Marx and Human Rights

Anteneh Geremew

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Contents
1. Introduction to Marxism...................................................................... 1
2. “On the Jewish Question” and Human Rights .................................... 4
2.1 Class of Rights................................................................................ 5
2.2 Philosophical foundations of Rights .............................................. 5
A. Civil Society and The Political emancipation ............................. 6
B. Species being and The Human emancipation.............................. 7
2.3 Specific Rights of Man ................................................................... 9
2.4 Conclusion .................................................................................... 10
3. Criticism on rights of man in Capitalism .......................................... 12
4. The Marxist concept of human rights ............................................... 13
5. Conclusion ......................................................................................... 16
6. Bibliography ...................................................................................... 17

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 1. Introduction to Marxism
“From each according to her ability, to each according to her needs!”

Karl Marx

We do not study Karl Marx for his biography, but rather for his ideas. However, in order to have
thorough understanding of the Marx conception of Human rights, it is necessary to get basic
knowledge of Marxism. So, let‟s begin with the basics. What is Marxism? Marxism is a
philosophy of history. It is also an economic doctrine. Marxism is also a theory of revolution and
the basic explanation for how societies go through the process of change. Marxists believe that
they and they alone have the analytical tools to understand the process of historical change, as
well the key to predicting the future. As Marx put it, “Communism is the riddle of history
solved.”1 Marxists also believe that they and they alone have an empirical, scientific approach to
human history and society: “Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic
nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history.”2

There are two basic ideas in Marxism:

A. Materialism
B. Class Struggle
By materialism, Marx meant that the engine that drives society is the economy. In addition,
Marxism is historical materialism.3 It believes that man and society are at every moment, a
reflection and product of history and of the dialectical movement behind it. Historical
materialism argues that history can only be understood in terms of material facts and not by
abstractions from facts.4

The second basic rule of Marxist analysis takes historical materialism a step further to dialectical
materialism. Dialectics is the idea that truth is obtained through the comparison of different
viewpoints, via dialogue. Dialectical materialism argues that the dialectic is between material

1
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, February 1848, translated: Samuel Moore and
Frederick Engels, 1888, p.21
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism accessed on Apr.30/2014
3
Ibid
4
Ibid
1

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forces.5 All of human history can be explained and predicted by the competition between
antagonistic economic classes; or as Marx put it, “The history of all hitherto existing society is
the history of class struggles.”6 In political terms, this means that the social classes are
competing in essence for control of the state or, as Marxists would put it: the class that controls
the Mode of Production al so controls the State.7

Political life is only veil for the real struggle: Capital versus Labor. Democracy is a sham;
workers can expect no significant help from the state. Marxism is then a combination of these
two basic ideas: everything is a product of the Mode of Production and the whole process of
history is characterized by endless competition between antagonistic economic classes.

To Marx, the fundamental division in every society is that between the exploiters and the
exploited, between the owners of the means of production and those who have to sell their labor
to the owners to earn a living. Society is more and more splitting up into two hostile camps,
directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and Proletariat.8

Let's define these terms here briefly:

Bourgeoisie: - This term in the Marxist vocabulary, simply means capitalist, or management.
Bourgeoisie are those who control the means of production.9

Proletariat: - The industrial working class- wage labor. But Marxists look very carefully at who
belongs here - no artisans, no peasants, and no farm laborers. The Proletariat is the factory
workers, "Those who have nothing but their hands."10

The basic of Marxism is to seize control of the productive process and to make it work in favor
of the exploited masses instead of enriching a tiny minority of capitalists. The good news was
that Marx analyzed the social situation and convinced himself that a fundamental social
revolution was not only desirable but also inevitable. Major social changes from feudalism to
capitalism then to communism are not possible without revolution.

