Why are rights considered a bourgeoisie concept?

[eric922]

I have heard a few people on the forums say rights are a bourgeoisie concept and I'm curious as to why that is so. It seems to me that Socialism promotes human rights far more than capitalism. Capitalism claims to protect rights, but it crush you underfoot if you dare to use your right of free speech or assembly to speak against the system.

[Rooster]

The rights of capitalism usually involve their call to rights of equality and freedom. But, these rights are related to the market to place. Equality in the sense that things are exchanged for their equivalence and freedom in that people are free to choose to who to sell and who to buy from. Most other rights stem from this. Anyway, that's just what I've read into it from reading Marx.

[L.A.P.]

I'm not necessarily against the ability to say whatever you want and such but the idea of "rights" are an idealist concept and complete social constructs that bare no logical reason as to what makes them rights. For example, the right to private property; why do people have a right to this? You can't really come up with a consistent material reason as to why people should have an entitlement to private property.

[Rooster]

I'm not necessarily against the ability to say whatever you want and such but the idea of "rights" are an idealist concept and complete social constructs that bare no logical reason as to what makes them rights. For example, the right to private property; why do people have a right to this? You can't really come up with a consistent material reason as to why people should have an entitlement to private property.

Yeah but you can't argue against it either.

[L.A.P.]

Yeah but you can't argue against it either.

Exactly. It's nonsense.

[Rooster]

Exactly. It's nonsense.

I agree too. Rights and morals mostly deal with social relations and these social relations spring from the material basis of production and what not. So all the concepts of rights under a bourgeois society have to be seen as results of a capitalist mode of production. This is why they are, well not pointless, but should be seen as related to the period of history that they come from.

[Dunk]

For example, the right to private property; why do people have a right to this? You can't really come up with a consistent material reason as to why people should have an entitlement to private property.
Yeah but you can't argue against it either.

Sure you can, comrade.

Most of the people who are a part of the bourgeoisie are born into their wealth. Social mobility is rare, especially upward mobility. Out of hundreds of millions of examples of people unable to become upwardly mobile, there are hundreds of high profile cases that are enough to keep the popular myths of upward mobility alive. I'm sure you're already aware of this.

For the sake of argument, let's say it's an upwardly mobile worker - a relatively high income member of the working class whom saved their own wages for decades, and opened a small business with $250,000 of his or her own saved wages. Before this means of production even begins to start producing, this start-up capital is often almost completely used-up. On opening day, it is the responsibility of workers to create the goods and services of that particular means of production, which will accumulate the revenue necessary to keep the means of production operating. Once this brand new capitalist has accumulated his or her original return of $250,000, there is absolutely no question as to who then has the right to own and control the means of production - the workers. Why should this new capitalist accumulate, many times over, the original investment he or she put into the creation of the means of production - especially considering he or she accumulates the profits of his or her means of production through extracting as high a rate of surplus value as they can from their employed workers?

Private property only exists because it is enforced. It's arbitrary.

[Rooster]

Sure you can, comrade.

Most of the people who are a part of the bourgeoisie are born into their wealth. Social mobility is rare, especially upward mobility. Out of hundreds of millions of examples of people unable to become upwardly mobile, there are hundreds of high profile cases that are enough to keep the popular myths of upward mobility alive. I'm sure you're already aware of this.

For the sake of argument, let's say it's an upwardly mobile worker - a relatively high income member of the working class whom saved their own wages for decades, and opened a small business with $250,000 of his or her own saved wages. Before this means of production even begins to start producing, this start-up capital is often almost completely used-up. On opening day, it is the responsibility of workers to create the goods and services of that particular means of production, which will accumulate the revenue necessary to keep the means of production operating. Once this brand new capitalist has accumulated his or her original return of $250,000, there is absolutely no question as to who then has the right to own and control the means of production - the workers. Why should this new capitalist accumulate, many times over, the original investment he or she put into the creation of the means of production - especially considering he or she accumulates the profits of his or her means of production through extracting as high a rate of surplus value as they can from their employed workers?

Private property only exists because it is enforced. It's arbitrary.

But that doesn't give a good enough reason as to why they shouldn't. Our morality shouldn't be based on this sort of idealism. The reason we should overthrow our capitalist oppressors has to have a more real and concrete reason. That reason is, there are more of us than there are of them. It is our class interest to. Not because we think it's wrong or right.

