9 Marxist Theory of Rights

Dr. Viralaxmi Moganty

Table of Contents

1. Learning Outcomes

2. Major Introduction

3. Major tenets of Marx’s theory of rights

3.1 Marx’s perception of society

3.2 Private property and State

3.3 The nature of labour: Class struggle

3.4 Surplus Value Production process and Surplus Value

3.5 Protection of rights in a communistic society

1. Learning Outcomes

Marx’ theory of state and rights makes the students to know the significant contribution of Marx on the origin and nature of society, capital formation and its relation on the lives and rights of people and institutions and societies and nations.
This chapter also makes the reader to analyze the relevance of Marxist conception of communist or social democratic state as against liberal democratic state and present global economies.

2. Context to Marx’ theory of rights

Marx was born in 1818 in Germany. In fact he enrolled for law graduation in the Berlin University; but influenced by William Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy and pursued studies in philosophy. He was also influenced by French revolution, socialistic literature and sought to journalism to impact industrial workers who are suffers due to excess working hours and inhuman treatment. Because of his revolutionary journalism he was expelled to live in Germany; moved to London. His impacting works Viz., Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right; Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 1844; Das Kapital and Crtique of Gotha Progamme. Marx associated with Friedrich Engels in London and their combined works such as German Ideology and Manifesto of the Communist Party too influenced socialistic thinking in London; Russia, in Siberia and in his times and all over the world even after death. Marx lived in poverty, lost his children and wife due to poverty and illness yet not he continued to perform his social responsibility as journalist and fellow citizen to impart his ideas on human rights. For instance Marx from his young school days itself aimed to seek such position with which he can uplift himself and also others in society. Further Marx’ pursuits continued though his own writings and along with Engels. Marx despite his life in abject poverty consciously struggled to find a classless society; a society without economic and other social alienations.

3. Major tenets of Marx’s theory of rights

To understand Marxist conception of rights one has to go through his views on the origin of society and man’s development in various societies namely agrarian, industrial and modern civilizations. Also how the process of production and capital formation led for inhuman human relations in society and the need to examine these and revolt against if necessary to establish a social democratic society.

3.1 Marx’s perception of society

Marx was born when nations were technically advanced where mechanical forces entered human lives. Modern period as we understand is a period of scientific temper in the areas of philosophies too. Yet science and rationalistic philosophy could not help human oppression of one economic or social class over the other. Marx and Engels as said above through their combined thinking aimed to change the society. To them society is conceived on material development rather than on spiritual or ethical basis or even eternal laws or superstitious power. Their materialistic conception is named as dialectical materialism. According to this phenomenon of dialectical materialism every aspect needs to be studied in three levels: thesis; antithesis and synthesis. Thesis is that the original or existing state of world; society or anything. Things or human beings do interact when they are together; hence according to the second level of dialectical process human beings through their interaction will come to know their relation with each other in the positive or negative aspects. Once the things or beings in the dialectical process come to know the elements of growth or decay of beings and societies there develops a conscious movement that grows and results in to a new product. This final state according to Marx and Engels is synthesis. Marx applies the dialectical process for understanding economic and social relations of the state that determine man’s status. Accordingly Marx assumes a revolution due to the revolting power that is suppressed in the oppressed societies and nations against the socially and economically disadvantaged classes and nations when all the nations united in a world of socialistic state or which is called as a communistic state in its higher sense. In fact to Marx each person or nation belongs to a proletariat class to serve another person or nation for its material existence. The dominant class is called the bourgeoisie class according to Marx. The oppressed class is the proletariat class.

3.2 Private property and State

Marx and Engels together worked through their writings and mainly Engels studied the origin of family and private property. In the early agrarian societies man is measured in terms of ‘possession of cattle’ and land. When agricultural asset and cattle asset determines the status of household in his family the female household is in turn slave to the male household. Similarly master slave relations are found in the family conception of human rights. Thus all human relations according to Marx and Engels are related to monetary relations. Furthermore while polygamy was the features of primitive family, polygamy indicates the slave status of women. Early matriarchal families were turned as patriarchal which is a prime slave society. Similar in the society basing on the strength of cattle; human cattle to work in agricultural field and the amount of money invention of coin money together –all contributed for accumulation of power in one person or a group of persons . Thus the private property determines the social stratification. Thus there evolved two classes – proletariat class and bourgeoisie class as mentioned above. Accumulation of capital led to possession of private property. For example in family the wife represents the proletariat and the husband the bourgeoisie class. Similarly in the agriculture production the land lord represents bourgeoisie and the worker represents the proletariat. In the industrial production the proprietor is the bourgeoisie and the industrial worker of any category is the proletariat. This goes on between dominant groups over less developed groups. In fact there is vicious circle as long there is one dominant person or group against one oppressing person in human societies as long as the oppressed does not introspect of his/their status and question against their status. Thus the economic class is politically dominant class also.

