Author: Haroon Khalil

A socialist system provides for particular rights such as right to work, education, social security, rest, wage, vote, membership of social organization, etc. Heywood points that ‘The Soviet Constitutions of 1936 and 1977 … established a truly impressive array of individual rights.’92 However, these rights could not be realized because of the overwhelming presence of the…

Having achieved the end of a system that protects bourgeois rights, what rights are admissible in a system or society that the Marxian perspective treats as its own? Three considerations are important in a socialist system so far as rights are concerned. Firstly, inequality of rights is done away with and equality of rights is…

Under the capitalist system there is inequality of rights as well as alienation. This be so, the Marxian perspective seeks the end of both. But it is also true that neither is possible under the capitalist system. As a result, revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system is the slogan that comes into play. Till that happens, we may ask…

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…

It is understood that Marx neither concentrated on formulation of a theory of state nor of rights. Rights, as claims of individuals to be recognized by the state or the society, need special scrutiny if we have to construct any Marxian position on rights. Unlike the Liberal framework, which is based on individual as the…

Based on the grounds of human rights and the specific challenges to the universality claim of human rights, we can list the perspectives or theories of human rights as follows:

Insistence on universality of the contents of human rights and their being applicable to all, irrespective of social, cultural and religious context, has led to controversy. Firstly, the evolution of human rights in terms of content has led to the debate on values and culture specific rights versus universal rights. Secondly, there may be contradiction…

Human rights include various types of rights, ranging from liberal or ‘bourgeois’ rights to social and economic rights to cultural and religious and also civil and political rights. Chris Brown has identified three generations of rights as part of evolution of content of human rights.81 These are: Human rights appear to contain three generation of rights—civil…

It appears that human rights are treated as part of natural rights or moral entitlements that inhere in the very existence of human beings, right from the stage of conceiving to death. Arguments with respect to the scope of the human right have, for example, included right of an unborn child and right of a…

It is understood that the human rights trace their root from the natural rights. Andrew Heywood maintains that ‘the idea of human rights developed out of the ‘‘natural rights’’ theories …’77 Natural rights such as right to ‘life, liberty and property’ (Locke) or right to ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’ (Thomas Jefferson, American Declaration of Independence) or…