Abstract:
This paper philosophically investigates the idea of rights. The aim here is to understand the fundamental arguments of liberalism and Marxism. To attain the purpose, the paper discusses the major arguments of these two schools of thought. To understand the principles of liberalism, the paper explains the ideas and arguments advanced in the theory of natural rights and in Utilitarianism. Simultaneously, to understand the core idea of Marxism, the paper focuses on the ideas and arguments of Karl Marx and Engle and further attempts to explain how their ideas have been argued and evolved in the political discourses.
Key Words: Rights, Natural Rights, Utilitarianism, Liberalism, Marxism
Introduction:
It is observed that in political philosophy, rights as essential conditions are argued and reargued in different contexts. To the concept of rights, this has given many meanings. Unfortunately, this, instead of giving clarity on the idea of rights, has created intellectual and policy confusions. The fundamental problem is that each idea is unique and holds one or other element of justice. Philosophically, all these ideas and arguments appear as essential and fair. In the given condition of the discourses, for a student of political philosophy or politics, it is difficult to understand what rights are and what they actually holds. This is mainly because the champions of rights, while identifying and arguing for rights as the virtue of justice, are focusing on different issues. For each of them, prerequisites of rights are not the same. For instance, the liberalist view while arguing for rights insists on individual rights and freedom and advocates for limited state. One the other hand, Marxism, while arguing for rights presents them as conditions which are assuring classless society. Since both the theories are arguing for rights with different scope, each of which has some truth, it is difficult to take a clear stand. The following sections attempt to discuss these extremes and while so doing explain the meaning of rights that are evolved in these two schools of thoughts.
Liberalist Perception of Rights
History of political philosophy provides that rights as a concept, is primarily claimed as freedom of life, in political discourse it evolves as liberalism. The concept of liberalism is allied with three fundamental principles. The first principle is that man is a free and intelligent agent. As he is endowed with reason, no one can decide his best interest on his behalf. The second principle is that man should fundamentally have economic freedom, i.e. laissez faire and the third is, that the minimum state is the best state i.e. a police state (Adam Smith (1776) and Ricardo). Philosophically, these many ideas are conceptualized and discussed as natural theory of rights and Utilitarianism. The natural rights theory has argued for the values of freedom, equality and fraternity and the idea of utility i.e. utilitarianism has emphasized that human happiness is indeed the proper goal of the rights and it can be possible only in the presence of a system of law. Utilitarianism as a theory assumes that man by nature is future-oriented. Therefore, any action of his is based on the thought which can give maximum pleasure as a result. The prescription has connected utilitarianism with hedonist psychology, which infers that human beings always want to increase pleasure and reduce pain. Since both of these have combinedly evolved the idea of liberalism, it is essential to discuss these in detail.
I.(i) Natural Rights: Rights are Right as given by Nature
According to the theory of natural rights, rights are pre-state phenomena as they have been in existence since the pre-political state of nature. Rights are enjoyable as a right because they are given by nature. The very first argument of the idea of natural rights can be noted in Hugo’s conception of rights. For him the reasoning of rights lies in the will of God. This perception is opposed by Hobbes and Locke for whom right is the will of individuals and it is this which makes rights a right. According to them, rights are claims that emerged with the common will i.e. “common consent on common principles”. They argue that rights are the consequence of moral agreement on the “common principle for common good, commonly accepted by the people living in primitive states”. Importantly, by Jeremy Waldron, the idea is defined as rights, duties and contract (Waldron, 1984).
It is very clear that Hugo’s perception is developed under the influence of Christianity. His idea on rights is attached with the principle of natural justice, called as natural law which is the will of God. He has defined rights as the will of God and endowed man with liberty of action. This was the first time when "Dominion" was given to man over his own actions, which enables man to enjoy certain rights, among which life, liberty and property are primary. In political philosophy, it is defined as philosophy of Divine or Natural Law (Gierke, 1950). This philosophy fundamentally argues that since rights are the gift of God, they are primary, unchangeable, absolute and inalienable laws which enjoy the status of “prima facie”. Grotius in The Authority of the Highest Powers opined that natural law commands everyone to care for one’s own life and safety; it implies that all men are free but responsible only to God. This further indicates that a man does have duty towards God that ultimately shifts towards others, which is executed on the basis of natural law. In the thought of natural rights, duty is one of the fundamental aspects of rights as a concept it is elaborated by Samuel Pufendof. He defined that rights are the beneficiary of someone else’s duty. According to him, all propositions involving rights are straightforwardly translatable into duties.