3.2 The nature of labour: Class struggle

What is the nature of labour and what are features of working class? Civilizations of nations however sophisticated they are not devoid of exploitation and alienation of man. As we understood social class formation based on property relations some people exercise this monetary power to exploit the others. It is not willing a submission but a necessary evil for the existence and for livelihood. Marx contends that man becomes a commodity along with land and other goods necessary for production and running of an organization or society. For example woman’s labour becomes a commodity for the existence of family; workers labour for production and administrative or other works become commodity as means of production. The nature of labour is well explained in the words of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto:

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class-struggle. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-construction of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending class”

Marx was firmly convinced that bourgeoisie class changed all human relations: “It [bourgeoisie] has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the men of science, into its paid wage- labourer. 2 Thus Marx contends that the entire middle class includes everybody and law morality – are all the rules of the ruling class and others are subjected to their rules .

3.3 Production process and Surplus Value

Marx was sensitive to the most part for the industrial workers who lived in poor working conditions and with lowly paid wages. However his views on exploitation of labourer he further to extended in all working places including domestic front. But he started with lowly paid wages. in his Das Capital. The producer, the labourer is devoid of rights over the product he produced. The wages according to Marx are not justly paid. The value of labour is not actual value but an imaginary value. Marx identifies the concept of surplus value involved in the unpaid labour of worker due to which the employer accumulates capital consistently. While C stands for commodity and M stands for money Marx says that the commodity [involved in the labour of worker] again transforms into money. This is represented as M-C-M.

Unpaid labour

Thus Sur plus value: ————-

Paid labour

In this way the capitalist accumulates capital and also social and political power that hinders the growth of worker. This process is similar to agricultural labourers where the land lord whom Marx calls as feudal lord acquires power to command over agricultural workers.

3.4. Alienation and deprivation of rights of people

Alienation is the separation of a person from a thing or a possession or any right to human development. Such production leads to man’s alienation from the produce and other types of alienations. First alienation is related with the produce. The worker cannot avail the produce as much as he wants whether it is industrial production or agricultural produce. Moreover all the produce will be converted as private property for capitalist or industrialist or land lord or whoever it is. Second alienation is man is alienated from his own activity; alienated from himself. Third alienation is from his species (from his own character). The fourth type of alienation is from other men.

With low paid wages the working leads a miserable life and whole proletariat class suffers also from is affected psychological, social alienation. Politically he is still poor as the bourgeoisie class becomes also the ruling class and frames the convenient laws for its growth. Hence natural man who is creative and enthusiastic becomes dull; loses his natural being in pre industrial societies or agricultural societies and also in agricultural societies. This alienation is the root of man’s mechanical life of workers.

And one must always relate Marx’s every phenomenon not simply to industrial working class but to the entire gamut of global society. Marx felt sensitive initially with the industrial working class. But he tried to find the roots of human suffering. Hence Marx aimed at such society where man lives as a natural man; devoid of artificial selection of occupation for his survival and above all lives like free and amicable social being without his attachment to wages or money or produce.

3.4 Protection of rights in a communistic society

Marx constructs an ideal state to restore rights of not only the rights of disadvantaged hitherto but a state for equality, justice and common good prevails. It is through destroying of capitalist society which encourages accumulation of capital at all levels in the name of right to private property. He builds a socialistic state. Features of socialistic state:

To Marx and Engels democratic republic is the highest evolutionary form. They put forwarded ten steps for restoration of rights:

Abolition of private property in land and application of land to public purpose.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of rights of inheritance
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital an exclusive monopoly.
Centralization of means of communication and transport in the hands of the state
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; bringing into cultivation of waste-lands and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies; especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.,

The said state is not an outcome of a revolt through a dialectical process of social, economic and political classes; a class struggle which is crucial to Marx.