5
Ibid
6
The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Supra note 1
7
Wikipedia, Supra note 2
8
The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Supra note 1
9
Ibid
10
Ibid
2

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After the first revolution, Capitalism appears triumphant, but appearances are deceiving. The
rapid expansion of the economy and of the factory system is the most important thing that has
ever happened in human history and its consequences cannot be avoided.11 The more that
production is concentrated into factories, the more the revolutionary working class is
strengthened - the more acute becomes the competition and antagonism between bourgeoisie and
Proletariat, capital and labor. There is no escape from this inevitable social struggle. “What the
bourgeoisie produces above all, is its own gravedigger.”12

Immediately after the revolution, when the proletariat gained control there would have to be a
period of "dictatorship of the proletariat" which would be necessary to remove all elements of
capitalism, especially the ideas and values making up bourgeois ideology. In this period of state
socialism people would still be motivated to work by differential wages and there would have to
be a strong state, in the hands of the worker's party, which ran a planned economy.

However, Marx thought that in time a collectivist society (communism) would emerge in which
control and decision making would be in the hands of the people as a whole. The coercive state
would wither away, intense division of labor and specialization would cease, the outlook and
motivation of individuals would be collective and cooperative, and people would have much
greater opportunity to develop and fulfill their potential than they had under capitalism. Perhaps
the best clue to the nature of communist society is given by the statement "From each according
to his ability, to each according to his needs".13 This means that all would contribute as best they
could, with those more able doing more, but all would be rewarded not according to their output,
skill or status but in proportion to their needs.

In his entire intellectual life, Marx provides no 'theory' of rights; indeed, he undertakes few
sustained considerations of them. His on and off contacts with the concept of Human rights were
guided by his anthropological, economic, historical, economic and social theories. Some of the
works in which Marx has made at least implied reflection include “On the Jewish Question”,
“Critique on the Gotha Program” and “the Communist Manifesto.” A holistic reading of Marx‟s
position on Right is warranted because he wrote in different periods as a philosopher, a
journalist, a critic of political economy, as well as a revolutionary involved in the International

11
Wikipedia, Supra note 2
12
Manifesto of the Communist Party, Supra note 1
13
Ibid
3

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Workingmen‟s Association. In Marx works, we can identify three main categories of rights with
different purposes, features and philosophical justifications. These were Rights of man, Rights of
Citizen and Social rights.

Most literatures written on the Marx conception of Human rights are tending to frame their
content in a way to label Marx as blind critic of Human rights. However Marx has never been
hostile to human rights doctrines per se. In this paper, I have shown that Marx is not totally rights
skeptic.

2. “On the Jewish Question” and Human Rights

The manuscript in which Marx has been most explicitly involved with the theme of human
rights is “On the Jewish Question” which appeared in 1844 in the “Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher”.14 In this article Marx turns polemically against the ideas of his old friend and
master Bruno Bauer, who had shortly before, in two articles turned against the struggle of
the German Jews to gain full rights such as has been the case in France since Napoleon. Bauer
reasoned out his stand from the perspective that his restricted nature which makes a man a Jew is
bound to triumph over the human nature which should link him as a man with other men, and
will separate him from non-Jews. For Jews to gain those rights, it is a prerequisite to be
emancipated from the religion which is the hindrance to social relations thereby claiming the
rights of man.

The question was whether the Jew as such, that was, the Jew who himself admits that he was
compelled by his true nature to live permanently in separation from other men, was capable of
receiving the universal rights of man and of conceding them to others.

Marx‟s analysis began from theoretical foundation of rights. For him, “For the Christian world,
the idea of the rights of man was only discovered in the last century. It is not innate in men; on
the contrary, it is gained only in a struggle against the historical traditions in which hitherto man
was brought up. Thus the rights of man are not a gift of nature, not a legacy from past history,
but the reward of the struggle against the accident of birth and against the privileges which up to

14
Karl Marx 1844, On The Jewish Question, Written: Autumn 1843; First Published: February, 1844 in Deutsch-
Französische Jahrbücher; Proofed and Corrected: by Andy Blunden, Matthew Grant and Matthew Carmody, 2008/9:
online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/ as accessed on Apr. 25/2014
4

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now have been handed down by history from generation to generation. These rights are the result
of culture, and only one who has earned and deserved them can possess them.” 15 This thesis was
intended in refuting the foundational view of rights of man. Rights of man are neither the product
of being born human as the naturalistic philosophy nor inheritance from past as to the historical
perception. Rather, rights are the outcome of struggle for the privileges denied for long.