The principle of “only beneficiary of duty” has been transposed by Thomas Hobbes, significantly in individualist terms. In his interpretation, claim on rights actually locates political authority in the people below, rather than in God above. In his account, natural right is introduced as a moral idea that is agreed on to “escape from inconveniences” of the natural state (Leviathan, 1651). He explained that the first inconvenience of an individual is a threat to his life, therefore right as a claim must be understood as claiming to have life. In this belief, Locke has added the idea of liberty that is located in natural liberty. According to him, the argument on natural rights insists that man by nature is free, equal and independent and he cannot be a subject of another without his own consent. In the Second Treatise of Government (1690), he describes rights as the fruit of one’s own labour which he classified as right to life, liberty and property.
According to Paine, by idea and purpose, rights are individualistic (The Rights of Man, 1791). For him, rights are the beginning and the end and there is no moral duty directing men to rational moral ends. They are the origin of the final cause of government because it is based on consent and contract (Canavan, 1961). Like Hobbes and Locke, his prescription of “will and reason” has established rights above state which puts limits on the functions of state. Frankean, in this reference explains that it is the idea of limited state which assures rights as inalienable (William Frankena, 1955). Importantly, in the tradition of natural rights, inalienability of rights is concerned with the notion of natural equal freedom, which is the most primary right of an individual as urged by Hart (1955).
In discussions of natural rights, Ryan and Boland (1940) present the argument that natural rights are rational claims, comprehended in two senses. In the moral sense, they are inviolable moral claims, constant to some personal good. In the civil sense they grow as positive or legal rights, derived from man’s rational nature (Ryan & Boland, 1940). Significantly, in Nozickean (1974) notion of rights, rationality is defined as freedom to have property. According to him right to property is so rational that it can be claimed even without morality insisted in Lockeian proviso. Evident difference within the idea of natural rights provides that the arguments in natural theory of right have evolved as per time and situation. Kant rightly ascribes that natural rights are universal standards of political justice that are not historical but the historical outcome of a long process of enlightenment. Hence, what is a right will depend on which premise is timely (Gunnar, 2006).
I.(ii) Utilitarianism: Rights are Right by Virtue of their Utility
The second major progress in liberalism is known as utilitarianism. As an idea it has argued that rights are post-state phenomena, which is an intellectual response to the negative aspects of natural theory of rights. Burke (Reflections on the revolution in France, 1790), as a proc-utilitarian, states that rights are the reflection of human reasoning. It is an idea which is commonly identified in its natural state and shaped and assured in a system of state. Significantly, Burke’s state is contracted to declare right as a legitimate claim. In this respect, the state is obligated to assure rights in all spheres of life (Canavan, 1961). Thus, in his concept of rights, man is a natural partner of the sovereign power of state, who can claim right as right to attain his “real interests”. The perception of right as “real interests” is argued as utility by Bentham and Mill, principally known as utilitarianism. The notion of utilitarianism presumes that rights are pleasures and good in themselves. Bentham and Mill, as the champions of this idea, described that rights are the effective tools that produce maximum pleasure for maximum people. They profoundly argued that rights are claimed to produce pleasure (Bentham 1973) and happiness in the form of security which assures freedom from injury as Mill insists (On Liberty, chapter 1 para 9). Mill asserts that the sentiment attached to justice, defined in terms of rights, is to be "distinguished from the milder feeling which attaches to the mere idea of promoting human ‘pleasure' or convenience”.
Significantly, in Bentham’s conception, utility is a pre-conception of right. For him, rights exist because of their inherent virtue of utility as they rest ultimately on "benefits”. Thus, in his concept, rights are of secondary importance. He proposes that rights are argued for and respected because their utility is accepted and assured through legal frameworks. While emphasizing on the institutionalization of rights he insists that rights are the ‘child of laws’ that are introduced and survive only in a system state. Hence, according to him, arguing for rights in a natural state is ‘simple nonsense (Bentham, 1973).
In Mill’s explanation, rights are institutionalized through social consent, this holds social responsibility along with liberty (Devlin, 1965). For him, right is right because its entitlement satisfies overall preferences pre decided by society. Consensus obtained from society confers rights as valid claims that are permitted by society to protect ‘something’ which is realized as essential for good life (opening sentences of his thesis “Utilitarianism”, 1861: chapter V,). Thus, in his thesis, rights are enjoyed as a shield by society “through the law”, acceptance of which depends on their utility. It is significant to note that his idea of utility is different from Bentham's notion of benefit. Mill maintains that the peculiar power of rights is seen not simply by certain forms of benefit, but by other considerations like security, which was a considerable fact in a pre-political state. In this sense, Mill’s concept of rights is a pre-legal phenomenon. According to him, rights are confirmed even without the existence of a well-defined legal system. It is a situation where everyone is to count for one and no one is to count for more than one (Mill, 1993, p. 64). This further implies that no one’s happiness counts more than anyone else’s happiness, in theory of right this is defined as “collective individualism”.