Evolution of communistic state through revolution:

Marx envisions revolutions capitalist revolutions; proletariat revolutions and communist revolutions. In capitalist revolution due to scientific advances the number of producers increases and there would be completion between manufacturers. This is a stage where demand for labour too increases. Workers with wages would transform as salaried employees. In the proletariat revolution the proletariat seizes the public power and production of the bourgeois transform as public property. “Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic definite organization” and “The struggle for individual existence disappears” contends Engels.5 Further communist revolution is however an outcome of proletariat revolution only. Initially it starts at national level but extends to international level for Marx said:

“Working men have no country … National differences antagonisms between people are daily more and more are vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of corresponding there too”

Marx and Engels communist state is a class-less state and bourgeois right is crossed when there would around development for all citizens in the manner: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.

4. Recent Marxist conception of rights :

Marx had influence while he was alive and aftermath too peoples and nations. There was tremendous impact of Marx beginning from the progressive literature all over the world to all academic disciplines namely law, sociology, politics and economics and anthropology. He influenced Russian revolution. It also impacted post modern thinking and in the critique of liberal democracy that facilitated unruly free trade and indiscriminate rights in the name of individualism etc., there are umpteen numbers of people and institutions that can be rated to have Marxist goals and inclinations. Lenin in Russia, Mao in China, Luckas in Hungary, Gramsci, in Italy and Rosa Luxemburg in Poland were influenced by Marx.

Lenin like Marx contends that there is no possibility of human rights “until all possibility of the exploitation of one class by another has been totally destroyed”. Further to Lenin remarked on [liberal] democracies, “. There is no a single state, however democratic, which has no lo loopholes or reservations in its constitutions guaranteeing the bourgeois.”

Mao liberated China from feudalism and drudgery of farmers. Peasant co-operatives and development of self-managed communes, self-regulatory systems are the changes brought into the rural lives by Mao9. Mao’s new democracy postulates “joint democratic dictatorship”; “an alliance of revolutionary classes of the worker” and based on the majority of the people. Thus Mao took the activist side of Marx than the philosophical side of Marx.

Rosa Luxemburg founded social democratic party in Poland and she is a Marxist and economic theorist. Luxemburg is popular for her theory on mass line to encourage mass strikes. She opined that ‘wage slavery’ continues to suffer even after expansion of suffrage. This is due to still existing workers’ alienation from means of production and capital.

Antonio Gramsci in Italy is another Marxist, and founded Communist Party of Italy during the fascist period in Italy. Despite his persistent illness, imprisonment for his journalistic literature against he continued to write even in prison. Gramsci contends that it is necessary to reform the concept of man; humanity is reflects in three levels: the individual; the other men and thought includes and the natural world. Further to human right is not state-centred but society-centred. Further Gramsci propounds that passive revolution has another dimension called molecular transformation. But to him rather than molecular transformation an end of domination is significant. Further he felt the need for a critique of three major structure namely stat, civil society with which human being can realize his full potential.

4.2. Wellbeing of working class: A social responsibility

We are still living in times of economic class as politically dominant however democratic our nations are. Today’s globalized world not simply facilitates communication but facilitates free trade and corporate culture where petty vendors are at stake. In the name of liberal democracy rights are disproportionately distributed and they need to be questioned. The term liberty and right to private property should not be understood in loose sense. Rights are inclusive of duties and social responsibilities. For example Corporate Social responsibility of recent times is a mandatory that involves the capitalistic groups of society to share their wealth for the well being of the deprived groups. This is recently incorporated in the Indian constitution too. Further employee welfare schemes and organized trade unions and other unions are the resultants of rectifications done by liberal democracies due to the influence of Marxist movements. Nations are actively taking development initiatives if not in Marxian sense through a complete state ownership but in socialist, secular and democratic constitutions.

5. Summary

We have started this module with how feudalism and industrial development excluded the agricultural and industrial workers from complete development. It was Marx who identified the exploitation and made the world to know the flaws capitalist societies. By the end of this lesson we find Marx’s idealistic society and his views on anticipated revolution in the dialectical process of development subsequently influenced the other nations; also influenced globally to replace liberal democratic nations into socialistic democracies to realize rights in humane sense. However one needs to relook into the prospects and consequences of both democracies – liberal and socialistic in the current day challenges.

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Reference

Varalakshmi, Moganty, The Concept of Justice: a Philosophical Analysis – A Reference to Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Marx and Engels, New Delhi: Serials Publications Pvt. Ltd.,2017.
Chattopadhya, Deviprasad, Marxism and Indology, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Company,1981.
Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philsophy, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973.
Selected Marxist Writers, in Marxist Internet Archive, available athttps://www.marxists.org/archive/selected-marxists.htm retrieved on 22nd July, 2017.