2.1 Class of Rights

Marx began his response to Bauer by explaining the so-called rights. Rights are, in part, political
rights, rights which can only be exercised in community with others. Their content is
participation in the community, and specifically in the political community, in the life of the
state. These rights come within the category of political freedom and may be designated as rights
of citizen, droits d’citoyen.16 Marx assesses civil rights completely positively, but as being
ultimately insufficient in effect. Political rights enable the participation of the citizen in general
decision making processes and Marx imagines these as ideally being structurally identical to his
anthropological ideal of human emancipation. Political rights might well be rights which can be
exerted in society with others.

Saying this, Marx introduced us with another category of rights, rights of man, droits d’homme,
which included among them the right to liberty, property, equality, security and freedom of
conscience, the right to practice any religion one chooses.17 “None of the so-called rights of man
go beyond egoistic man, beyond man as a member of civil society – that is, an individual
withdrawn into himself, into the confines of his private interests and private caprice, and
separated from the community.”18 However, these rights are ultimate expression of political
emancipation and are necessary steps towards human emancipation.

2.2 Philosophical foundations of Rights

In this section we will go through some basic questions including “Who is man as distinct from
citizen?” “What is civil society?” “What are the rights in civil society?” How is this fact to be
explained? I am confident that these questions direct us to the way Marx anthropology is

15
Marcel H. Van Herpen, Marx and Human Rights Analysis of an Ambivalent Relationship, Cicero Foundation
Great Debate Paper No. 12/07, September 2012, P.3
16
On the Jewish Question, Supra note 14
17
Ibid
18
Ibid
5

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intersected with the social and political stances to give us the clear image of Marx justification of
rights.

A. Civil Society and The Political emancipation

The division of rights in to rights of citizen and rights of man is the result of the division of the
society in to the state and the civil society, which are respectively the sphere of the general
interest and the sphere of private interests. Due to this, citizens lead a split life in two completely
opposed worlds.19 On the one hand they are citizens in the state, and as such directed towards the
general interest. On the other hand, they are bourgeois, inhabitants of the civil society in
which everyone is selfishly, hunting for his exclusive self-interest: “Where the political state
has attained its true development, man – not only in thought, in consciousness, but in
reality, in life leads a twofold life, a heavenly and an earthly life: life in the political
community, in which he considers himself a communal being, and life in civil society, in
which he acts as a private individual, regards other men as a means, degrades himself into a
means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers.”20

In the civil society of his time Marx sees the modern variant of the Hobbesian state of nature.
Civil society is a situation in which man is bent on maintaining himself at the cost of
others and is not afraid of degrading his fellow man – but also himself – to a means for the
satisfaction of his own needs.21

In spite of the nasty state of nature, for Marx, recognition given to rights of man as it was in
The French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen were a „great step forward‟. For
instance, the private right to be religious (or not) in any way one wishes is the necessary
first step toward freedom from religion as such. Freedom from religion presupposes
freedom of religion. By emancipating the state from religion, it represented the first step
in „turning the affairs of the state into the affairs of the people‟, this is the so called
political emancipation.

19
Annual Reviews Inc, Marx and Anthropology, William Roseberry, Annu. Rev. Anthropol, 1997, p.11
20
Eric Engle, Human Rights According to Marxism, Guild Practitioner, 2008; Online at
http://web2.westlaw.com/result/documenttext.aspx?vr=2.0&sv as accessed on Apr.27/2014
21
Marx and Anthropology, Supra note 19
6

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 B. Species being and The Human emancipation
Marx had proven that political emancipation is a great step forward but only progress within the
exploitative society. It is only through human emancipation that the human can realize its
"species-being".

