Can a radical social worker believe in human rights?

Abstract

Although claims for what are now called human rights have been central to emancipatory politics throughout this century, many on the left of the political divide have expressed deep reservations about the individualising discourses and divisive practices which unquestioned belief in such rights allow to flourish. The left's reservations over human rights can be traced to Marx. Marx (1966; 1975) considered the concept of rights and moral justification for them to be bourgeois products of capitalist society designed to maintain and extend the preeminent position of the dominant class. This paper, then, poses a fundamental question: “Can radical social worker believe in human rights?”