HR in particular

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhRBsJYWR8Q

Human rights today have the kind of status that the divine right of kings had in the Middle Ages.

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They are so deeply ingrained in our political thinking,

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that imagining a society without them seems almost impossible.

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We all know the famous line from the Declaration of Independence:

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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,

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that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,"

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But we should beware of what seems self-evident.

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In many cases, what seems self-evident is less an indication of what is correct or indubitable,

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and more an indication of our biases, an effect of the time and place we live in.

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One of the most influential liberal political philosophers of the 20th century, John Rawls, once even stated that:

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"Human rights are not the consequence of a particular philosophy,

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nor of one way among others of looking at the world.

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They are not tied to the cultural tradition of the West alone,

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even if it was within this tradition that they were formulated for the first time.

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They just follow from the definition of justice."

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That human rights "simply follow from the definition of justice" is, at the very least, a strange claim,

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because the notion of "justice" has been theorized at least since the ancient Greeks.

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Whereas the doctrine of human rights was not fully formulated until the 17th century.

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Can we really untie the definition of justice from the vast majority of the terms' history?

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Whenever we feel like some notion or idea is impossible to do without, there is a kind of therapy we can utilize.

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It's called history.

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By seeing how the idea of human rights emerged,

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we can then situate it as a product of a particular time and place.

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And those hopefully remove the limits that it places on our political imagination.

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A crucial distinction is in order before we begin:

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the distinction between objective rights and subjective rights.

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Objective rights state what is right in general.

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For example, "It is right to bury the dead," "It is right to obey your parents,"

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or "It is right to serve your community."

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Notice that these do not attribute rights to an individual.

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They do not state whose right it is to bury the dead.

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Merely that it is right.

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Subjective rights, on the other hand, are rights that are attributed to an individual, a subject.

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Hence, subjective.

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Examples would include the familiar rights from the Declaration of Independence.

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"I have the right to liberty,"

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"I have the right to property," "I have the right to a fair trial."

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These do not state what is right generally,

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but rather speak of rights as something that someone possesses.

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And it is this category, subjective rights, that constitutes the idea of human rights that we are all so familiar with.

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Something that each human being owns, merely by virtue of being human.

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Today, we pretty much identify "rights" as such with subjective rights.

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If someone speaks of rights, more often than not we can assume they're speaking about the subjective variety.

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Yet, they're actually an incredibly recent invention.

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When, for example, ancient Greeks spoke of what is right, or lawful, or just,

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they have the objective conception in mind.

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To them the idea of subjective right would probably be incomprehensible.

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In fact, sentences in the form of "I have the right to..." something,

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are not even possible to construct in ancient Greek.

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Ancient Greek philosophers commonly saw what is right, what is lawful,

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as being determined by the moral order of the world itself.

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What is right was not to be found in individuals, but in the harmonious order of things.

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In the relationships between the different parts of the world and ones community.

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Roman law famously defined justice as: "giving each person what is due to him"

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Reading this through the spectacles of our times,

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we might assume that what "giving each person what is due to him" means, is something like

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"respecting each person's individual property rights."

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But, as I already mentioned, the notion of a subjective right had not even been formulated at the time.

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What was due to a person was determined not by the individual rights they possessed,

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but by their position in the larger community, and their relationship to the other members of the community.

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The point of such distributive justice was to aim at social harmony,

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something that can only be understood in light of the community as a whole,

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rather than in terms of isolated individual rights.

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So what changed this brand of justice, so different from the one common in our times?

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What made it possible to think of rights as "subjective"?

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Like many things in the history of ""the West,"" one thing in particular is crucial.

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Christianity.

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First of all, Christianity conceived of each individual as having a soul.

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Something which places each person in direct relationship to God,

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and thus gives each person a kind of absolute value.

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Because the soul exists independently both from one's personal qualities and the community one belongs to,

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it becomes possible to view individuals not as the specific members of their community,

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but instead as abstract human beings, each being equal in sharing a common essence.

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Because the soul is both universal and eternal,

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human beings could now be viewed in abstraction from both time and space.

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Independently from the position they occupy in their community, or the world more generally.

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Secondly: certain Christians, for example: William of Ockham,

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eventually argued that if the moral law is inherent in the order of things, it leaves no freedom for God.