The concept of human emancipation can only be understood when one is familiar with his
anthropological presuppositions. Marx considers man as a natural social being. The concept of
“social” really means more than just merely the fact that man is naturally keen to engage
in social relationships and therefore has social ties. According to Marx, man is naturally a
Gattungswesen – a „species being’ that not only from a biological need, but also morally
and fundamentally, is focused on his fellow man, due to an inborn altruism.22

To unmistakably comprehend Marx‟s species being, let‟s have more general anthropological
dealings. For Marx, the essence of humanity is that each individual human being is the unity of
the particular and the general.23

A person‟s particularity is obvious. As a natural creature, each individual has an absolutely

unique identity.24

A person‟s generality or “species-being” is somewhat more difficult to grasp. There appear to be

two separate senses in which Marx speaks of the universality or generality of human beings. The
first sense in which a person is a species-being is based upon the nature of human perceptual and
conceptual faculties and human life activity.25 A human being is able to mentally appropriate
(consciously understand) the essential features of all forms of material existence (living and non-
living) and to act upon them, to influence; mold, or condition them in accordance with these
principles of understanding. In this way one is able to make features of all existence a part of
oneself subjectively and to objectify oneself in all existence. In his earlier writings, the Economic
and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: Man is a species-being...because in practice and in
theory he adopts the species (his own as well as those of other things) as his object... Just as
plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc. The second sense in which a person is the general or the
universal is based upon the social nature of human life activity. Our sociality is inherent in our

22
On the Jewish Question, Supra note 14
23
Marx and Anthropology, Supra note 19
24
Ibid
25
Ibid
7

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individuality.26 Each person is, in her or his subjective essence, the family, the tribe, the clan, the
State, the society and ultimately the whole human race. Therefore, for Marx, man in his
individual existence is at the same time a social being.

In Marx‟s words from the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx considered "species-being", i.e. human
nature, in terms of labor: "Animals also produce. They build nests and dwelling, like the bee, the
beaver, the ant, etc. But they produce only their own immediate needs or those of their young;
they produce only when immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces
even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need;
they produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of nature; their products belong
immediately to their physical bodies, while man freely confronts his own product."27

Marx understood that capitalism, by imposing "estranged labor," had alienated us from our own
nature: Estranged labour, therefore, turns man‟s species-being - both nature and his intellectual
species-power - into a being alien to him and a means of his individual existence.28 It estranges
man from his own body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence, his
human existence.

It is only through human emancipation that the human can realize its "species-being". According
to Marx, human emancipation is first complete when the human is completely itself in all
respects, when its individual nature has become simultaneously social. Marx sees the solution in
a complete integration of „state life‟ in civil society. 29 Only then would the citizens take note of
the general interest in their tangible daily lives too, or – as Marx in his famous expression says:
“Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen (self in the state),
and as an individual human being has become a species being in his everyday life, in his
particular work, and in his particular situation...only then will human emancipation have been
accomplished.”30

The tension between the individual and the community is resolved, according to him, in
communism, in which the general interest and the individual interest would coincide. This

26
Ibid
27
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm as accessed on Apr 27/2014
28
Ibid
29
Ibid
30
On the Jewish Question, Supra note 14
8

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monism left no place for a divergence between the individual interests and the general
interests. In communist society there would no longer exist an opposition between the
individual interests and the general interest.

2.3 Specific Rights of Man

Above all, we note the fact that the so-called rights of man are nothing but the rights of a
member of civil society – i.e., the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and
from the community.

According to Article 2 of Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1793, the rights
of man, (the natural and imprescriptible rights of man) are liberty, property, equality and
security. Marx treated each separately as follows.

What constitutes liberty?

According to the same Declaration, Liberty is the power in which man has to do everything that
does not harm the rights of others, or, according to the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1791:
Liberty consists in being able to do everything which does not harm others.

Liberty, therefore, is the right to do everything that harms no one else. The limits within which
anyone can act without harming someone else are defined by law, just as the boundary between
two fields is determined by a boundary post. It is a question of the liberty of man as an isolated
monad, withdrawn into himself.31

The practical application of man‟s right to liberty is man‟s right to private property. What
constitutes man‟s right to private property?

