Was Karl Marx truly against human rights?

Lacroix, Justine; Pranchère, Jean-Yves; Raillard, Sarah-Louise

doi:10.3917/rfspe.623.0047

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Until 1945, there was little in the socialist canon on how to engage with human rights aside from dismissing it as a defense of bourgeois class interests, disguised as a form of universal morality, as first argued by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Brenkert 2008;Lacroix, Pranchère, and Raillard 2012). The Soviet Revolution produced no programmatic list of rights and not once in the works of Lenin did he mention the concept of human rights or the rights of man (Kuczynski 1978: 20).…”

Section: State Socialism and The Rise Of Global Human Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As criticisms of the dominant individualistic rights paradigm increase in the present, we might expect growing interest in these themes. A renewed enthusiasm for social and economic rights has become apparent among leading human rights theorists (Sen 2011: 379-387) and even Marxist thought is also once again being used to rethink the meaning of rights in order to move beyond the limits of legalistic liberalism (Lacroix, Pranchère, and Raillard 2012;Fasenfest 2016;O'Connell 2018). Indeed, the United Nations showed a renewed interest in exploring revitalized social and economic rights in the context of global inequality with the appointment of Philip Alston as "Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights."…”

Section: And the Collapse Of Alternativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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New Perspectives on Socialism and Human Rights in East Central Europe since 1945

2019

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In recent years, the study of human rights history has expanded beyond Western-centered narratives, though the role of Eastern European state socialism and socialists in the evolution of human rights concepts and politics has not received sufficient attention. This introductory essay synthesizes recent research of the role of Eastern Bloc socialist states in shaping the emergence of the post-war human rights system and the implications of this new research for the history of the Cold War, dissent as well as the collapse of state socialism in 1989/91. Ultimately, state socialist actors were not merely human rights antagonists, but contributed to shaping the international arena and human rights politics, motivated both strategically as well as ideologically. And the Eastern Bloc was not merely a region that passively absorbed the idea of human rights from the West, but a site where human rights ideas where articulated, internationalized and also contested.

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Section: State Socialism and The Rise Of Global Human Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: And the Collapse Of Alternativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Perspectives on Socialism and Human Rights in East Central Europe since 1945

2019

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“…Therefore, I will not engage with David Leopold's argument that the young Marx, to the extent that he formulated a theory of human flourishing, held onto a concept of human rights(Leopold 2007; also seeLacroix and Pranchère 2012). Even if this argument is convincing, I believe it does not tell us enough about the role rights might play in the transition towards this more ideal society.…”

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confidence: 96%

Limits to the Politics of Subjective Rights: Reading Marx After Lefort

Boonen

2019

Law Critique

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In response to critiques of rights as moralistic and depoliticising, a literature on the political nature and contestability of rights has emerged. In this view, rights are not merely formal, liberal and moralistic imperatives, but can also be invoked by the excluded in a struggle against domination. This article examines the limits to this practice of rights-claiming and its implication in forms of domination. It does this by returning to Marx's blueprint for the critique of subjective rights. This engagement with Marx will, however, take a particular form. I will read Marx first through the eyes of Claude Lefort and thereafter against Lefort. The latter's critique of Marx still constitutes the strongest case against the dismissal of subjective rights. Introducing a reading of Lefort into the argument allows us to discover what is dead and what is well alive in the Marxist theory of rights. What is dead, I will argue, is Marx's early conception of subjective rights as ideology and illusion. However, the more mature Marx developed a theory and critique of the legal form that is able to explain why the politics of rights-despite its undeniable advances-has not been able to overcome certain forms of domination.

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Beyond and Against the State: Anarchist Contributions to Human Rights History and Theory

Bray¹

2019

Humanity

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Was Karl Marx truly against human rights?

Cited by 4 publications

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New Perspectives on Socialism and Human Rights in East Central Europe since 1945

New Perspectives on Socialism and Human Rights in East Central Europe since 1945

Limits to the Politics of Subjective Rights: Reading Marx After Lefort

Beyond and Against the State: Anarchist Contributions to Human Rights History and Theory

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