The Socialist Contributions to Human Rights: An Overlooked Legacy

Abstract

The nineteenth century industrial revolution and the growth of the labour movement opened the gates to previously marginalised individuals, who challenged the classical liberal economic conception of social justice. Yet, despite the important socialist contribution to the human rights discourse, the human rights legacy of the socialist – and especially the Marxist – tradition is today widely overlooked or dismissed. Bearing in mind the atrocities committed by communist regimes in the name of human rights, this article attempts to correct the historical record, by showing that the struggle for universal suffrage, social justice and worker's rights – principles endorsed in the major UN documents of human rights – were shaped by socialist ideals.

Notes

1. On this question, see Stephen Lukes, Marxism and Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp.61–70, or his ‘Can a Marxist Believe in Human Rights?’ in Moral Conflict and Politics (Oxford: New York: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp.173–88; and Michel Foucault, ‘Two Lectures’, pp.79–108 and ‘Truth and Power’, pp.109–33 in Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (NY: Pantheon Books, 1980). See also Claude Lefort, L'invention démocratique: les limites de la domination totalitaires (Paris: Fayard, 1981), p.46.

2. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (New York: International, 1964), p.26.

3. Karl Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’, in David McLelland (ed.), Selected Writings, (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), p.39; or Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’, in Micheline Ishay (ed.), The Human Rights Reader (New York/London: Routledge, 1997), p.189.

4. Karl Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’, in David McLelland (ed.), Selected Writings, (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), p.39; or Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’, in Micheline Ishay (ed.), The Human Rights Reader (New York/London: Routledge, 1997), p.192.

5. Karl Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’, in David McLelland (ed.), Selected Writings, (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), p.39; or Marx, ‘On the Jewish Question’, in Micheline Ishay (ed.), The Human Rights Reader (New York/London: Routledge, 1997), p.197.

6. Karl Marx, The German Ideology (New York: International, 1960), p.37.

7. Friederich Engels, ‘Herr Eugen Dühring Revolution in Science’, in Lewis S. Feuer (ed.), Basic Writings in Politics and Philosophy (NY: Anchor Books, 1959, p.270; or see ‘The Anti-Dühring’, in Ishay, The Human Rights Reader (note 3), p.212.

8. Karl Vorländer, Kant und Marx, Ein Beitrag sur Theorie des Sozialismus (Tübingen: Verlag von J.C.B. Mohr, 1926); excerpt translated in Otto Bauer, ‘Marxismus und Ethik, Neue Zeit’, 24.2, p.82, in Tom Bottomore and Patrick Goode (eds), Austro-Marxism (Oxford, 1978), pp.78–84; see also Karl Kautsky, Ethik und Materialistische Geschichtauffassung (Stuttgart: np, 1906), pp.127–44; Max Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason (New York: Continuum, 1987); Alan Gilbert on moral objectivity in Democratic Individualism (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).

9. See Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, ‘Alienation and Social Classes’ excerpts from The Holy Family, in Robert Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels' Reader (NY: Norton, 1972), p.105. More recently, the liberal philosopher John Rawls has entertained a similar position by calling on individuals, regardless of their class position, to envision social justice as if they were wearing a ‘veil of ignorance’, concealing the future status they would occupy in society, see his A Theory of Justice (MA: Harvard University Press, rev. edn., 1999), pp.118–23.

10. Engels, ‘The Anti-Dühring’, in Ishay's The Human Rights Reader (note 3), p.213.

11. The famous phrase is from Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (New York: Signet Classics, 1960), p.9; Dickens also evokes the horrors of British factory life during this period in his novel Hard Times (London: The New English Library, 1961).

12. In T.H. Marshall's words, ‘the Poor Law treated the claims of the poor not as an integral part of the rights of citizen, but as an alternative to them – as claims which could be met only if the claimants ceased to be citizens in any true sense of the word. For paupers forfeited in practice the civil right of personal liberty, by internment in the workhouse, and they forfeited by law any political rights they might possess.’ T.H. Marshall, Class Citizenship, and Social Development (NY: Anchor Books, 1965), p.88. See also Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (New York, Toronto: Farrar & Rinehart, 1944), pp.77–102.

13. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (New York, Toronto: Farrar & Rinehart, 1944), p.80.

14. For an interesting discussion of Chartism, see Garath Jones Stedman, ‘Rethinking Chartism’, in his Language of Class: Studies in Working-Class History (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

15. Chartist Petition agreed to at the Crow and Anchor Tavern Meeting, in London, on 28 February 1837, in Dorothy Thompson, The Early Chartists (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), p.62.

16. Louis Blanc, L' Organisation du travail (Paris: société de l'industrie fraternelle, 1848). This excerpt was translated by Ronald Sanders and reprinted in The Socialist Thought, co-edited with Albert Fried (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), p.235.