The 1793 Declaration under Article 6 defined it as “The right of property is that which every
citizen has of enjoying and of disposing at his discretion of his goods and income, of the fruits of
his labor and industry.”

The right of man to private property is, therefore, the right to enjoy one‟s property and to dispose
of it at one‟s discretion, without regard to other men, independently of society, the right of self-

31
Works of Karl Marx 1843, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel‟s Philosophy of Right, Introduction, Written:
December 1843-January 1844; First published: in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 7 & 10 February 1844 in Paris;
Proofed and corrected by Andy Blunden, February 2005, Corrected by Matthew Carmody, 2009; Online at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/ accessed on Apr.26/2014
9

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interest. For Marx, this individual liberty and its application form the basis of civil society. It
makes every man see in other men not the realization of his own freedom, but the barrier to it.

There remain the other rights of man: equality and security.

Equality, used here in its non-political sense, is nothing but the equality of the liberty described
above – namely: each man is to the same extent regarded as such a self-sufficient monad.

Article 8 the1793 Declaration: “Security consists in the protection afforded by society to each of
its members for the preservation of his person, his rights, and his property.” The concept of
security does not raise civil society above its egoism. On the contrary, security is the insurance of
egoism.

Security is the highest social concept of civil society, the concept of police, expressing the fact
that the whole of society exists only in order to guarantee to each of its members the preservation
of his person, his rights, and his property.

In addition to the right to liberty, property, equality and security, and directly related to Bauer‟s
misperception, The French Declarations of rights of 1791 and 1793 have clearly stipulated that
no one is to be subjected to annoyance because of his opinions, even religious opinions. This
right is the freedom of every man to practice the religion of which he is an adherent. For Marx,
the privilege of faith is expressly recognized either as a right of man or as the consequence of a
right of man, that of liberty.

2.4 Conclusion
In conclusion Marx asked, “Why was the Jew, according to Bauer, incapable of acquiring the
rights of man?”

To remind, this was the view of Bauer. “As long as he is a Jew, the restricted nature which
makes him a Jew is bound to triumph over the human nature which should link him as a man
with other men, and will separate him from non-Jews.”32

As per Marx, here is the miss from the above assertion; the right of man is based not on the
association of man with man, but on the separation of man from man. It is the right of this

32
On the Jewish Question, Supra note 14
10

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separation, the right of the restricted individual, withdrawn into himself. Thus, man to man
linkage is not a requirement for the right to man; instead the contrary is the expression of state of
condition under the right. The freedom of religion is not an exception. As we have seen, rights of
man in no way presuppose the positive abolition of religion – nor, therefore, of Judaism. Instead,
incompatibility between religion and the rights of man is to such a degree absent from the
concept of the rights of man that, on the contrary, a man‟s right to be religious, in any way he
chooses, to practice his own particular religion, is expressly included among the rights of man.33

Final point revolves around a question “What can we deduct about Marx perception of rights
from Marx analysis of man‟s nature, emancipations and social structure in On the Jewish
Question?”

First, it is quite clear that Marx was more than marginally supportive of citizens' or political
rights; both in terms of restricting the freedom of the state and in providing some participatory
rights which permit and encourage certain forms of collective action. His complaint about the
subordination of these rights to the 'so-called rights of man‟ may also serves to support the
conclusion that he viewed participatory or citizens' rights as worthy of support.

On the other hand, Marx asserted that none of the so-called rights of man go beyond egoistic
man, beyond man as a member of civil society – that is, an individual withdrawn into himself,
into the confines of his private interests and private caprice, and separated from the community.34
Society appears as a framework external to the individuals, as a restriction of their original
independence. The sole bond holding them together is natural necessity, need and private
interest, the preservation of their property and their egoistic selves.