[Dunk]

But that doesn't give a good enough reason as to why they shouldn't. Our morality shouldn't be based on this sort of idealism. The reason we should overthrow our capitalist oppressors has to have a more real and concrete reason. That reason is, there are more of us than there are of them. It is our class interest to. Not because we think it's wrong or right.

The real, concrete reasons I suspect people may revolt against capitalism include a rapidly decreasing standard of living from burgeoning unemployment or underemployment. In such a case, justifications like the argument I posted against private property will be a tertiary afterthought to the necessity of overthrowing capitalism.

[eric922]

I guess the main reason I ask this is because I think the concept of rights are important so far as they are used as check on a potential ruling class from emerging. I would hate to see the revolution come and see a new ruling elite arise to control the workers as happened under Stalin

[Rooster]

The real, concrete reasons I suspect people may revolt against capitalism include a rapidly decreasing standard of living from burgeoning unemployment or underemployment. In such a case, justifications like the argument I posted against private property will be a tertiary afterthought to the necessity of overthrowing capitalism.

Yeah so that means that we shouldn't abide to the bourgeois ideas of morality, rights, equality or freedom. We have to use the force of our class. The causes of those reasons you posted can be interpreted in other ways. As evident in people voting for far right parties, voting for tories or whatever, still within the realm of bourgeoise ideas of rights. It's our job to show that their real gripes lie with the private ownership of the means of production (not with just private property, but is also included in the usual lists of bourgeois rights).

Comrade, excuse if I'm not very eloquent this evening. I have been imbiding in wine since I finished work, but I am trying my best and I don't mean to cause friction within our community. :blushing: I think we can all agree that we can't use the morality or ideology of capitalism as a reason to justfiy the overthrowing capitalism.

[Rooster]

I guess the main reason I ask this is because I think the concept of rights are important so far as they are used as check on a potential ruling class from emerging. I would hate to see the revolution come and see a new ruling elite arise to control the workers as happened under Stalin

The reasons that the soviet union got corrupted lie within the conditions that it was in. Not in some ideas of rights. Kleber is a good person to ask on this, and he has written many posts regarding this matter.

[jmpeer]

Rights, morals, values, and the likes can be argued and reasoned into logical and socially advantageous things. They're not nonsense, but nonsense doesn't hesitate to find its way to them when you give it the chance. Just ignore what those people say and get on with more practical things.

[TC]

Bourgeois ideology has effectively employed the concept of rights - including bourgeois rights such as private property and freedom of contract that the bourgeois interpret as, depending on their ideological variety, "human rights", "natural rights", "rights of Englishmen" etc.

However there is nothing inherently bourgeois about rights discourse and people on the left can and have employed it for their own ends and incorporated it into their own ideology - often with a different set of 'rights' people are entitled to.

Rights are of course not found in nature - they may however be required to keep certain theories of justice and government internally coherent - so in that respect they need not be purely arbitrary human inventions - even though rights are fundamentally entitlements and sets of duties that exist in the context of human society.

[28350]

Rights are of course not found in nature - they may however be required to keep certain theories of justice and government internally coherent - so in that respect they need not be purely arbitrary human inventions - even though rights are fundamentally entitlements and sets of duties that exist in the context of human society.

Furthermore, should our morality be based on a proletarian class ideology or on a communist classless ideology?

edit: ie. one based in the current class antagonism, or one based on a future classless society?
This raises the question are the interests of the working class the same as the interests of the classless society?

[Dunk]

It's our job to show that their real gripes lie with the private ownership of the means of production (not with just private property, but is also included in the usual lists of bourgeois rights).

Oh, I was using the term "private property" as a synonym for "private ownership of the means of production".


Comrade, excuse if I'm not very eloquent this evening. I have been imbiding in wine since I finished work, but I am trying my best and I don't mean to cause friction within our community. :blushing: I think we can all agree that we can't use the morality or ideology of capitalism as a reason to justify the overthrowing capitalism.

:lol: It's totally cool, I've been there many times. I'm taking the idea away from this thread that I should try to learn more about what popular concepts, morals, or principles owe themselves to capitalism, if any at all may be working class principles, or if any of the liberal bourgeois concepts of rights have any future in a possible post-capitalist world.

