Karl Marx and Human Rights

Karl Marx defined human rights as the “rights of the egoistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the community”. They are the rights of man as an isolated, inward looking, and self-centered creature who:

Regards his free opinion as his intellectual private property instead of a part of communication;

Uses his right to private property not in order to create a beach-head for his public and cultural life but to accumulate unnecessary wealth and to protect unequal property relationships;

Uses the right to privacy as a wall keeping out the poor class watching the rich people;

Considers fellow men as the only legitimate restraint on his own freedom, and therefore as a limit instead of the source of his own thinking, identity and humanity (this is the way in which Marx read Article 6 of the French Constitution of 1793: “Liberty is the power which man has to do everything which does not harm the rights of others”);

Considers freedom to be no more than the ability to pursue selfish interests and to enjoy property, unhindered by the need to help other people, “without regard for other men and independently of society”; and

Considers equality to be the equal right to this kind of freedom (everybody can emancipate himself by becoming a bourgeois).

According to Marx, human rights serve only to protect egoism and the unequal distribution of property, and to oppress the poor who question this and who try to redistribute property. On top of that, human rights obscure this fact because they are formulated in such a way that it seems that everybody profits from them. Contrary to what is implicit in their name, “human” rights are not general or universal rights. They are the rights of those who have property and who want to keep it. A specific situation of a specific group of people is generalized in human rights.

One example of human rights is “freedom of expression”. However, Marx defined it in a deleterious way. For him, because the rich have more means to use, for example, their freedom of expression, this freedom can be an instrument of the rich to monopolize political propaganda and political power and to use this power to maintain their privileged situation. Economic relationships can be maintained by legal means.

However, in order to judge and possibly reject a phenomenon, one should also look at its intended and ideal functions, not only at the ways in which it can be abused. Human rights not only protect man against the attacks and claims of other people ( for example the attacks and claims on his property); they also create the possibility of forcing people to help each other. They do not allow you to do something to other people (taking their property, determining their opinions, etc.), but at the same time they invite you to do something with other people. In other words, they are not only negative.

Interactions of human beings within social

structures that contain

economic class distinctions.

Class divisions within societies create conflict and disorder.

Therefore, law (and the state)

comes into existence to

deal with this conflict.

They not only limit the way we relate to other people, they also stimulate and protect the way we relate to other people.

Marxist Law − Introduction

Karl Marx views the notion of Marxist Law from the following perspective,

“Law, morality, religion, are to [the proletariat] so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as

many bourgeois interests.”

With this, Marx believed that laws are the product of class oppression.

There are assumptions basic to Marxist legal theory—first, that God does not exist; second, that humans are evolving animals; third, the impossibility of an absolute moral code and; fourth, the inexistence of any law grounded in any authority other than human authority.

V. I. Lenin says, “In what sense do we repudiate ethics and morality? . . . In the sense in which it was preached by the bourgeoisie, who derived ethics from God’s commandments. We, of course, say that we do not believe in God.” 

Furthermore, L.S. Jawitsch, a modern-day Marxist legal theorist, maintains Lenin’s denial of anything supernatural, saying, “There are no eternal, immutable principles of law.” Therefore, Marxist law cannot be based on anything other than human rationality. In Lenin’s words, “We repudiate all morality taken apart from human society and classes.”

How do law and human rights arise and were able to come up with a state?

Overthrow the

bourgeoisie

Thus, allowing

the proletariat

to make the laws.

Proletariat Law

Issues that arise on having the State:

State perpetuates the conflict as a dominant class wielding power over classes with less power;

The State is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another; and

Its aim is the creation of ‘order’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression between the classes.

Two Classes in the Marxist View of Law

In the Marxist view of law, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the two classes involved in the struggle for power.

Bourgeoisie is the ruling class of the two basic classes of capitalist society, consisting of capitalists, manufacturers, bankers, and other employers. The bourgeoisie owns the most important of the means of production, through which it exploits the working class.

On the other hand, proletariat is the class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labor to live. It is the lowest social or economic class of a community.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx denounces,

“[Y]our jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of existence of your class.”

It means bourgeois law as nothing more than a reflection of the desires of that class. Bourgeois law is oppressive because it is based on the concept of private property, and thus laws are created that promote unequal rights.

The legal system that promotes the interests of the working class is called proletariat law.

According to Marxist legal theory, the working class may break capitalistic law if such an action is in pursuit of equality.

Moreover, Lenin explained that “the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.”

Marxist Law – Law and Socialist Economics

Once the revolution of the proletariat has succeeded, the new Marxist law will reflect the desires of the working people rather than those of the bourgeoisie. Meaning, law based on the will of the proletariat will create a society that is less exploitative than that based on capitalist bourgeois law.

The will of the proletariat becomes the basis for all rights, laws, and judgment, thereby negating natural law, God, or any absolute moral code. Marxists see law based on the will of the proletariat as flexible rather than inconsistent.

Marxist Law – Law Withers Away

Because Marxists believe law arises from class conflicts caused by property, the need for law itself will dissolve once a communist society is established. Marxists believe that when classes are abolished, all people will create and live in an environment that promotes harmony. Since only one class (the proletariat) will then exist, the need to promote order between classes will no longer remain—in effect law will have become unnecessary. 