In the utilitarian understandings, the value of individual collectivism is significantly highlighted by Charles Samuel Hamilton (2002). To underline the idea, he points that rights in the notion of utility are non-discriminatory. It is decisively based on the principle of equality because it argues against preferences and priorities. He points out that the Mill’s conceptualization is a combination of individualism and egalitarianism, where enjoyment of right is dependent on the purpose of action. Sidgwick’s perception of the purpose of action is essentially moral by nature: therefore, he defined rights not as a claim but as a moral concern. To explain, he notes that rights are a moral conduct and as a higher principle of utility, it has to check on the opponent's morality. He defines this as an act of utilitarianism (Sidgwick, 1874). With the proposition, he proposes that self-evident maxims are supposed to be the fundamental principles and must underlie the more specific maxims of common morality (Schneewind, 1977). Arrow, in a similar tradition, infers rights as social utility based on morality. He describes this as social preferences that ultimately have protected individual interests and preferences (Kenneth, 1951). In the tradition of valuing morality, the idea of utility is added as a core value by Hare. According to him, utilitarianism stands for act-utility because if we begin from what is involved in a moral judgment, we will end up with utilitarian theory. Thus, in utilitarian understanding, rights are moral actions that are protected by the state through law. Fundamentally, it has valued utility above everything else, including morality.
It is significant to note that in both the theories rights are individual centric. However, the reasons and arguments determined behind them are not the same, but are remarkably different. In political discourses this difference establishes and maintains them as separate theories. Such differences can be easily noted in the policy making processes where principles of utilitarianism are relatively more popular, in comparison to the ideas of natural rights.
II. Rights in Marxist Perception: Rights are result of social construction and in liberalism they are bias
In the Marxist interpretation, rights are not the product of political philosophy but emerge as a social fact and so is a social construction (Plamentatz &Wokler, 1962). In reference to the idea of rights, Marxist arguments are basically the development against the interpretations of rights in liberalism and human rights. Karl Marx in his work “On the Jewish Question” describes the inadequacy of classical rights, i.e. natural rights. He opines that in the notion of classical rights, equality is merely formal and freedom is an empty promise; this is because it has legitimized a natural order which has endorsed inequality as just. He profoundly argues that the system of rights in classical understanding has created a capitalist state, where right to property is the only right one can claim for. Since it is inclined more towards economic freedoms it has produced right as egoism that has disregarded the possibility of equality in society and has unjustly entitled capitalists to have property by any means (Geras, 1983). He pinpoints that rights in a liberalist system (i.e. capitalism) is simply a bourgeois concept and a product of bourgeois-capitalist society. He rigorously argues that since such a system is fundamentally working against the principle of equality, it cannot endorse any right as universal (“On the Jewish Question”). Like Marx, Engels opines that the suggestions of natural rights are tool to exploit others as everybody does not enjoy similar rights. He explains that as an idea it has endorsed on a pre-decide situation where everybody will not have a fair chance to own property as their right.
In perception of Marx and Engels, even rights are influenced by the mode of production and are developed in the course of history. They present that the mode of production creates working relations and decides on social status. Due to this fact rights can be justified only after analyzing the mode of production and social relations of a given society. In their argument they underlined the fact that since arguments of classical rights have ignored historical and social facts, it has not created “natural rights” but “natural privileges” that has rejected equality as a right (Marx & Engels, 1977). It is noted that rights are not the direct subject of Marxism but they have emerged with the criticism of natural rights. Fundamentally, it talks about two rights. The first right is the right to equality that has the content to make a man self-sufficient and the second right is the right to freedom which is enjoyed as a result of self- sufficiency. According to Marx, freedom as a right, allows a person to do everything that harms no one. Marx persists that the idea of freedom has meaning only if it allows one to gain control on the conditions of one’s own existence by allowing one to recognize one’s aim. He insists that it should include equal right to participation in social decisions and equal right to access the means of self-realization which includes equal opportunities to attain social position and offices.
Significantly, his equality is not the same as equality defined in the idea of natural rights. While re –conceptualizing the idea of equality he explains that equal labor and equal share have no meaning if needs have not been considered with the difference of context and situation. He opines that the economic status of a man depends on his marital status and on the numbers of the members he is supposed to feed. Certainly, the needs of a married man with children will have more requirements than a man who is single or married but with no children. As a result, a worker with similar wages can be richer than others because he has fewer social responsibilities than others (Marx, 1975). Marx argued that the greatest suppression and inequality are hidden in the socio-economic area of needs. He insists on replacing them with the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.