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As God must follow the order of things as well.

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Because of this, gradually, the moral law came to be seen not as something inherent in the order of things,

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but something stemming from the will of God.

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The importance of "order" is replaced by the importance of "will".

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Finally, because we are created by God, in the image of God,

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it takes a small step to identify the will of God with the will of each individual.

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Thus, the result is a morality built on universal abstract rights,

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which emanate from the will of each individual, by virtue of a shared human essence.

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We arrive at the full-fledged enlightenment conception of human rights.

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Some might be surprised by the significant role played by Christianity in the development of human rights.

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But this was made very clear in the writings of the theorists developing human rights themselves.

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John Locke, for example, one of the main philosophical influences on the Declaration of Independence,

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started his Theory of Rights from the claim that God owns us as property,

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and therefore endows us with unalienable rights.

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And this is stated in the Declaration of Independence itself:

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"Humans are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights."

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The religious parallels don't end there.

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Human rights and belief in God are also similar in that both are supposed to be something self-evident,

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rather than something you can discover empirically.

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And just as nowadays, people claim that without the doctrine of human rights,

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society would plunge into chaos.

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So people used to argue that society would plunge into chaos without the belief in God.

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So far I've mostly been talking about ideas. Namely, Christian ideas.

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But ideas don't just float around in the heavens.

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In order to be effective, they need to be established materially, in political and social life.

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The influence of Christianity is clear.

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But why is it that the ideology of human rights became so widely and rapidly accepted?

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Specifically in the 17th century and onwards, when Christianity had existed much longer than that.

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Well, if the ideas behind human rights are inseparable from Christian thought,

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then their political influence is inseparable from the rise of capitalism.

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In order for capitalism to kick off,

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the emerging capitalists had to buy a plan that was previously owned communally,

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for the subsistence of the people living on it, and turn it into land owned individually for profit.

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This was known as the enclosure movement,

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during which many peasants, who had previously worked on commonly owned land,

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producing for their own consumption,

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were forcibly and often violently removed from said land.

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And, now property-less, were forced to work for a wage.

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Thus people who previously saw themselves as part of a larger community,

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working together to accomplish shared goals,

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now became isolated and atomized individuals.

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And the production process no longer responsible to their community,

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but to their boss, the individual capitalist.

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Collective solidarity was gradually replaced with individual competition.

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Workers ceased being fellow members in a shared community,

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and became individuals competing for a wage.

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They became, in other words, individuals who got together in production

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in the pursuit of their own private individual interests.

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Workers pursuing a wage, and capitalists pursuing more capital.

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The ideology of human rights went hand-in-hand with the situation.

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It conceived of freedom primarily as negative freedom: freedom "from".

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For example, freedom from interference.

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Replacing the positive collective freedom people experienced in pursuit of shared goals before.

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Competition led people to view each other as something that they must be protected from,

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as something that constantly threatens to infringe on their ""rights.""

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And this is also why social contract theory became so popular.

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Positing that society was created through the establishment of a contract.

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If people are seen as individualized and atomized by default,

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and get together only in pursuit of their own self-interest,

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then the only conceivable way to form a society is to sign a contract.

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This led to the strict separation between what Hegel called civil society on the one hand and the political state on the other.

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Civil society is the society of the market,

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of private individuals pursuing their private interests independently of anyone else.

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The political state, in contrast, is the sphere in which people get together to make common decisions.

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Fixing the excesses of the civil sphere.

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Liberal society was shaped by this fundamental split.

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Private individuals on one side, and the state with its offices, courts, army, and police force on the other.

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Hence, Marx writes:

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"Above all we note the fact that the so called rights of man

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are nothing but the rights of a member of civil society

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i.e. the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community."

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The separation between civil society and the political state splits the individual into two:

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the private, egoistic individual of civil society on the one hand,

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and the political man, the citizen of the political state, on the other.

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This also creates a tension in the ideology of human rights,

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because they're supposed to exist independently of any particular political system,

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but can only be granted to a person if the state recognizes them as a citizen.

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The abstract universal human being is in constant tension

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with the particular citizen of a specific political community.

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The way in which human rights view individuals as universal and abstract

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was also befitting the capitalist production process.

