Human Rights 1

1
Human Rights 1

• Week 2
• Utilitarian and Marxist critique
• of Human Rights
• Dr. Sirkku K. Hellsten

2
What are human rights?

• Most basic and the most general rights we posses
  as human beings?
• Originally derived from some idea of shared human
  nature or essence (theological ad philosophical)
  respect for human life
• Human rights as claims, but against whom?
• Individuals against each other and/or arbitrate
  conduct on the part of state/limits to the
  administrative power of the state? Right to have
  a right and the problem of failing states?
• Human rights moral or legal?

3
What are rights?

• Debates over the nature and scope of right
• A persons entitlements as a member of society,
  incl. liberties (right to use the public
  highway and claim-rights (right to defence
  counsel).
• J.S.Mill to have a right is to have something
  society ought to protect me in the possession of
• Reciprocal duties If I have a right to get back
  a loan the person who borrowed my money has
  the duty to pay

4
Are human rights a matter of morality, matter of
law or a matter of politics?

• Universal and eternal, inviolable and
  unchanging/unalternable?
• Specific institutional and historical approaches
  to human rights and their implementation
• Political and historical understandings between
  individuals and peoples

5
(Act) Utilitarianism

• The greatest happiness of the greatest number
  consequentialism an act is right if it produces
  the greatest sum of utility (happiness)
• Ends can justify the means
• Public institutions build on the overall utility
  and well-being of the society
• Based on criticism of natural law by Hume
  ought does not follow from is laws and norms
  should be useful to the society not permanent and
  inflexible, not purpose in themselves

6
Utilitarian Critique of Human Rights

• Jeremy Bentham natural rights as moral rights
  simple nonsense and nonsense upon stilts
  men were not born free and equal
• Rights are man-made, and could not spring from
  mere assertation of principle
• From real laws come real rights, from imaginary
  laws of nature, come imaginary rights

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Problem of utilitarianism

• If merely the public interest and overall good of
  the society is promoted, individual rights and
  freedoms can be violated
• Innocent can be sacrificed in the name of the
  overall utility and maximum happiness
• Cant count for disgusting, unethical
  pleasures as morally relevant
• Problems in calculation/relativist

8
Liberal (rule) utilitarianism

• John Stuart Mill protecting individuals right
  to liberty is part of the public good/general
  utility
• Right are rules of conduct
• Liberty rights conscience thought and feeling
  freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects,
  harm principle not harming others

9
Marxs political theory

• Economic determinism of dialectic materialism
  phases of capitalism historical necessity and
  revolution
• Commitment to political practice as the end goal
  of all thought
• Individual subjects' choices and beliefs are
  strongly conditioned by the social conditions in
  which they exist.

10
Marxist critique of human rights

• Political emancipation is not human emancipation
  a state can be a free state without man being a
  free man the egoism of civil society, economy
  and power politics produces people who are
  alienated uncivilized, and unsocial corrupted
  by the whole organization of society
• The language of rights is defending a particular
  pattern of interests getting rid of feudal
  remnants, absolute monarchies, protection of
  property of those who already have it provides
  no objective standard does not advance
  disadvantaged class

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Marxs objection to the four basic Rights of Man
and Citizen

• Rights to liberty are the rights of an isolated
  (self-sufficient) monad, withdrawn into himself
• Property rights are rights to self-interest
• Rights to equality are understood as rights to
  equal liberty
• Rights to security are the assurance of egoism
• Economic conditions rule thus, we should give
  everyone according to their needs

12
Marxs vies of human rights

• Rights separate people
• Bourgeous revolution right to property
• In communism no need for right
• State will wither away
• A revolution more radical than a political
  revolution that aims at political emancipation. A
  social revolution to transform egoist man to
  communal man, a species-being,not isolated monad

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Marxs alternative

• Human emancipation as emancipation from ones
  individualistic, egoistic identity involves
  becoming a non-egoistic member of a non-egoistic
  community
• Not religious freedom, but freedom from religion
  not freedom to own property, but freedom from
  property not freedom to engage in business, but
  freedom from business

14
Problems of Marxism

• Paternalistic
• Authoritarian
• Suppressing individual freedom
• Problems in equal material redistibution
• Passive citizens non-participation
• Inefficiency

15
Rights in existing socialism

• In the Cold War the West Accused the Soviet Union
  (and related states) of violating human rights
• Emphasis always on political and civil rights
  rather than economic and social rights
• Although violations of human rights existed,
  collective social rights better protected, though
  there were problems in centralized economy