What critiques of there are the concept of 'human rights' from the left? I've seen a number of people on the board react with general suspicion or contempt.
Also, if you're going to react with SPOOKS, at least explain why it's a spook, and why it's bad.
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I mean IMO it's less about "human rights" and more than human rights orgs tend to serve as propaganda sources for the west to denigrate regeimes they want to discredit, even if similar instances occur in their own backyard.
Spook doesn't mean bad m8. It just means that it's an idea you accept uncritically and allow yourself to be used by as a means to an end. Human rights might be a spook if, for example, you applied the human right to life so broadly that you wouldn't kill a home invader and instead watch your family be slaughtered before you.
Marx talks on the subject of the rights of man in On the Jewish Question, specifically in criticism of liberal rights.
They might as well not exist. They aren't even a spook because no one whose opinion on the matter has any real consequence allows their actions to be dictated by them. When you don't need them, they are irrelevant. When you do need them, you won't have them - the practical needs of power trump any such moral obligations the ruling class pretends to have. The only purpose they serve is to give imperialist nations an essentially permanent casus belly on all the third world, as there always human rights violations going on everywhere which can be used as justification for a military intervention or embargo when the need arises.
Alain Badiou critiques it in Ethics. But it's been a while since I've read it.
Because it's spooky idealism. "Human rights" seek to resolve conflicts related to material conditions through non-material means. As meatpuppet wrote, read Marx On the Jewish Question.
The first article of the universal declaration of human rights is a prime example of idealism. Dignity is the ultimately the result of material freedom. The means to enforce it are also material. The indignity of poverty and wage labor is not the result of a lack of rights, but a lack of self-sufficiency and opportunities.
Or take the right to free speech: which is useless if you have no platform, or if your voice is drowned out by others, paid to not argue in good faith.
That's not so much an argument against human rights as a simple recognition that it can't be enough to guarantee human dignity. The framework of human rights is not wrong, it's insufficient.
It's not insufficient, it's useless. Yet it does foster idealism and the idea that "rights" guarantee anything, which is why it needs to go.
The whole idea of rights as a (universal) guarantee-er of dignity is an anti-materialist stance, and distracts from the need to develop the productive forces, as well as practical solutions.
It seems harmless. But unfortunately it isn't.
What about rights enshrined in law?
when you get down to it, aren't they just laws that protect you from certain abuses, no different than any other similar law except in the perception that they're special?
But do laws such as "freedom of speech" deserve special consideration in that they hold significant sway in the evryday lives of people, despite being just a law?
Rights only makes sense in the context of a power that might abuse you. Rights are theoretical barriers on how that power can be exerted over you. In communism rights should theoretically be obsolete because there would be no authority over you that might be abused. The point is to see through "rights" as an attempt to pacify people. Just take a look at the news threads to see just how much fuckin' rights are worth.
That's bourgeois right. In a socialist society rights would be drawn up to ensure the freedom of the people, no?
if by special consideration you mean an absolute refusal to curtail any kind of speech then I don't know
obviously I believe things like holocaust denial and propagating nazism should be controlled/banned but I'm wary of actually doing it because if you create a mechanism for censorship all it takes is one shit election before it's turned on you
this sounds like one of those liberal "I disagree with you but you must be heard!" type of arguments
to be honest I don't give a shit if a nazi's speech is suppressed, it's an abhorrent ideology that seeks to bring violence on anyone not deemed pure enough
Not sure if this is what you're looking for James Peck's "Ideal Illusions" is a book about how the concept of human rights is abused by America as a pretext for imperialism and anti-communism.
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It's the same thing. Law is not the ultimate source of power.
At most it describes established practice. And then again: not always.
Laws don't protect against abuses. Enforced will does. Without powerful backing, or the means to enforce your own dignity, laws may as well not exist.
The main problem is that most people who applaud "human rights" never grasp the full weight of how rights work in reality. For every right one person, or group of people, has there is a mirroring responsibility on a number of people. If I have the right to freedom of speech, everyone else has the responsibility to allow me to speak. If I have the right to a roof over my head and food to eat every day, society has a responsibility to provide me with those things. Most humanist idealist who scream about "human rights" are eager to declare rights, but completely unable to enforce the mirroring responsibilities.
The reality humanists often overlook, is that there is ''no such thing as "natural" or inalienable rights. What rights society can provide mirrors what responsibilities it is willing and able to enforce.
The world would be a better place if everyone had the right to decent food and shelter. Currently, Swedish authorities are employing that principle, and are providing food and shelter for ALL inhabitants (not only citizens, or even only those who are allowed to stay). The result is severe cuts to the health services and nursing homes, and most municipalities are still suffering from severe deficits. They have declared that everyone has the right to all these material goods, but are unable to enforce the mirroring responsibilities (i.e. collect enough tax money). As a result the municipalities are spending more money than they have, while still being unable to provide all the rights the government has promised.
Every right is a service, and many humanists who cheer the ideas of human rights, essentially want to promise a service without being ready to provide it.
Why is naziposter our best poster?
Nazbols were right all along.
I find this ironic to read knowing it comes from someone who truly values "blood and soil".
I don't think Naziposter is really a *nazi* though. He seems to be a Nazi the same way Steve Bannon is a Leninist.
How would you suggest ensuring rights, if that is to be done at all
So does right consist of only what society csn provide?
I think Naziposter thinks he's nazi, because being a smart nazi makes him feel special.
The moment you need "rights" to guarantee your dignity, things have already gone off the deep end.
Can you just change your name to Poster Formerly Known as Naziposter?
how about we make a leftist version of human rights, these would of course incluse the regular version of of what is now considered human rights, but besides that it would include stuff like basic healthcare, housing, feeding rights, education rights, labour rights, and else, this way the human rights score is not perfect, but it better reflects people's actual conditions, unlike now, and this is a perfect way to know which regimes need overthrowing now, and if implemented the world would slowly drift to the left
because it's a shitposting flag?
He's an unironic Monarcho-communist, and links to anti-Enlightment blogs.
...
If society cannot provide the right, it is no right at all.
The universal healthcare question in the US is dumbed down to the idealist question "do you have the right to healthcare?", as if it is possible that you have the right to something without having the thing itself. The real questions should be "is universal healthcare a good or an evil?", where I imagine most people would agree that is is a good, and then "can we (society) provide that good, and if yes, how will we do that"
All monarchy lovers need to have a visit to France and meet some long dead friends
I have a right to everyone
Draka when
Feeling special is mostly the reason for leftist sectarianism.
No. Only positive ones.
I get what you mean, but you're probably talking about two different things here. You're likely speaking with an assumption that rights are legal protections by a state, while he's simply asking how to ascertain he won't be, say, killed, mugged or raped.
Until we agree on a different shorthand term for "the ability to do/be something", the semantic confusion between legal entitlement and a contextless principle will make discussions like these incoherent.
just fyi this is literally wrong
most negative rights come with an expectation of the relevant state body to guarantee that right, if need be by enforcing punishments against non-state actors who enfringe on your right idk about you but that sounds like a state service to me
outside of that even is the service of the european court of human rights performing judgments and sanctions against state actors who enfringe on human rights, which is also a service
at least thats how it the laws are interpreted in the european convention on human rights which is the only place in the world that enforces human rights in any meaningful sense afaik