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Because when a capitalist hires workers

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he views them as abstract individuals, defined only by their labor power.

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And because the ideology of human rights posits that rights are formally equal for everyone,

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it helps obscure the vast and real power imbalances that exists between real people.

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For example, the state proclaims that the courts are fair,

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because everyone has an equal right to a fair trial.

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But this equal right obscures the fact that how "fair" your trial is, depends on the lawyer you can afford.

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The doctrine of equal human rights does not actually make people equal.

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It just allows them to be viewed in abstraction,

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from everything that actually makes them the person that they are.

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This is yet another tension found in human rights.

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On the one hand, their supposed purpose is to protect the autonomy of the individual,

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yet by its very nature, it must view human beings in abstraction

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from everything that actually makes them an individual.

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But, even given all of this, it could still be the case that human rights have a net positive value, right?

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We should be careful not to commit a genetic fallacy here.

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Judging that something is bad, solely based on where it came from or how it emerged.

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It could be that rights are valuable,

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even if they were originally declared to legitimate the interests of the emerging capitalist class.

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However, I think that the problem with human rights

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at least as we understand and implement them, is inherent to them.

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To explain why we must ask what their fundamental problem is.

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Let's begin from a starting point that is often overlooked or ignored in theory.

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The enforcement of rights.

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Liberal political theorists, when speaking of rights or laws,

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often avoid speaking of their enforcement like the devil.

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This is because the issue of enforcement brings to light the power dynamics at play.

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Who has the power to enforce?

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But in order for human rights to be effective, they have to be enforced.

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Violently if necessary.

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So who enforces them?

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Well, those who have the power to enforce them.

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Those who control the courts, the military, and the police force.

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Namely the state. A state with the monopoly on violence.

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And in order to enforce such rights they must be more powerful than you,

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and have the permission to commit acts that you yourself cannot.

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And who does the state serve?

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Well, even if liberal ideology says that it serves society as a whole,

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it must by its very nature serve those who fund it.

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Otherwise, it would not receive the capital that allows it to exist in the first place.

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And who primarily funds it?

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The wealthy. In other words, the ruling class.

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It is their interests that it must represent.

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It's not a coincidence that some of the most influential human rights declarations were signed in palaces.

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A fundamental tension immediately begins to emerge here.

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In order for human rights to exist politically,

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there must be someone vastly more powerful than you, giving you those rights in the first place.

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Human rights, which are supposed to make everyone equal,

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paradoxically depend on a fundamental power imbalance between groups with competing interests.

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And if someone more powerful than you is giving you your rights, then they can also take them away.

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But if this is the case, why would the state grant those rights at all?

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Here Nietzsche's conception of rights in the Genealogy of Morals is very helpful.

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He writes: "My rights - are the part of my power

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which others have not merely conceded me, but which they wish me to preserve."

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"How do these others arrive at that? First: through their prudence and fear and caution

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whether in that they expect something similar from us in return,

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or in that they consider that a struggle with us would be perilous or to no purpose."

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So, say the working class is financially and politically impoverished.

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Tired of the situation, they organize together in a militant labor movement and threaten to overthrow the state.

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The state then recognizes the working class as powerful. Powerful enough to pose a threat.

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And because they recognize this power, they decide to implement certain labor rights.

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These rights are not implemented because the state is benevolent,

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or because it's enacting some eternal moral law.

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Rather, they are implementing these rights as a compromise between two competing powerful groups,

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in the hope that this will appease the other party.

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"That is how rights originate: recognized and guaranteed degrees of power."

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This way of looking at rights is more embedded in social and material reality.

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It helps us see how they emerge not as impartial eternal laws, but as the historical outcomes of struggle.

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Nietzsche continues: "If power relationships undergo any material alteration,

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rights disappear and new ones are created -

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as is demonstrated in the continual disappearance and reformation of rights between nations."

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"If our power is materially diminished,

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the feeling of those who have hitherto guaranteed our rights changes:

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they consider whether they can restore us to the full possession we formerly enjoyed -

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if they feel unable to do so, they henceforth deny our "rights""

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So to continue my example: if the working class ends up growing weaker,

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the state that previously granted it additional rights, no longer sees them as necessary and take them away.

