proved to be an equal disaster. “What happened in our country is primarily the result of the debilitation and eventual elimination o… Read More Icon for Marxism-Leninism- Marxism-Leninism- Why the Soviet Union collapsed, or “Socialism never works?” The Soviet Union didn’t need to borrow the funds which would later bankrupt it. Gorbachev was either a fool or intentionally destroying the Soviet Union, because the Soviet Union didn’t need to move away from socialism, which caused the shortfalls which required taking on new loans in the first pla… Read More