Republic of the Philippines

University of Eastern Philippines

College of Law

Research Paper on Human Rights Law (Marxist Theory)

Submitted by:

Igmedio F. Alcera
Carrisa Lyka G. Miranda
Dianne E. Rosales

Submitted to:
Atty. Bernabe Figueroa






June 23, 2014
Chapter I
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
Every person from the moment they are born automatically becomes a member
of society. They are born free and equal in dignity and rights without any distinction as
to race, color, sex, religion, origin and social status. History discloses that human
beings, particularly the low class in the society have been subjected to torture, force,
violence, threat, intimidation, slavery or other means which oppressed their human
dignity and liberty by reasons of discrimination and inequality.
Even Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity was himself a victim of human
rights violation. Jesus Christ in the biblical accounts, came and lived as a human being,
and was unjustly tried sentenced to death and crucified in the most inhuman manner.
This was the first account of denial of due process. (Mark 14:53-64; Luke 22:66; H
23:2-7). Hence, the concept of the human rights has existed and it emerged as a
response to the felt need to curtail human rights abuses. Public awareness has been
elevated so quickly that nowadays, human rights law covers almost all features of
human activity.
The philosophy of human rights attempts to examine the underlying basis of the
concept of human rights and critically looks at its content and justification. Several
theoretical approaches have been advanced to explain how and why the concept of
human rights developed. One of which is the Marxist theory which is the subject matter
of this research paper.
The researchers are tasked in this study to correlate the Theory of Marxism to
human rights as it is hypothesized in this study that the above-named theory is one of
the sources or origin of human rights that we are enjoying nowadays.
The succeeding pages of this paper will discuss in detail the connotations of the
word human rights and how it is related to Marxism Theory. Further, this will also
elaborate the researchers understanding and the relationships that exists, if ever there
is, based on the founded theories of some well- known authorities.



Statement of the Problem
This study specifically aims to correlate human rights to the Theory of Marxism.
Specifically, this seeks to answer the following questions:
1. What is human rights?
2. What is Marxist Theory?
3. Why Marxist Theory is advanced as one of the sources of human rights?







Objective of the Study
This study aims to correlate human rights to the Theory of Marxism.
Specifically, this aims to attain the following objectives:
1. Determine the meaning of human rights;
2. Know the meaning of Marxist Theory;
3. To determine why Marxist Theory is advanced as one of the sources of
human rights;







Significance of the Study
This study will be significant to the following:
ACADEME. This will significantly contribute to this sector since findings of this
study can be used as a ready reference on topics dealing on human rights and its
violations. This will also inform the readers on the possible relationships that exists
between human rights and Marxism Theory;
READERS/RESEARCHERS. Findings of this study will be beneficial to this
sector as this can be used as bases of their researches. Besides, other topics on this
study can also be the subject of this research works.
LAW STUDENTS. Findings of this study can serve as an on hand reference to
law students in their law education.
COMMUNITY. Proceeds of this study will be beneficial to the community, since
the results there under might inform them their basic human rights.

Definition of Terms
The following terms are defined both conceptually and operationally to further
grasps the meaning of this endeavor.
Human rights
According to United Nations, human rights are generally defined as those rights,
which are inherent in our nature, and without which, we cannot live as human beings. It
further defines that human rights are rights to all human beings, whatever our
nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language,
or any or other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without
discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.
As cited by Filip Spagnoli, Karl Marx defined human rights are the rights of the
egoistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the community.
According to Philippine Commission on Human Rights, human rights are
supreme, inherent and inalienable rights to life, dignity and self-development. It is the
essence of these rights that makes man human.
As defined by Merriam-Webster human rights are rights (as freedom from
unlawful imprisonment, torture, and execution) regarded as belonging fundamentally to
all persons.
Marxism
Merriam-Webster defined Marxism as the political, economic, and social theories
of Karl Marx including the belief that the struggle between social classes is a major
force in history and that there should eventually be a society in which there are no
classes.
Slavery
The status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching
to the right of ownership are exercised.
Violence
Is the employment of serious or irresistible force upon the person.


Intimidation
There is intimidation when a person is compelled by a reasonable and well-
grounded fear of an imminent and grave evil upon his person or property or upon the
person or property of his spouse, descendants or ascendants.
Torture
Under Article 1 of Convention on Torture, torture is defined as any act by which
severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person
for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession,
punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having
committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on
discrimination of any kind when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or of the instigation
of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an
official capacity.