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Kind of like what happened in the emergence of neoliberalism in the 80s with Reagan and Thatcher.

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The elimination of previously won labor rights

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corresponded to a rapid weakening of the labour movement.

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In other words: the very existence of human rights

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presupposes the existence of a power struggle of competing groups,

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with the more powerful one granting rights to the weaker one.

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As the journal Gegenstandpunkt writes: "Man has the right to be the servant of a master that attends to him:

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that is the miserable substance of the great Enlightenment notion of the natural human right."

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It's no wonder that the first two countries to declare human rights:

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The United States and France, were also some of the last countries to abolish slavery.

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This power dynamic that we see between classes also exists between countries.

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Take the so-called "right of humanitarian intervention".

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Something with no historical precedent, which states that one nation can invade another,

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for the purpose of stopping human rights violations.

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Who enforces the right of humanitarian intervention?

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Well, again, those who have the power to do so. The militarily and economically powerful.

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This creates a situation in which the powerful can use humanitarian intervention as a pretext

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to invade, destabilize, and exploit other countries, like what the U.S. did with Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, etc.

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While themselves not being accountable to anyone for their own human rights violations.

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Let me be clear here:

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I'm not saying that all these problems will be fixed if we simply stop adhering to the doctrine of human rights.

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Human rights are an outcome. A symptom of a specific social and political configuration,

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and you don't fight the symptom, you fight the disease.

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If we recognize the problem with human rights,

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it is the social and political configuration that produces them that we have to change.

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So long as we live under capitalism and the liberal political paradigm,

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rights are absolutely necessary.

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But if we limit our struggles to begging for the state to grant us rights,

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we will never address the more fundamental problem that human rights are a response to.

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The fundamental social and political imbalances that constitutes our society.

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The split between civil society and the political states,

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which is inseparable from the split between economic classes.

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We can begin to see at this point that human rights and the divine right of kings

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are actually very similar in significant respects.

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Both are utilized by a minority of the population, the ruling class,

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to justify its rule by appealing to something independent of society.

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Some metaphysical or moral law.

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Compare: "Sure, there are vast power imbalances between us,

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but we're all subjects of God, and we, the kings, are merely carrying out his will."

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And: "Sure, there are vast power imbalances between us,

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but we're all bearers of rights, and we, the state, are merely enforcing those rights."

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In other words: the ideology of human rights, like the ideology of the divine right of kings,

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tries to naturalize a historically contingent political situation.

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Portraying it as something necessary.

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It involves an essential contradiction.

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It declares human rights to be something that exists independently of states,

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even though such human rights inherently presuppose the existence of a state.

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So, what would need to be done in order to establish a society

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that no longer produces or depends on the ideology of human rights?

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It would have to be a society in which the significance of community has been restored.

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A society where collective decision-making is not confined to the state,

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but characterizes society as a whole, starting from the local level.

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A society where production is not the affair of private individuals pursuing their self-interest,

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but a socially planned process.

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It is only when people reclaim power over their own lives and their own activities,

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that they no longer need a state to grant them rights.

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Because their powers would no longer be alienated by a state in the first place.

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When decision-making is no longer the task of a select minority of state functionaries

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and becomes the task of everyone concerned, only then can freedom be realized.

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Not the abstract sham freedom of the atomized individual,

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but the real freedom that can only be realized through association with others.

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Such a society would have done away with the distinction between civil society and the political state,

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between the individual human and the abstract citizen.

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As usual, no one puts it as beautifully as Marx.

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"Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen,

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and as an individual human being has become a species-being in everyday life,

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in his particular work, and in his particular situation,

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only when man has recognized and organized his "own powers" as social powers,

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and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power,

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only then will human emancipation have been accomplished."

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Such a society may be as hard for us to imagine as it would have been for a serf to imagine ours.

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But it is only when we reject the political dogmas of our times that we can begin to envision emancipation.

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And now, let me thank my private individuals of civil society

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collected here only in pursuit of their own self-interest.

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As well as all of these, private, egoistic individuals.

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I'd also like to thank the fellow YouTubers who read out quotes for this video.

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They are great and you can find their info below.

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This has probably been my hottest take yet, because we're going full radical here on YouTube.

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I hope you enjoyed it, and remember:

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Abolish everything. Thank you.