In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscript (1844), Marx says ‘Man is a species-being … also because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being.’90 The import of this idea of Marx is that human being is, what John Plamenatz in his Karl Marx’s Philosophy of Man says, a ‘self-creating being’.91 This is an idea of ‘man’ as a self-fulfilling creature—a species-being realizing one’s self in work, its products, in interaction with fellow beings, in relation with the nature. It in this context that we can understand Marx’s analysis of alienation, where human being is alienated from work that one does, the product one creates, social relations that one is placed in and ultimately the nature. If we may say so, Marx’s ethical, moral and spiritual critic. of capitalist mode of production and institution of private property is based on the concept of alienation. While the political economy of the laissez faire economists, a la Smith and others, identify ‘self-interest of man’ with his atomistic, self-centred and possessive nature, for Marx man’s self-interest lies in realizing one’s capacity and freeing from ‘human self-estrangement’, i.e., alienation .
One may be tempted to ask, why would Marxian critic on capitalist system and private property constitute a critic of rights in a capitalist society as well? The liberal perspective views freedom of man in individualistic and atomistic terms or what Macpherson would say, realization of ‘possessive individualism. Marxian views portray man’s self-fulfilment and realization in terms of social and human fellowship. While the liberal theory seeks rights of individual to possess, transfer, exchange and accumulates property as an end, the Marxian view seeks man’s creativity and self-realization in work. Accordingly, liberal views argue for provision and safeguarding of those conditions that allow creation, accumulation, possession, transfer and exchange of private property. And these conditions can be secured by protecting certain rights that the state must protect against any infringement of others. This means, right to private property, contract and security. All other rights, such as civil and political, are meant to provide necessary condition for the right to private property, contract and security to be protected and sustained. Is it not that all capitalist societies insist on protection of these rights? Are not these rights class rights or what Marx says bourgeois rights? These rights by their very nature are to be applied unequally and are not meant to be equal for the bourgeois and the proletariat at the same time.
Capitalist system on the one hand, secures bourgeois rights and on the other, results in alienation of workers and in fact all human beings. In both the conditions, a human being is reduced to an atomistic and self-centred being. As such, rights are not helpful in self-realization but are mere means for an external end, the end of possessive and acquisitive society in which an individual creates and accumulates not for self-realization but for the sake of further accumulation; profit for the sake of profit.
Another aspect that the Marxian view contests is that rights are a priory and naturally available to individuals. A very basic question that comes to our mind is that when rights are social conditions of realization of certain ends, how can they be available before society itself is constituted? Natural rights theory gives primacy to rights that are already available to individuals before they even constitute society. This could be possible only when one decides that the individual is self-interested, atomized and remains so even if he enters the society. As such, rights of man are already decided even without the society and they are enforced on the society as rights to be protected. The Marxian view, on the other hand, argues that human beings are social beings and can enjoy rights in company of other fellow beings. Rights must be social rights and they must emanate from human beings in society and not a priori. Rights are not conditions of realization of a self-centred individual, but realization as a social being, which is endangered because of right to private property.
Legal rights are rights that the state secures. But state in a capitalist system will secure only those rights that are bourgeois rights. Be it rights under the Magna Carta of 1215, which granted certain civil and political liberties to the barons in England, or rights of man and citizen in the French Declaration and the American Declaration of Independence, which espoused the demands of the rising bourgeoisie, all reflected the demands of a particular class. In a capitalist system, rights of property, security and contract are treated as inviolable and these are the rights that are legally protected. However, it was the effect of reformist liberalism that argued for certain other rights such as rights to working hours commensurate with leisure and better conditions of life and right to equal wage for equal work, etc. that punctuated the early insistence on bourgeois rights.
Orthodox Marxian position that the superstructure, i.e., legal, political, philosophical and educational systems, is determined by the infrastructure, i.e., the economic relation, implies that legal rights are a reflection of the relations that obtain at the economic level. Legal protection of right to property and contract are reflection of the capitalist relations. Can we raise a question, which may also be relevant in the Indian context? Does any political system of capitalist society recognize the right to strike with the same vigour that it recognizes the right to private property? Even the Indian Constitution which may be characterized as a moderate liberal constitution for its liberal and social welfare mix, too borrowed the right to property and provided it explicitly under the fundamental rights, though subsequently it is retained only as a constitutional right. On the other hand, right to strike can only be implied under right to association and not to be found as explicitly as the right to property. Further, intervention of courts has led to the interpretation that workers do not have the right to strike. It is true that a constitution should not be a charter of revolution and its own destruction, but is it not equally true that it should neither be a charter of class interest?
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