17. Karl Marx, ‘Universal Suffrage’, David McLelland (ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977); see also Micheline Ishay, The Human Rights Reader (note 3), p.201.

18. Frary, Donald Paige and Charles Seymour, How the World Votes, The Story of Democratic Development in Elections (Springfield, MA: C.A. Nichols Company, 1918), p.133.

19. T.H. Marshall, Class Citizenship and Social Development (note 12), pp.85–6.

20. George Henry Evans, ‘The Working Men's Declaration of Independence’, December 1829, in Philip S. Foner (ed.), We, The Other People (Urbana/Chicago/London: The University of Illinois Press, 1976), p.48.

21. Adam Przeworksi and John Sprague, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), p.50.

22. Immanuel Kant, ‘Idea for a Universal History’, in Hans Reiss (ed.), Kant's Political Writings (CA: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p.50.

23. Thomas Paine, in Sydney Hook (ed.), The Essential Thomas Paine (New York/Toronto: Mentor Books, 1969), p.267.

24. Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in Collected Works, VI: p.488.

25. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace in Hans Reiss, Kant's Political Writings (CA: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp.94, 95, 96.

26. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his L'État de Guerre in The Political Writings from Jean Jacques Rousseau, edited from the original by C.E. Vaughn (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962), p.300; see also Robert Derathé, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la Politique de son Temps (Geneva; Slatkine reprints, 1979), p.134; see also Rosa Luxemburg, ‘The Militia and Militarism’, in Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings, edited and introduced by Robert Looker (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), pp.76–92; Karl Liebnecht, Militarism and Anti-Militarism (New York: Howard Fertig, 1969).

27. Julius Braunthal, The History of the International (New York: Praeger, 1961), vol. 1, p.321.

28. Minutes of the General Council, 19 and 26 June; 3, 10 and 17 July 1866, noted in Braunthal, Julius Braunthal, The History of the International (New York: Praeger, 1961), vol. 1, p.321.

29. Minutes of the General Council, 19 and 26 June; 3, 10 and 17 July 1866, noted in Braunthal, Julius Braunthal, The History of the International (New York: Praeger, 1961), vol. 1, p.321.

30. Minutes of the General Council, 19 and 26 June; 3, 10 and 17 July 1866, noted in Braunthal, Julius Braunthal, The History of the International (New York: Praeger, 1961), vol. 1, p.328.

31. Karl Marx, Die Presse (1865), ‘Letter to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America’, Collected Works (note 24), 20: 19–20.

32. Georges Bernard Shaw, Fabianism and the Empire (London: Fabian Society, 1900), pp.22–38.

33. John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government in Three Essays (NY: Oxford University Press, 1975), p.380–88, 401–4, 408–12, or in Micheline Ishay, coeditor, The Nationalism Reader (NY: Humanities Press/Prometheus Press, 1995), pp.98–107; Braunthal (note 27), vol. 1, p.308; Eduard Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus (1899), or The Preconditions of Socialism, edited and translated by Henry Tudor (Cambridge University Press, 1993); see also Manfred Steger, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism, Eduard Berntein and Social Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997); for a critique of Bernstein's position, see Karl Kautsky, Socialism and Colonial Policy: An Analysis (Belfast: Athol Books, 1975), p.12ff.

34. Braunthal (note 27), vol. 1, p.308.

35. Amsterdam's Resolution quoted in Braunthal (note 27), vol. 1, p.319.

36. ‘The Stuttgart Resolution, on Militarism and The International Conflicts’, in Amsterdam's Resolution quoted in Braunthal (note 27), vol. 1, p.363.

37. ‘Déclaration des huit cours relative à l'abolition universelle de la traîte des nègres.’ 8 February 1815, in Great Britain, Foreign Office, British and State Papers, 1815–16, pp.971–2; see also Paul Lauren The Evolution of Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp.40–41.

38. Lauren, The Evolution of Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), p.41.

39. Later to become the anti-slavery International for the protection of human rights, one of the first human rights NGOs.

40. The General Conference of Berlin, 6 February 1885, in Arthur B. Keith, The Belgian Congo and the Berlin Act (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919), p.305.

41. The League of Nations adopted the Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery in 1926.

42. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, with an introduction and notes by Edwin Cannan (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), p.413.

43. Smith, Wealth of Nations, with an introduction and notes by Edwin Cannan (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976).

44. For more details on economic justifications for the British and American anti-slavery movement, see Stanley L. Engerman (ed.), Terms of Labor: Slavery, Serfdom and Free Labor (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp.59–86.

45. Karl Marx, Capital (London: Penguin Books, 1976), Vol.I, p.1033.

46. Barbara Wolfe Jancar, Women under Communism (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1978), p.74; Sheila Rowbotham, Hidden from History: Rediscovery of Women in History from the 17 ^th century to the Present (London/New York: Pantheon Books, 1973).