Chapter II
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDY
Related Literature.
Human Rights.
As cited by Filip Spagnoli, Karl Marx defined human rights are the rights of the
egoistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the community. They are the
rights of man as an isolated, inward looking, and self-centered creature
Who regards his free opinion as his intellectual private property instead of a part
of communication.
Who uses his right to private property not in order to create a beach-head for his
public and cultural life but to accumulate unnecessary wealth and to protect
unequal property relationships
Who considers fellow men as the only legitimate restraint on his own freedom,
and therefore as a limit instead of the source of his own thinking, identity and
humanity (this is the way in which Marx read Art. 6 of the French constitution of
1793: Liberty is the power which man has to do everything which does not harm
the rights of others)
Who considers freedom to be no more than the ability to pursue selfish interests
and to enjoy property, unhindered by the need to help other people, without
regard for other men and independently of society
And who considers equality to be the equal right to this kind of freedom
(everybody can emancipate himself by becoming a bourgeois).
Human rights, in this view, serve only to protect egoism and the unequal distribution
of property, and to oppress the poor who question this and who try to redistribute
property. On top of that, human rights obscure this fact because they are formulated in
such a way that it seems that everybody profits from them. Contrary to what is implicit in
their name, human rights are not general or universal rights. They are the rights of
those who have property and who want to keep it. A specific situation of a specific group
of people is generalized in human rights.
Of course, this criticism can be correct. No one will deny that human rights can serve to
protect and justify egoism, oppression of the poor and indifference. They can help to
shield people behind private interest and to transform society into a collection of loose,
self-centered, self-sufficient, withdrawn, independent, sovereign and isolated
individuals. Because the rich have more means to use, for example, their freedom of
expression, this freedom can be an instrument of the rich to monopolize political
propaganda and political power and to use this power to maintain their privileged
situation. Economic relationships can be maintained by legal means.
However, in order to judge and possibly reject a phenomenon, one should also look at
its intended and ideal functions, not only at the ways in which it can be abused. Human
rights not only protect man against the attacks and claims of other people (for example
the attacks and claims on his property); they also create the possibility of forcing people
to help each other. They do not allow you to do something to other people (taking their
property, determining their opinions etc.), but at the same time they invite you to do
something with other people. In other words, they are not only negative. They not only
limit the way we relate to other people, they also stimulate and protect the way we relate
to other people.
1

According to Coquia, human rights are those rights, which are inherent in our
nature, and without which, we cannot live as human beings. This allows to develop and
use our human qualities, intelligence, talents and conscience, and to satisfy our spiritual
and other needs.
2


1
Flip Spagnoli, http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/mard-and-human-rights/
2
Jorge R. Coquia; Human Rights: An Introductory Course; Central Professional Books, Inc., 2000 pp 3
Coquia further illustrated that human rights are inherent because they are not
granted by any person or authority.
3




Marxist Theory.
As discussed by Berlin, The Marxist theory emphasizes the interest of society
over and individual mans interest. Individual freedom is recognized only after the
interest of society is served. It is concerned with economic and social rights over civil or
political rights of the community. In a capitalistic society where few men controlled the
means of production, an individuals needs and rights are never satisfied. The economic
and social rights in many international instruments of human rights are claimed to be
due to the Marxist theory of equitable distribution of wealth and economic resources.

3
Ibid.
Marx regarded, the natural law approach as very idealistic. He saw nothing natural or
inalienable about human rights. Such concepts of law, justice, morality, democracy,
freedoms as historical categories whose content is determined by the natural conditions
of the life of the people. The inclusion of economic and social rights among the
international instruments are attributed to the theory of communist states.
4

According to Abbdullahi Ahmed An-naim, basic to the Marxian theory of human
rights is a principle of equality. Every individual is equally deserving of having his or her
basic needs met; thus all are equally entitled to these rights, regardless of sex, race,
beliefs, and so on. For Marx, this equality provision means that ideally the society
cannot be a class society. Significant socioeconomic inequalities will have to be
eliminated so that everyone will have roughly the same opportunity to make use of their
formal rights, such as the right to free speech.
5

Bryan Nelson further discussed, that Marxism theory itself is an ideology
employed as a justification for party denomination and as a cloak for nationalist ideals, it