Marxist Ethics – Old Morality

Marxists wholeheartedly reject moral codes that are founded in religious beliefs, including traditional universal moral ideals. “Old morality”— the morality of the reigning capitalist class—exploits the working class. According to this view, old religious moral codes must be abandoned. “old morality,” as products of the bourgeoisie invented and used by the propertied class to oppress the property-less proletariat. The old morality is simply a tool used by the oppressing classes to maintain their position in society. Christian ethics is the means by which the rich control the working class poor.

Marxist Ethics – Dialectical Materialism

This approach is rooted in dialectical materialism. According to the Marxist dialectic,

“Everything in the universe—including society—is in a state of constant change. These changes are moving society upward toward the elimination of

all social and economic class distinctions.”

The next social advance in history will be the move from capitalism to socialism, which will inevitably result in changes in society’s moral ideals. The dialectical view of history dictates the clash of thesis and antithesis — in this historical context, the relentless clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Marxist-Leninists believe that the morality of these two classes is totally different, and when the proletariat finally destroys the bourgeoisie, a new morality will reign —a new morality for the new social system. 

Marxist Ethics – The Evolution of Morality

Our social and economic status is always changing, so our ideas about morality must also be in a state of continual change.  In the Marxist perspective, is there such a thing as communist morality?

Lenin answered, “Of course there is. It is often suggested that we have no ethics of our own; very often the bourgeoisie accuse us Communists of rejecting all morality. This is a method of confusing the issue, of throwing dust in the eyes of the workers and peasants. In what sense do we reject ethics, reject morality? In the sense given to it by the bourgeoisie, who based ethics on God’s commandments. On this point we, of course, say that we do not believe in God, and that we know perfectly well that the clergy, the landowners and the bourgeoisie invoked the name of God so as to further their own interests as exploiters.”

In Lenin’s view, Communist morality had to evolve beyond that morality of outdated Christian myth used by the exploiting class to suppress the exploited class. 

Marxist Ethics – Classless Society

Marxists believe that what is generally regarded by society as moral directly contradicts the Marxist goal of a classless society.

So long as classes exist on the earth, there will be no such thing in life as something good in the absolute sense. What is good for the bourgeoisie, for the imperialists, is disastrous for the working class, and, on the contrary, what is good for the working people is not admitted by the imperialists, by the bourgeoisie.

Marxist Ethics – Moral Revolution

Question:How can we achieve a ‘classless society’?

When pursuing Marxist ethics, revolution is the most efficient means for creating a society without class distinctions. According to Marxists, revolution is unavoidable and it is the only way to overthrow the bourgeoisie and lift up the proletariat. The obligation to work toward the overthrow of the bourgeoisie may very well include the duty to kill.

Moral Ethics – Class Hatred

According to Marxist ethics, hatred is moral as long as it is directed toward the proper institution, class, or enemy. It follows, then, that society’s generally accepted moral principles (which Marxists claim are bourgeois tools) are in direct opposition to the moral principles of the proletariat. If this is true, no one in the bourgeoisie can do right or act morally. Unless members of the propertied class became proletarian, anything they do, no matter how moral by their standards, will be contemptible to Marxists.

British journalist D.G. Stewart-Smith estimates that international communism is responsible for 83 million deaths between 1917 and 1964. From a Marxist- Leninist perspective, if 83 million people died to abolish social classes and private property, it was worth the price—even morally just. Marxists judge the results, not the methods. No matter how immoral it appears to a world that believes in an absolute or

universal moral standard, it is morally good within the Marxist-Leninist worldview.

Marxism and Religion

Religion does not reflect man's true consciousness. Religion, as Marx sees it, is a false consciousness; religion is the product of men, the product of those in power—those who control the productive process. It had been used by the ruling classes to give the working classes false hope for times, while at the same time recognizing it as a form of protest by the working classes against their poor economic conditions.

For Marx, then, humanity is God. We created God in our own image. We created religion in order to worship ourselves. The notion that God is merely our projection is contained in Marx’s assertion that man “looked for a superhuman being in the fantastic reality of heaven and found nothing there but the reflection of him.”

Conclusion

Marxist law is grounded in a denial of the existence of God and a belief that we and our social systems are evolving. These assumptions require Marxists to rely on legal positivism as the basis for law. The Marxist version of legal positivism adds the unique feature of class-consciousness to the state’s role as the will of the ruling proletarian class. Furthermore, the working class must rule under the guidance of the Marxist-Leninist political party, giving the party final authority on morality and law.

When those adhering to a specific ideology arbitrarily determine a system of law, laws will be created that are prejudiced against those with opposing views. In such a society, freedom disappears, as each citizen is held hostage by the arbitrary laws of the state.

Hence, Marx believed that laws are the product of class oppression, and that laws would have to disappear with the advent of Marxism.

Meanwhile, many uncertainties surround Marxist ethics. While virtually all Marxists agree on the dialectical materialist foundation for morality and the inevitability of the evolution of moral precepts, they cannot predict what the ethics of a classless society would look like. An ethical ideology that includes the inevitability of change and the evolution of morals leaves Marxists free to abandon generally accepted moral standards in pursuit of a greater good—the creation of a classless communist society.

This pursuit requires Marxists to dedicate themselves to the cause and to use whatever action they believe will bring about a classless society. Any course of action then, no matter how immoral it appears to a world that believes in an absolute or universal moral standard, is morally good within the Marxist-Leninist worldview. At the

same time, Marxist ideas continue to stimulate and engage thinkers in a variety of fields, including political theory, history, and literary criticism.