47. Clara Zetkin, ‘Nur mit der Proletarischen Frau wird des Sozialismus siegen!’ in Ausgewählte Reden und Schriften (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1957), Vol.1, pp.3–11; in Ralph Miliband and John Saville (ed.), Socialist Register, 1976, trans. by Hal Draper and Anne Lipow (London: Merlin Press, 1976), pp.192–201.

48. August Bebel, Women and Socialism (NY: Source Book Press, 1904), p.4; or, as translated, see Micheline Ishay's The Human Rights Reader (note 3), p.228; on women's emancipation see also, F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (NY: International, 1942), pp.148, 158; for an account on Marxist view of women, see Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1983).

49. Engels, The Origin of the Family (note 48), p.72; or in Micheline Ishay (ed.), The Human Rights Reader (note 3), p.224.

50. The 1802 preamble ran as follows: ‘Whereas it hath of late become a practice in cotton and woollen mills, and in cotton and woollen factories, to employ a great number of male and female apprentices, and other persons, in the same building, in consequence of which certain regulations are now necessary to preserve the health and morals of such apprentices.’ R.W. Cooke-Taylor, Factory System, or see http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk.

51. Robert D. Owen, An Outline of the System of Education at New Lanark (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1824); see also Eileen Yeo, ‘Robert Owen's Reputation as an Educationist’ in Sidney Pollard and John Salt (eds), Robert Owen, Prophet of the Poor: Essays in Honour of the Two-Hundredth Anniversary of His Birth (Lewisberg: Bucknell University Press, 1971), pp.65–84.

52. Robert Palmer and Joel Colton, History of the Modern World (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1965), p.503.

53. L. Trattner, Crusades for the Children (Chicago: Quandrangle Books, 1970), ch. 1, p.29, note 18.

54. L. Trattner, Crusades for the Children (Chicago: Quandrangle Books, 1970), ch. 1, pp.30–33.

55. For an interesting discussion on this issue, and generally for a very good book on the history of homosexuality, see David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp.383–96.

56. For an interesting discussion on this issue, and generally for a very good book on the history of homosexuality, see David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), ch. 8, pp.347–96.

57. For an interesting discussion on this issue, and generally for a very good book on the history of homosexuality, see David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), ch. 8, pp.387–8.

58. Oscar Wilde, ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’ (New York: M.N. Maisel, 1911); Walt Whitman, the Calamus section of the Leaves of Grass, and Democratic Vistas, in Mark Van Doren, The Portable Walt Whitman (England: Penguin Books, 1945), Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1941); André Gide, L'immoraliste (Paris: Mercure de France, 1917) and his Corydon (Paris: Gallimard: 1925).

59. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (NY: Harper & Row, 1987), p.380.

60. ‘J'accuse’ was published in Aurore, 13 January 1898.

61. For a fascinating account of Zionism within that context, see Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism (NY: Basic Books, 1981), pp.10–11.

62. Karl Marx, ‘The Communist Manifesto’, in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader (NY/London: W.W. Norton, 1978), p.488.

63. Bauer, quoted by Lenin, Critical Remarks On the National Question (Moscow: Progress, 1974), p.116.

64. Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp.117–18; also in Micheline Ishay, co-editor, The Nationalism Reader (note 33), p.184.

65. Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy (note 64), 157–258; Micheline Ishay, co-editor, The Nationalism Reader (note 33), p.186.

66. Michael Forman, Nationalism and the International Labor Movement: The Idea of the Nation in Socialist and Anarchist Theory (PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 1998), pp.107–8.

67. Luxemburg, The National Question and Autonomy (originally published in 1909), in Ishay, The Human Rights Reader (note 3), p.292.

68. Luxemburg, The National Question and Autonomy (originally published in 1909), in Ishay, The Human Rights Reader (note 3), p.296.

69. Luxemburg, The National Question and Autonomy (originally published in 1909), in Ishay, The Human Rights Reader (note 3), pp.291, 293.

70. Luxemburg, The National Question and Autonomy (originally published in 1909), in Ishay, The Human Rights Reader (note 3), p.292.

71. Luxemburg, The National Question and Autonomy (originally published in 1909), in Ishay, The Human Rights Reader (note 3), p.292.

72. Lenin, On the National Question (note 63), p.43 or in Ishay's The Nationalism Reader, (note 33), p.209.

73. Lenin, On the National Question (note 63), p.43 or in Ishay's The Nationalism Reader, (note 33), p.212.

74. V.I. Lenin, On the National Liberation Movement (San Francisco, CA: Proletarian, 1975), p.56.

75. See Steve Roach, The Question of Cultural Autonomy: Reassessing the Merits of Cultural Autonomy during the Post-Cold War, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Denver, Co., January 2002.