However, as we have tried to see, Marx was not completely adverse to these liberal rights. He
believed democratic constitution, in particular abolition of state religion and recognition to
individuality are necessary ingredients for political emancipation of individual man. Besides,
rights of man are part of the journey to full emancipation of human being from restrictions not to
embrace his species being nature. Therefore, in his” On Jewish Question”, Marx was neither
rights‐nihilist nor an antinomian who sought to trash the very idea of rights. Rather, we
can conclude, for him, rights of man were necessary evils.
33
Ibid
34
Ibid
11

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Marx‟s critique over the classical rights of man was based on the fact that they were obstructions
on /not genuine expression of/ the true nature of human being. More radical criticisms on the
concept of rights under the bourgeoisie system have been forwarded in later works of Marx.
These later denunciations were mainly focused on the exploitative instrumentality of liberal
rights. We will deal it next.

3. Criticism on rights of man in Capitalism

In his latest works like Critique of the Gotha Program and the Communist Manifesto, Marx
engaged himself in radical critique of liberal rights of man. Marx seeks to demonstrate that the
freedom and equality of persons in the arena of exchange is undermined by capitalist production,
where the domination of capital over labour prevails under the banner of equal rights.By this
time, as we see, Marx has developed a historically grounded critique of political economy, and
he also has a heightened awareness of the significance of class struggle in revolutionary
transformation. Marx actually reflects on his intellectual development, particularly his shift from
the critique of political and juridical categories to the critique of political economy, in telling
passages.

The critic of human rights asserts that the rights and freedoms of bourgeois democracies are
purely formal and at most procedural and thus are trickeries. Rights of man under capitalism,
from the Marxist perspective, are framed in a manner to exploit workers. 35 For him, the state is
concerned about the protection of capitalist interests and ignores those of workers. Thus, Marx
presents a universal criticism of liberal regimes.

The serious Marxist criticism of human rights in capitalism is that they are purely formal and
empty of substantive meaning in practice, concealing inequality by way of a superficial and
sham procedural equality.36 Formal equality and legality mask de facto substantive inequalities.
To Marx, equality in liberal democracies are illusory, in that the freedoms advocated by liberal
regimes are market values and are not centered on protecting basic human dignity.

35
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, ed Friedrich Engels. (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 59-60.
36
Kevin Hargaden, Karl Marx and the Trouble With Rights, May 16, 2013; Online at
http://theotherjournal.com/category/issues/22-marxism/ accessed on Apr.27/2014; Prof. Dr. Georg Lohmann, A
Missed Opportunity: The Communist Manifesto and Human Rights, Statement to the Conference "Capitalism and
Beyond? The Communist Manifesto after 150 years", New York University, May 1st -2nd, 1998; Online at
http://www.georglohmann.de/index.html accessed on Apr.26/2014
12

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Capitalist societies give rise to wage slavery, but the slave is sold once and for all, the proletarian
has to sell himself by the day and by the hour.37 The slave is the property of one master and for
that very reason has a guaranteed subsistence, however wretched it may be. The proletarian is, so
to speak, the slave of the entire bourgeois class, not of one master, and therefore has no
guaranteed subsistence, since nobody buys his labour if he does not need it. The slave is
accounted a thing and not a member of civil society. The proletarian is recognized as a person, as
a member of civil society. The slave may, therefore, have a better subsistence than the
proletarian but the latter stands at a higher stage of development. The slave frees himself by
becoming a proletarian, abolishing from the totality of property relationships only the
relationship of slavery. The proletarian can free himself only by abolishing property in general.38

Marx maintains, that rights are, in part, a bourgeois device to establish and sustain bourgeois
freedom to control wealth. Marx sees this contingency of rights most clearly in property rights.
Capitalism requires that we respect each other‟s possessions. If the stronger could plunder the
weaker, trade would dwindle. To prevent the appropriation of another person‟s possessions by
force, we “recognize one another reciprocally as proprietors, as persons whose will penetrates
their commodities.”39 The social structure we call rights arises out of a need to lubricate property
exchange.

The end product of all his reflection on the historical contingency of social structures is that
Marx suspects that rights are exhilarating promises that will never be realized, promises that are
perhaps designed to never be realized. Fundamentally, they are social constructs that emerge to
support the conditions which capitalism must assume. The principal Marxist critique of human
rights is the fact that human rights are used to legitimate and justify the in-egalitarian capitalist
system.

