5 - The Rights of Man against Human Emancipation

Summary

In a recent work, David Leopold mounted an attack on a theory long treated as received wisdom: the notion that Marxist thought is radically opposed to human rights claims. This thought-provoking revision is not enough to invalidate Marx’s early critiques of human rights, which became more categorical in his mature writings. Yet we can identify a logical weakness in Marx’s thought on the subject whilst fully recognising that the author of Capital was no positive advocate of rights either. The basic paradox is this: how can individual emancipation – the ultimate goal of communism in Marx’s view – be achieved without rights being demanded? This question opens the way for a rethinking of Marxist ideas on human emancipation as part of the tradition of human rights – Marx’s own critiques of that tradition notwithstanding.