4
Berlin , Two Concepts of Liberty [1958]
5
Abbdullahi Ahmed An-naim; Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives a quest for consensus; University of
Pennyslvania Press, 1992 pp 181
became an ideology in the fullest sense. According to Karl Marx, the capitalist simply
compels the workers to work longer than the time it requires to create sufficient value to
pay them. Capitalists compels them, to labor 16 hours rather than 8 to 10 hours it
requires to generate enough economic value to maintain them. Workers have no choice
but to expropriation of their labor. Marx has described a seemingly perfect and
unalterable system of exploitation. Marx insists that the exploitation, hence misery, of
the proletarian is much more extreme than that injured by earlier productive classes.
Workers are transformed into little more than commodities, something to be purchased
on the market at the lowest price possible. There only value is the market value of labor
power, not their value as human beings. Under these conditions, not only is the
economic condition of the proletarian debased beyond human toleration, but the nexus
between the worker and the capitalist ceases even to be a human relationship. Thus,
unlike any previous productive class, the proletariat is not only made miserable in the
narrow economic sense, it is quite literally dehumanized. Marx employed the term
alienation to describe this dehumanization, and he devoted much theoretical effort in his
younger years to analyzing the nature of alienation in a capitalist system. His chief work
on this subject is The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
6

Tillman Clark also stated that as the Russian Revolution was arguably the high
water mark for historical Marxism, it is arguably the most important reference to theories
of human rights and the policies and practices that the architects of this event adhered
to and implemented. When looking at the Russian Revolution, it could be counter-
argued that the capitalist countries were the aggressors that forced Russia into
authoritarianism. Additionally, it could be argued that all states--especially revolutionary
ones--were founded on violence and suppression of dissent, notwithstanding the bloody
birth of liberalism which, as some authors have pointed out, were not inherently
democratic but were made so only after a protracted struggle.
12
But if a closer look is
taken, the theories of Marxism, especially after the Russian revolution, are imbued with

6
Bryan Nelson; Western Political Thought: From Socrates To The Age of Ideology 2/E; Pearson Education, 1996 pp
336
not only a willingness to use violence and repression, but a willingness to do so brutally
and with little to no moral restrictions.
7

M. Anne Brown stated, Marxism enabled quite a different appreciation of the
international dimension of rights from that offered by liberal and interdependency
theories. Various Marxist approaches have offered a critique of the dynamic structures
of enrichment and impoverishment, and so have given substance to the idea of patterns
of abuse and the assertion of rights beyond the boundaries of citizenship. Moreover,
drawing on Marxisms emphasis on the primacy of human production in the continuing
transformation of the social and material world, later interpretations of Marxism (neo-
Marxism, critical theory) have questioned the production of fundamental categories of
liberal notions of rights and of specific patterns of abuse.
8




7
Tillman Clark; http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/218/3/human-rights-and-radical-social-change-liberalism-
marxism-and-progressive-populism-in-venezuela
8
M. Anne Brown; Human Rights and the Borders of Suffering: The Promotion of Human Rights in International
Politics,; Manchester University Press, 2002 pp 50





Chapter III
DISCUSSION
Human Rights
Human rights are moral principles that set out certain standards of human
behavior, and are regularly protected as legal rights in national and international
law. They are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a
person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights
are thus conceived as universal (applicable everywhere) and egalitarian (the same for
everyone). The doctrine of human rights has been highly influential within international
law, global and regional institutions. Policies of states and in the activities of non-
governmental organizations and have become a cornerstone of public policy around the
world. The idea of human rights suggests, "if the public discourse of peacetime global
society can be said to have a common moral language, it is that of human rights." The
strong claims made by the doctrine of human rights continue to provoke considerable
skepticism and debates about the content, nature and justifications of human rights to
this day. Indeed, the question of what is meant by a "right" is itself controversial and the
subject of continued philosophical debate.
Many of the basic ideas that animated the movement developed in the aftermath of
the Second World War and the atrocities of The, culminating in the adoption of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris by the United Nations General
Assembly in 1948. The ancient world did not possess the concept of universal human
rights.
[5]
The true forerunner of human rights discourse was the concept of natural
rights which appeared as part of the medieval Natural law tradition that became
prominent during the Enlightenment with such philosophers as John, Francis
Hutcheson, and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, and featured prominently in the English Bill
of Rights and the political discourse of the American Revolution and the French
Revolution.
From this foundation, the modern human rights arguments emerged over the latter half
of the twentieth century.


