Human Rights as Hinge Principles

ABSTRACT

The standard interpretation of human rights models them on the constitutional rights of citizenship familiar from the history of liberalism. Human rights are, in this view, universalizations of nationally particular liberal rights of citizenship. This interpretation invites a Marxist critique. Like the rights of citizenship, human rights fail to address the deep causes on inequality, domination, and social violence: market forces that drive states into conflict over scarce resources and capitalists to intensify the exploitation of labour. I agree with this critique, but argue that it does not necessarily apply to human rights as such, but only to the standard interpretation. I conclude by excavating from major human rights documents a different interpretation. This counter-reading focuses on the life-value of human rights: their potential to expose the life-destructive forces that drive capitalism. Read in this way, human rights can serve as hinge principles that legitimate mass democratic struggle against capitalist oppression and violence. On their own human rights under any reading cannot solve the problems supporters think they can solve. But as hinge principles they can help legitimate the mass struggles that can solve those problems.

KEYWORDS:

• Human rights
• Marxism
• liberalism
• constitution
• life-value

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Jeff Noonan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Windsor. He publishes widely on problems of social philosophy, democratic theory, and the philosophical foundations of Marxism. He is the author of Critical Humanism and the Politics of Difference (2003), Democratic Society and Human Needs (2006), and Materialist Ethics and Life-Value (2012), all published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Notes

1 All references to the documents are to the on-line versions. The list of URL’s follows the order of the list of documents, excluding the UD and the RD, which have already been referenced above. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cescr.htm, http://www.unicef.org/crc/, http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/4a8aa8bd2.pdf, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cerd.htm, http://www.un.org/disabilities/convention/conventionfull.shtml, http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/1994-dec.htm (accessed March 22, 2012).