Don't step on eggshells or worry about friction on my behalf. You're an anti-capitalist, and are thus OK in my book. I'm not going to deride anyone for leaning towards different anti-capitalist tendencies, or for disagreeing with me over minor stuff. :thumbup1:

[mosfeld]

**semi-rambling**

The Maoist position on "human rights" directly relates to the OP's question. It's not really a question of opposing human rights as an idea or concept, but opposing the imperialists who have monopolized the concept of "human rights" to the point where the definition and direction of human rights are directed by the imperialists.

Human rights, according to imperialists, is that imperialist nations have the right to bomb, intervene and subjugate oppressed nations, while oppressed nations which supposedly have poor human rights records, and people have the right to be bombed, suffer under imperialist exploitation and be subjugated, etc.

According to human rights organizations, Iraq had a poor "human rights" records, which meant that the imperialists had a right to impose economic sanctions which led to the deaths of 500 thousand children and a subsequent invasion which lead to over a million deaths and immense misery for the entire nation, making the situation even worse than under Saddam.

As opposed to the class-neutral and abstract concept of "human rights", the PCP, more commonly known by the bourgeois name "Shining Path", promoted a more class-oriented and marxist concept called "people's rights". Under proletarian dictatorship, the people (peasantry, proletariat, etc.,) have rights -- after all, it's their dictatorship, but formerly exploiting classes and reactionaries do not.

Here's something more in-depth:


WHAT IS THE PCP POSITION ON HUMAN RIGHTS?

The financial oligarchy, a class of imperialism and specification of the big bourgeoisie, has always raised the old and torn banners of "human rights" so as to expand their world domination. Apparently imperialism, reaction, and revisionism defend human rights outside class divisions, but in reality, they only defend their right and freedom to keep peoples and nations subjugated: that is why imperialism today, mainly Yankee, uses "human rights" to dictate its "international norms," justifying their intervention anywhere in the world under the mask of acting on behalf of the "internatioal comunity," subjecting all to its hegemony. Ironically, the United States is the worst violator of human rights in the world, proven inside and outside its borders by invasions and bloody massacres in Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia; and so their "human rights defender" propaganda is but an excuse to impose imperialist class rule. Inside the U.S. by the increasing gap between "haves" and "have nots," permanent massive layoffs, 1.6 million prisoners -more than 10 times the incarceration rate of its NATO allies- some 8 million U.S. children (mostly from oppressed nationalities such as of African and Latin American descend) suffer malnutrition. In New York alone (not to speak of the U.S. colony Puerto Rico), 21 per cent of the total population lives in extreme poverty. Forty two percent of the poor is Latin American and 35 percent is Black, and the unemployment rate for these groups is 9 and 15 percent respectively (U.S. Census Bureau, 1996). The police is acting as occupation army in the barrios and ghettoes. The Supreme Court and Congress are canceling the rights of citizens, legitimate dissident groups (especially those from the Third World) are being suppressed, jailed, and deported (e.g., so-called "counterterrorist law") or are being subject to arbitrary telecommunications surveillance (e.g., illegal intercepts and wiretapping are widespread.) In short, internally the "beast" is gradually turning itself into a huge police state.

Considering today's world, it is clear that the rights of the working class and the people are not included in the touted individual "human rights." The peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have the right to have a decent life, however, imperialism condemns them to die of hunger, and sink them in growing misery, debt, unemployment, economic crisis, and bury them in profound ignorance. In today's world reality, the so-called "human rights" are those of imperialism to oppress and exploit the people.

To defend the rights of individuals isolated from the class context is absurd because a worker is not equal to a capitalist, as the former has the "right" to be exploited and the latter has the "right" to exploit "selecting" those, he or she chooses to hire. These rights are not genuine rights by warped deceptions to cover up oppression and exploitation. An example of that is the very "right" to private property over the means of production (factories, etc.) that is the supreme "human right" of the big capitalists and bankers which in reality, amounts to the "right" to make wage slaves of the rest of society. Moreover, a homeless person or beggar or even an employed union worker may spend long years in prison for most any mistake he or she makes, and often on completely false accusations, while a "Du Pont" literally would be found "temporarily insane" at most, even if beyond a shadow of a doubt guilty of a capital crime.