Marxist Theory
The Marxism Theory believes that human rights exist insofar as the government
creates them and allows them to exist. The idea of rights is, therefore, entirely subject to
the supreme authority of the state.
Marxism is a worldview and method of societal analysis that focuses on class
relations and societal conflict that uses a materialist and a dialectical view of social
transformation. Marxist methodology uses economic and sociopolitical inquiry and
applies that to the analysis and critique of the development of capitalism and the role
of struggle in systemic economic change.
The main of objective of Marxism theory is not to promote human rights or to
support the separation of governmental powers, nor even equality before the law, but to
criticize these very ideals of the rule of law and to reveal its putative structures of socio-
economic domination.
With these ideas in mind Karl Marx argued that basic human rights are not fixed
but rather or constantly evolving according to the progressive stages of class warfare.
In the mid-to-late 19th century, the intellectual tenets of Marxism were inspired by
two German philosophers: Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Marxist analyses and
methodologies have influenced
multiple political ideologies and
Karl Marx and Friedich Engles
social movements. Marxism encompasses an economic theory, a sociological theory,
a philosophical method, and a revolutionary view of social change.
There is no single definitive Marxist theory; Marxist analysis has been applied to diverse
subjects and has been misconceived and modified during the course of its
development, resulting in numerous and sometimes contradictory theories that fall
under the rubric of Marxism or Marxian analysis.
Marxism builds on a materialist understanding of societal development, taking as
its starting point the necessary economic activities required by human society to provide
for its material needs. The form of economic organization or mode is understood to be
the basis from which the majority of other social phenomena including social relations,
political and legal systems, morality and ideology arise (or at the least by which they
are directly influenced). These social relations form the superstructure, for which the
economic system forms the base. As the forces of production (most notably technology)
improve, existing forms of social organization become inefficient and stifle further
progress. These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in the form
of class.
According to Marxist analysis, class conflict within capitalism arises due to
intensifying contradictions between highly productive mechanized and socialized
production performed by the proletariat, and private ownership and private appropriation
of the surplus product in the form of surplus value (profit) by a small minority of private
owners called the bourgeoisie. As the contradiction becomes apparent to the proletariat,
social unrest between the two antagonistic classes intensifies, culminating in asocial
revolution. The eventual long-term outcome of this revolution would be the
establishment of socialism a socioeconomic system based on cooperative ownership
of the means of production, distribution, and production organized directly for use. Karl
Marx hypothesized that, as the productive forces and technology continued to advance,
socialism would eventually give way to a communist stage of social development.
Communism would be a classless, stateless, humane society erected on common and
the principle of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
Marxism has developed into different branches and schools of thought. Different
schools place a greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while de-
emphasizing or rejecting other aspects of Marxism, sometimes combining Marxist
analysis with non-Marxian concepts. Some variants of Marxism primarily focus on one
aspect of Marxism as the determining force in social development such as the mode
of production, class, power-relationships or property ownership while arguing other
aspects are less important or current research makes them irrelevant. Despite sharing
similar premises, different schools of Marxism might reach contradictory conclusions
from each other.
[4]
For instance, different Marxian economists have contradictory
explanations of economic crisis and different predictions for the outcome of such crises.
Furthermore, different variants of Marxism apply Marxist analysis to study different
aspects of society (e.g. mass culture, economic crises, or feminism).
These theoretical differences have led various socialist and communist parties and
political movements to embrace different political strategies for attaining socialism and
advocate different programs and policies from each other. One example of this is the
division between revolutionary socialists and reformists that emerged in the German
Social Democratic Party (SPD) during the early 20th century.
Marxist understandings of history and of society have been adopted by
academics in the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology, media studies, political
science, theater, history, sociology, art history and art theory, cultural
studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical
psychology, and philosophy.


Why Marxist Theory is advanced as one of the sources of human rights?
Marxist theory is one of the most important theories of the existence human
rights. The economic and social rights in many international instruments of human rights
are claimed to be due to the Marxist theory of equitable distribution of wealth and
economic resources. Marx regarded, the natural law approach as very idealistic. He
saw nothing natural or inalienable about human rights. Such concepts of law, justice,
morality, democracy, freedoms as historical categories whose content is determined by
the natural conditions of the life of the people. The inclusion of economic and social
rights among the international instruments are attributed to the theory of communist
states.
9

