Real freedom for all turtles in Sugarscape? - Presses universitaires ...

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Should a Marxistbelieve in human rights?Justine LacroixPhilosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways;the point is to change it.Karl Marx 1Abstract (in French)Pour la plupart des interprètes, il existe une opposition radicale entre la pensée deKarl Marx et les revendications en faveur des droits de l’homme. Cette grille delecture s’est trouvée récemment contestée par David Leopold. Dans l’ouvrage qu’il aconsacré au jeune Marx, ce dernier plaide qu’il y a peu de traces d’une réellehostilité au concept de droit chez l’auteur de Sur la question juive. Cetteinterprétation stimulante n’est pas tout à fait convaincante. Il semble difficile de nierque Marx est resté prisonnier d’une version idéologique des droits de l’homme. Enrevanche, on peut argumenter que la pensée de Marx souffre, sur la question desdroits, d’une incohérence logique et qu’elle présente en son sein les ressourcesnécessaires pour résister aux violations faites aux droits de l’homme.Nearly thirty years ago, Steven Lukes published an article entitled ‘Can aMarxist Believe in Human Rights?’ He answered his own questioncategorically, saying that ‘the Marxist canon provides no reason forprotecting Human Rights (…) a Marxist cannot, in the sense indicated,believe in Human Rights. Many non-hypocritical and non-self-deceivingMarxists who do can only therefore be revisionists’ (Lukes 1982: 344). To besure, Lukes did not argue that it was impossible for those with Marxistaffiliations and beliefs to subscribe to the concept of human rights. He did,however, maintain that they could not do so consistently: for Lukes, ‘to takehuman rights seriously’ – that is, to give priority to the interests theypresuppose and the obligations they impose – was ‘not to take Marxismseriously’ (Lukes 1985: 70).1Karl Marx, Thesis XI on Feuerbach, cited by Philippe Van Parijs to illustrate thephilosopher’s task during a teaching seminar with Luuk van Middelaar and Helder DeSchutter at the Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, Brussels, 24 February 2011.261
262A r g u i n g a b o u t j u s t i c eIndeed, Marx’s early diatribe against human rights as ‘nothing but therights of the member of civil society, that is selfish man, man separated fromhis fellow men and from the community’ is well known (Marx 2007: 44).Proclaimed as universal rights pertaining to the abstract individual, Marxsuspected that human rights in fact promoted the interests of a highlyspecific person: the property-owning individual in the capitalist system.Moreover, he argued, bourgeois ideology defined not only the context inwhich rights emerged, but also their form itself (Waldron 1987: 126). Thenature of these rights is ultimately selfish, since it assumes that there willalways be a significant enough potential for conflict between individuals tomake a coercive authority necessary in order to ensure that the actions ofothers do not endanger the individual’s pursuit of his/her own interests. Inshort, according to Marx’s interpretation, human rights feed what today wecall ‘social atomism’.However, the term ‘atomism’ is misplaced here, since what Marxemphasized was in fact the difference between social ‘atoms’ and membersof civil society. In The Holy Family, he thus observed that the definingcharacteristic of an atom is its self-sufficiency and autonomy. The selfishindividual, on the other hand, may cherish the illusion of being a selfsufficientatom, but reality is there to remind him that he does in fact haveneeds. This is why one can say that a definite bond exists between themembers of civil society in the shape of interest. This is the source of thecontradiction that trapped Robespierre, Saint-Just and their followers: that ofbelieving it possible at once to proclaim the rights of man – the rights ofgeneral competition, anarchy and individualism – and, at the same time, tomodel collective life on that of antiquity.Leopold’s interpretationOn first glance, it therefore seems difficult – following Lukes and mostother commentators – to deny the existence of a radical opposition betweenMarxist thought and the claims made for human rights. However, thecertainties of this interpretative scheme were arguably shaken by thepublication of David Leopold’s The Young Karl Marx in 2007. In this studydevoted to Marx’s early writings, the author affirms that – contrary to ‘aninterpretative commonplace’ – he can find ‘little sign of this purportedhostility to moral rights either in this text or elsewhere in the early writings’(Leopold 2009: 150).The first step of Leopold’s argument is to contest the moral status ofindividuals in Marx’s work. In the broadest sense, to affirm that an entityhas rights amounts to saying that it enjoys an independent moral status. To
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Real freedomfor all turtles in Suga
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On genetic inequalityHillel Steiner
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In defense of genderlessnessErik Ol
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