The PCP upholds and defends PEOPLE'S RIGHTS, rights of the class to exercise political power, satisfying all their basic needs, and having the freedom to live a happy life with dignity, without suffering unjust oppression and exploitation, and this is possible only with a New State of New Democracy, with the People's Republic of Peru now being formed. The PCP uses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - the Costa Rica agreements - to show before the world that the corrupt terrorist Fujimori regime, the old Peruvian state, and U.S. imperialism, are the biggest violators of these same rights they claim to defend and talk about with both sides of their mouth. In Perú, the defense of human rights propaganda is part of the low intensity war conducted by Yankee imperialism against the People's War and the PCP. The acts of terrorism by the Fujimori regime have already caused over 30,000 victims in Peru. Its bloody military has committed heinous genocides: El Fronton (300 political prisoners murdered), Cantogrande (100 prisoners of war murdered), Barrios Altos, mass annihilation of peasant communities in Accomarca, Bellavista, Cayara, Huanta, Huancapi, heavy bombardment of civilian population such as the Ashaninka community, and People's Committees in Ayacucho, assassinations in universities such as La Cantuta, Huancayo, San Marcos, etc.
http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp/pcp_faq.htm#faq15

Here's another good read: "People's Rights vs. Human Rights (http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp/rights/rights.htm)"

[The Grey Blur]

a lot of marxists have a very reductionist approach to human rights...to a degree this is understandable given their invocation for anti-communist and imperialist interventionist purposes.

that said, i'd argue that the 'right' as a category of political philosophy shouldn't be abandoned, and that seeing as marxism is generally an economic-based analysis and philosophical school it's thus only understandable that it lacks a worked-out theory of universalism, ethics, and other broad political-philosophical concepts. there are marxist academics who attempt to deal with those subjects and their work is worth engaging with, as well as pushing for more practical implementation of such ideas in activist campaigns, via occupations or strikes or whatever. the conclusion of david harvey's 'brief history of neoliberalism' riffs a bit on this topic and the potential of rights-based discourses for the radical left...for example he posits the counterposing of 'collective' rights or economic rights to those of bourgeois individual freedom. there's a tension in the whole nature of the discussion really (the collective vs individual, and how we pose those two social units), i don't think the sort of discourse on revleft is suited to a nuanced discussion of the subject lol.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Rights are liberal-democratic baggage that only exist insofar as there is a sovereign power capable of maintaining or denying them. Outside the context of an authority capable of exercising the force necessary to limit and define who-has-the-right-to-do-what-to-whom, the supposed necessity of rights evaporates. What we need is an ethics based on relationships of consent that doesn't rely on an imposed generalization of what we are/n't "naturally" "entitled" to.

[Sixiang]

The rights of capitalism usually involve their call to rights of equality and freedom. But, these rights are related to the market to place. Equality in the sense that things are exchanged for their equivalence and freedom in that people are free to choose to who to sell and who to buy from. Most other rights stem from this. Anyway, that's just what I've read into it from reading Marx.
Yep. The most right-wing person I can think of knowing is my government teacher at school. She thinks that the only reason why 3rd world countries are poor at all is because "they don't have protection of property rights like the US does." That's it. She doesn't even list freedom of speech, assembly, protest, and so forth as essential. In her opinion, the only rights that are necessary for a "free and prosperous nation" are property rights, i.e. the right to exploit workers and amass as much capital as possible.

[Black Sheep]

I'm having difficulty with this concept.

My understanding is that ights do exist, the do have a meaning as a term, but they're are social constructs, and depend, as everything societal, in the class system.

They do not exist independently, they aren't absolutes.There are no human rights on Venus and in Neptune.

Defined as 'a set of stuff all people in our society shoud have access to', what are the human rights in capitalism?
There certainly is no right in food,shelter,clothing,healthcare - economic difficulties take away these.Due to that, there is also no right to property.
In capitalism it's an ambiguous term, but it could be a product of class division.

In classless communism, the abundance & need satisfaction could be expressed as rights to clothing,food,shelter,healthcare,free time,education etc

[BankHeist]

The reasons that the soviet union got corrupted lie within the conditions that it was in. Not in some ideas of rights. Kleber is a good person to ask on this, and he has written many posts regarding this matter.


Disagreed. I highly recommend "There is No Communism in Russia" by Emma Goldman, for people who think that worker control by the Soviet bureaucracy wasn't akin to the lack of worker rights. Its lack of workers rights paired with its informal class system of workers and party officials made Stalinism an inevitability.