4. The Marxist concept of human rights

Marxism affirms human rights not as absolute formal procedural particulars (which is what
liberal capitalism does) but as substantive claims in the material world. Marxist human rights are
relativized by class struggle and history, that is, by historical materialism. For Marxism, social

37
Manifesto of the Communist Party, Supra note 1, p.38
38
Ibid
39
Ibid
13

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inequalities are reflections of the struggle between different social classes. Thus, according to
Marx, eliminating class differences is the first step to ending inequality and attaining the full
realization of all persons.40

Determining whether socialist or capitalist systems meet human needs better depends on an
axiological choice of distributive justice--individual procedural freedoms (processes) in
capitalism versus collective egalitarian solidarity rights (claims) in socialism. The distributive
principles in socialism are collectivization, socialization, solidarity and equality. The distributive
principles in capitalism are individualism, independence, self-sufficiency and liberty/freedom.
There are good arguments for both values and any system likely draws on both the idea of liberty
and the idea of equality. In Marxist terms, the interplay between freedom and equality is
dialectical- each of those opposites is linked to and influences the other, though one
predominates.41

Hence, in the history of communism, in socialist and communist movements and then states
instead of a critical modification and supplementation of rights to political participation and
individual liberties came demands for a new kind of rights: social rights to provision or social
human rights.42 They contain entitlements to social provisions, to education, maintenance, an
apartment and work. These "rights", however, can no longer be enforced as subjective liberties
are, but are granted by the commonwealth under certain conditions, in much the same way as
rights were afforded as privileges for good conduct in medieval corporate states.43 The
conditional character of these social entitlements was demonstrated by the fact that many of
these rights were granted only in connection with corresponding duties. For example, the "right
to work" was always linked with the "duty to work". 44

For Marx, the needs of the class of people who must sell their labour power in order to live are
different from the needs of those who live off the proceeds of their property. 45 Property rights are

40
United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural Organization, A Marxist Approach to Human Rights, Maria
Hirszowisz, Round Table Meeting on Human Rights, Oxford, Nov11-19,1965, UNESCO archives
41
A Missed Opportunity, Supra note 35
42
Tony Evans, Marx and democratic rights, The Politics of Human Rights: A global perspective, 24 December
2005; Online at https://www.wsws.org/en/ accessed on Apr.27/2014
43
Ibid
44
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/
Critique of the Gotha Programme .htm accessed on May 5/2014
45
Ibid
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of little use to those who have no property. Workers need first and foremost the right to organize
and form combinations, and the various rights which contribute to this such as legal protection
for union funds, and so on, and the right to satisfaction of basic human needs – food, shelter,
clothing, health, education – access to which the bourgeoisie can purchase with money.46 These
are the distinctive workers‟ rights, over and above those fought for by the progressive
bourgeoisie, rights that are denied in bourgeois society except insofar as workers secure them
through struggle and protect them with legal instruments and the constant threat of class
struggle.47

In a socialist society, as it emerges from capitalist society, equal right here is still in principle –
bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads. Equal right is still
constantly stigmatized by bourgeois limitation.48 The right of the producers is proportional to the
labour they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made by an equal
standard, labour.

But one person is superior to another physically or mentally, and so supplies more labour in the
same time. Hence, this equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It is therefore a right of
inequality, in its content, like every right.49 Right by its nature can consist only in the application
of an equal standard; but unequal individuals are measurable only by an equal standard in so far
as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only, for
instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers, and nothing more is seen in them,
everything else is ignored.50 To avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have
to be unequal. But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is
when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society.51 Right can never be
higher than the economic structure of society and the cultural development conditioned by it.