The history of Marxism provides that the desire to re-conceptualize the idea of rights, in favor of needs persistently continued to develop even after Marx. In this regard, ideas of Marx and Engle are re-interpreted by the Marxist scholars (like Nordahl 1991: Burke, Crocker, & Legters, 1981 along with others). They have used Marx’s arguments to criticise human rights. While highlighting the limits of human rights, scholars have argued that human rights do not assure any right because the purpose of rights is to maintain the status quo. Scholars like Nordahl (1991) Burke, Crocker & Legters (1981) interpret that human rights have no real significance like natural rights. As while arguing for rights, it has not considered the structure of social relations and the level of production. They further explained that by making things universally common, notion has systematically preserved the interests of a few that have not gone beyond the egoistic man (who is born due to the entitlement of natural rights). To criticize human rights from its basic arguments, new interpretations of Marxism argue that the idea of universality in human rights has created a system where an individual withdraws into himself, into the confines of his private interests and private caprice, and is separated from his community. Due to this unusual separation, rights become a simple illusion that is nothing but empty shells (Marx, 1975). Thus, objections driven from Marx, do not end with the condemnation of the detachment of individual and community but it further goes against the claim of universality of rights as human rights. Understandings of Marx on rights are well elaborated by Nordahl (1991). While challenging the principle of universality of rights, he describes that rights can be real if they are classified as per the society. Like, in the highly interdependent industrial societies, people have rights like, right to job, right to get right remuneration and right to education. In a pre-industrial society, the right to land would be the fundamental right as that is a major source of earning. Here rights to job and education would not make a serious difference. In highly industrial societies the list of rights will get replaced with the participation in industrial management (Nordahl, 1991:162-70). According to him, this will create social ownership and overthrow the capitalist system, which otherwise has no substantive understandings on rights as said before. In Nordahl’s perception, Marx appears as the first philosopher who highlighted the unjust situation of workers. He argued that by creating social ownership he wanted to ensure equal accessibility to employment and goods. Here, the right to equality has a different meaning which insists that workers are partners of the management and are not subordinate to anybody.
Elucidation of Marx’s argument on rights, discloses that his real interest is to define rights in the reference of needs that are different as per the person and society as Heller (1976) describes. Nordahl (1991) also points out that Marx did not take up the task to define what rights are but his theory of needs implicitly provides what rights should be (page 162). According to him, Marx highlights three fundamental rights that are basically attached with needs. This primarily includes physical life needs. The other two rights are autonomy and freedom of community and social needs (Nordahl, 1991). Since rights are social construction for Marx, all these rights are not fundamental but contingent on the availability of the resources. He explains that in Marxist perception rights are oriented towards equality because it emphasises that every person should have equal rights to meet his/her needs. For him, Marx does not insist on equal distribution of resources and goods, rather his argument is that the fundamental needs of the population need to be satisfied. Since Marx has stateless society, it becomes the obligation of a society to meet first the physical life needs i.e. to provide for goods like food and shelter, which should be entitled before right to freedom or autonomy (Burke, Crocker, & Legters, 1981). Like Nordahl, Plamenatz also has interpreted Marxist notion of rights and explains that a right has meaning only when an individual stands in relation with others. Therefore, a right can exist only in relation to society (Plamenatz & lamont, 1950). He describes that in the conception of Marx rights are not personal enlightenments but are justified as the needs of the whole community, the purpose of which is to return to their true nature as social beings. In this sense even the idea of freedom is a social construction created by society, under specific conditions (George Klaus and Manfred Buhr 1974). Rodney Peffer, in this reference states that Marx is not only committed to a principle of equal freedom but he has reconstructed it as holding that people has certain rights (Peffer, 1990). In Marxist perception rights are conceptualized by the logic of socialist development rather than capitalism (Engel, 2010). In the Marxist theory, rights are claimed as real because they are classless and social. Freeman states that with the rise of Marxist perspective, rights were no longer fundamental moral ideas to regulate political life, but ideological products of social struggles (Michael, 2012:203).
Marxism certainly has a logical and emotional appeal in discourse of right. Its theory of needs as rights is a significant contribution to political philosophy. However, the problem is that it has conceptualized things with single interpretations and contempt capitalism for almost everything. It is a fact that it has ignored other factors that are equally influencing the social, political and economic structures. Similarly, its argument of classless rights is not well defined, universal applicability of it, is always in doubt. There are societies that are not divided on class alone but are divided due to other reasons, as in the case of India caste is a key factor of social, political and economic division.
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