Marxs theory of human rights thus coincided with a theory of economic
development and the idea that socialism would bring about not only political
emancipation of the working class but also the unfettered growth of economic
abundance through a new organization of the relations of production. As the Russian
Revolution was arguably the high water mark for historical Marxism, it is arguably the
most important reference to theories of human rights and the policies and practices that
the architects of this event adhered to and implemented. When looking at the Russian
Revolution, it could be counter-argued that the capitalist countries were the aggressors
that forced Russia into authoritarianism. Additionally, it could be argued that all states--
especially revolutionary ones--were founded on violence and suppression of dissent,
notwithstanding the bloody birth of liberalism which, as some authors have pointed out,

9
Berlin , Two Concepts of Liberty [1958]
were not inherently democratic but were made so only after a protracted struggle. But if
a closer look is taken, the theories of Marxism, especially after the Russian revolution,
are imbued with not only a willingness to use violence and repression, but a willingness
to do so brutally and with little to no moral restrictions.
Marxism is rather straightforward in its approach to revolution. Lenin was
arguably the first to truly grasp and implement the implications of revolutionary Marxism
and the active engagement in terror and suppression of the previous holders power--
such as landowners, capitalists and those who had an active interest in taking up armed
struggle against the revolution. Writing his classic The State and Revolution, on the eve
of the revolution in 1917, Lenin but it quite bluntly when he wrote that,
"The dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom
of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists. We must suppress them in order to free
humanity from wage slavery, their resistance must be crushed by force.
While this statement is contextualized with a discussion of increased democracy
of the underprivileged and the full realization that it is transitory policy that
acknowledges the lack of freedom inherent in it, the implications are obvious and
straightforward. His revolutionary counterpart, Leon Trotsky, in a polemic against Karl
Kautsky written in 1920 entitled Terrorism and Communism, put it in even more direct
terms:
Who aims at the end cannot reject the means. The struggle must be carried on
with such intensity as actually to guarantee the supremacy of the proletariat. If the
Socialist revolution requires a dictatorship the sole form in which the proletariat can
achieve control of the State [A quote from Kautsky] it follows that the dictatorship
must be guaranteed at all cost.
14

What Lenin and Trotskys quotes point to is an honest admittance of the need to
use force at any cost to guarantee the ushering in of the a socialist revolution. It this
theory, inscribed into the practical application of Marxist revolution, through which the
rejection of human rights and the following authoritarianism and repression is used.
The way in which Marxism treats human rights follows a very distinct ideology of
radical social change. The first idea is that liberal human rights are premised on
inequality and injustice and should be seen as simply a theory natural to capitalism and
therefore open to complete rejection. The second idea is that if a movement has an
emancipatory plan and ideology that conforms to the rejection of capitalism and the
desired institution of socialism, then terror and abuses to human dignity can be
accepted for a certain transitional period in order to suppress those who are opposed to
seeing this plan come to fruition. The rejection of human rights is to be tolerated under
the guise of necessity and a rejection of bourgeois morality.
10

Marxisms rejection of human rights has amounted, when in power, to the
equivalent of ignoring true political social redresses, suppressing civil and political
freedoms while giving a free hand to forces of authoritarianism and indiscriminate
terror.
15
It cannot be said that this was the intention, nor can it be said that this was the
logical, determined, path of Marxist theory, but there is simply no way to get around the

10
http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/218/3/human-rights-and-radical-social-change-liberalism-marxism-and-
progressive-populism-in-venezuela
fact that Marxist regimes and movements that have rejected human rights have also
been historic failures at using transitory force to bring in radical social change--and that
the Marxist theory of human rights played a large role in this disaster.



Chapter IV
CONCLUSION
The researchers concluded based, as Marx believed that laws are the product of
class oppression, and that laws would have to disappear with the advent of
communism. Marxist ideas are closely associated with despotic communist regimes,
since these regimes have claimed Marxism as their official ideology. Unfortunately, the
Marxist dream of a lawless society has led only to gross inequality and class-oriented
genocidal policies. In fact, Marxist regimes have been far more efficient in the art of
killing millions of individuals than in the art of producing any concrete or perceived form
of social justice.
But it appears that Marxism is still very much alive, and that it has deeply
influenced a direct line of contemporary legal thinkers, who have adopted some of its
ideas or picked up some aspects of this radical theory. Indeed, Marxist theory overlaps
with much of the current work within critical theories of law. This may be regarded as a
dangerous development, since history empirically demonstratesrather conclusively
that whenever Marxist legal theory is applied, at least two of its most dreadful
characteristics invariably appear, namely, judicial partiality and political arbitrariness.