It’s a bit trendy these days for leftists to dismiss talk of ‘human rights’ – or the ‘rights of man,’ as people once knew them. In truth, Marxists went even further. But it’s surging again in the last few years. In the older days, leftists dismissed all this as talk of ‘bourgeois rights’ or ‘freedom.’ Now they frame it more in terms of privilege or the ‘rights of man’ being only for white…well, men.
Where did all this come from? I’ll give an overview of Marx’s critique of human rights and the rights of man. This stuff comes from his early political philosophy. And I haven’t written a lot about that. I’ve focused in this blog mostly on Marx’s later work.