In the higher phase of communist society, after labour has become not only a means of life but
life‟s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased. Only then can the narrow

46
…………,Theoretically Justifying Human Rights: A Critical Analysis; Online at http://www.e-ir.info/, accessed
on Apr.27/2014
47
Ibid
48
Manifesto of the Communist Party, Supra note 1, P.39
49
Ibid
50
Ibid
51
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, Supra note 44
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horizons of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: „From
each according to her ability, to each according to her needs!‟52

5. Conclusion
Marx has rarely made serious and exclusive confrontation with human rights concepts.
However, in the process of formulating politico-economic theory he has dealt rights as just little
more than incidental issues. Generally, we may identify three sorts of rights have got recognition
and dealt in Marxism. These are rights of man, rights of citizen and social rights.

Human rights have been more explicitly entertained in the work “On the Jewish Question”.
When Marx wrote this short piece, he was barely twenty five years old. The young man has been
initiated to write “On the Jewish Question” by a temptation by his close Hegelian friend, Bruno
Bauer. Bauer had had raised firm disapproval against claim for rights of man by Jews living in
Prussia. Bauer justified his disavowal by the allegation that Jews shall first be emancipated from
their religion which naturally hindered them from interpersonal relations which are necessary for
the enjoyment of those rights.

In his reply, Marx has tried to show us the real picture of rights of man distinguishing them from
rights of citizen. Rights of man are rights of a member of a civil society where as rights of citizen
are rights of a member of state. Rights of man constitute right to liberty, property, equality and
security. Rights of citizen, on the other hand hold the right to participation in state affairs. The
true nature of rights of man is their trait of isolating individual being from the community rather
than integrating to. Thus, those rights do not really necessitate man to man relations. The
existence, not the abolition of religion and the recognition, not the elimination of private property
is a precondition for rights of man. In a simple phrase rights of man according to Marxism are
necessary evils. They are necessary because they form important stage in human emancipation.
They are also evils due to their nature of alienating the true and social nature of individual being,
species being. Marxism is completely positive on rights of citizen.

New sort of rights, social rights have begun to cultivated through the development of the concept
of communism. This category stresses the right to work and the right to basic needs. They are
also known as equality rights. The equality rights were intended to dominate the liberty rights
52
Ibid
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which prevail in capitalist states. In his later works, the adult Marx has engaged himself in stiff
criticism of capitalist conception of rights as a mere superficial promises which conceal and in
fact, support exploitation. Therefore pragmatic and substantive claim rights should be adopted.
The government shall abolish private property, the proletariats shall own their labour, they have
the right to work and may claim subsistence from the government until all becomes for all.

6. Bibliography
Journals and Books
 Eric Engle, Human Rights According to Marxism, Guild Practitioner, 2008; Online at
http://web2.westlaw.com/result/documenttext.aspx?vr=2.0&sv=
 Georg Lohmann, A Missed Opportunity: The Communist Manifesto and Human Rights,
Statement to the Conference "Capitalism and Beyond? The Communist Manifesto after
150 years", New York University, May 1st -2nd, 1998.
 Karl Marx 1843, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel‟s Philosophy of Right,
Introduction, January 1844; Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February 1844, proofed
and corrected by Andy Blunden, February 2005, and corrected by Matthew Carmody in
2009
 Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875, Online at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/ Critique of the Gotha Programme
.htm
 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, February 1848,
translated: Samuel Moore and Frederick Engels, 1888;
 Karl Marx 1844, On The Jewish Question, 1843; Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher;
Proofed and Corrected: by Andy Blunden, Matthew Grant and Matthew Carmody,
2008/9.
 Maria Hirszowisz, A Marxist Approach to Human Rights, United Nations Educational
Scientific Cultural Organization, Round Table Meeting on Human Rights, Oxford
Nov11-19,1965, UNESCO Archives
 Steven Lukes, Can a Marxist Believe in Human Rights?, PRAXIS International (PRAXIS
International), issue: 4 / 1981, Online at www.ceeol.com
 Tony Evans, Marx And Democratic Rights, The Politics of Human Rights: A Global
Perspective, 24 December 2005,
Internet Websites
 http://www.e-ir.info/, Theoretically Justifying Human Rights: A Critical Analysis
 http://theotherjournal.com/category/issues/22-marxism/
 http://www.marxists.org/glossary/index.htm
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism
 https://www.wsws.org/en/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts
/labour.htm
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