Li Chaoqun*

 

 

Key words: Marx    political rights    economic rights    human liberation    human rights

 

According to the famous “three-generation human rights” theory of Karel Vasak, the first generation of human rights originated in the Enlightenment and was established during the Bourgeois Revolution in the 18th Century. Represented by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) of France and the Constitution of the United States, it emphasizes political rights and civil rights. The second generation of human rights is the fruit of international communist movements represented by Russian revolution at the beginning of the 20th Century. It emphasizes economic equality, which mainly includes equal employment, equal pay for equal work and social securities. The third generation of human rights comes into being in the anti-colonization movements after WWII, with the right of development as the representative. According to this theory, modern development of human rights can be summarized as a process of transition, a transition from emphasizing on political rights to emphasizing on economic rights and social rights. The latest “White Paper: Progress in China’s Human Rights in 2014” is consistent with the development trend of the “three-generation human rights” theory. The right to development is illustrated as the primary human right in Chapter I. According to the content, the so-called “development” emphasizes on the development of the economy, society and culture, which highlights the natural affinity of the second and third generations of human rights. In contrast, the political right is placed in Chapter III.

 

As a country taking Marxism as the official ideology, China also takes Marx’s thoughts on human rights as the fundamental guide for its human rights theories. Indeed, Marx’s proposition that the economic basis determines the superstructure has grounded for many scholars’ assertion that economic rights prevail political rights. However, exploring deep into Marx’s discourses on human rights and the relations of economy and politics, it is easy to discover that it’s not Marx’s opinion on this issue. On the contrary, in the eyes of Marx, the faults of the first generation of human rights do not lie in its partially emphasizing on political rights and ignoring economic rights. Emphasizing on economic rights is not necessarily affirming economic rights and belittling political rights. Actually, while we are emphasizing the second and the third generations of human rights as the sublation of the first generation of human rights, or even using them to confront the first generation of human rights, Marx’s thoughts on human rights play an important role in bringing us back to the issue of political rights in human rights system. 

 

 

In On the Jewish Question, Marx divides general “rights of man” into two parts, and reveals that rights of man in a narrow sense are different from political rights. “These rights of man are, in part, political rights, rights that can only be exercised in a community with others. Their content is participation in the community, and specifically in the political community, in the life of the state. They come within the category of political freedom, the category of civic rights; ... The other part of the rights of man remains to be examined--the droits d’homme, insofar as it differs from the droits d’citoyen.”¹ Marx further notes that the latter “is nothing but the rights of a member of the civil society--i.e., the rights of an egoistic man, of a man separated from other men and from the community.”²

 

Such a distinction is based on the dualistic social situations established in modern bourgeois revolution, that is, the separation of a civil society and a political state. Marx took the feudal society as a unified political society, because the old civil society was “directly political”. Its elements, for example, property, the family, or the mode of labor, were raised to the level of political life in the form of seigniory, estates, and corporations. Modern Bourgeois Revolution as the political emancipation overthrew this sovereign power and its basis--the privileges, guilds and hierarchies. The political revolution thereby abolished the political character of the civil society. It broke up a civil society into a political state and a civil society. At the same time, the civil society further broke down into independent individuals. This man, the member of a civil society, is thus the basis and precondition of the political state. He is recognized as such by this state in the rights of man.³

 

In this case, political rights and narrow human rights respectively correspond to a political state and a civil society. Then the character of a civil society exactly stands for that of narrow human rights. As Marx notes, “The perfect political state is, by its nature, man’s species-life, as opposed to his material life. All the preconditions of this egoistic life continue to exist in civil society outside the sphere of the state, but as qualities of civil society.”⁴ In this contrast, a civil society, at the first place, means the non-political spheres of the life of a man, with material life and egoism as two characters. Just like what Hegel has mentioned, the basis of a civil society is “the hierarchy of needs”. It is exactly the place where the special, isolated individual seeks for his private material interests in the principle of egoism. Thus, the life of a civil society, by its nature, is a man’s real economic life. This character reflects in the concept of the rights of man. Marx took the French Constitution (1793) (i.e., Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1793) as textual basis and analyzed the four basic contents of the rights of man one by one--liberty, property, equality and security. In his analysis, the right of property was put at the most prominent place. “The practical application of a man’s right to liberty is the man’s right to private property.”⁵ In other words, liberty, in real life, is the liberty to obtain, enjoy and dispose of private property. In this liberty, man is treated as an isolated monad. The right of man to liberty is based on the separation of man from man, and the restrictions created by law for man’s behaviors. In this way this state of separation was confirmed. Thus liberty is a “separated right”, a “narrow right restricted to itself”. Equality is nothing but the equality of the liberty described above. Security, as the highest social concept of a civil society, is the security of the liberty and equality described above. To the end, it’s the security of the right of private property. Clearly, the right of property is the most fundamental and substantive content of the rights of man. It represents the material interests all citizens pursue, and paints the rights of man rich color of a civil society. Marx has commented on this issue, “None of the so-called rights of man, therefore, go beyond egoistic man, beyond man as a member of a civil society--that is, an individual withdrawn into himself, into the confines of his private interests and private caprice, and separated from the community. …The sole bond holding them together is natural necessity, needs and private interests, the preservation of their property and their egoistic selves.”⁶

 

Classic theory on the rights of man stems from the thoughts of modern natural law. Its theoretical paradigm was first created by Hobbes and was further developed and improved by Locke. On one hand, by setting “prior political” natural state, “non-political” individual was proved to have an original dominant position. The desire or passion of self-preservation was illustrated as the basic principle and purpose of human activities. On the other hand, by social contract, “the birth of Leviathan” was instructed. The political union and the purpose of state power were set to safeguard the self-preservation of its members. Therefore, the concept and the rights of man and the basis of this system lay in self-preservation, the most fundamental natural right. Locke was not satisfied with such an abstract description of “self-preservation”. He explained the substantive content of self-preservation in a more specific way. Body preservation was the priority of self-preservation, which relied on the acquisition of external substances, that is, “meat and drink and such other things as Nature affords for their subsistence”.⁷ Yet only through labor can man got the materials for his life. The consequent of this process was the right of property. According to Locke, at the beginning of the natural state, land and all lower animals and all other natural resources for man’s subsistence were owned by them all. There was no so-called right of property.⁸ Yet at the same time, there was one right that was only owned by each individual, that is, his ownership to his body.⁹ Labor is the practice of this original ownership. Man’s ownership of external materials arouses in labor. “Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”¹⁰ The gaining of the property right and the realization of self-preservation combine to one fact in labor. In this way, the right of property endows self-preservation with specific form and makes it the most basic “natural right”. Based on this, the original purpose of state is further clarified, which is not only for Hobbes’ “peace”, but also for people to live richly and freely. The most fundamental purpose of political society is to preserve and enlarge the property right of its members.

 

The largest difference between Locke and Hobbes is that Locke did not partially emphasize the gospel that Leviathan (state power) brought to its members, but kept a wary eye on the power of government. He thought that, with an autocratic government, the basic right of citizens might not be protected but might suffer from a government’s reckless infringement. Such a political society was even worse than a natural state. Thus he did not only design the scheme of check and balance, but designed to people the supervision right or even the resistance right over a government. What man used to restrain the power of government were exactly their political rights.  Studying deep into Locke’s logics, it is not hard to find that property rights prevails political rights. This is because, on one hand, property rights emerge earlier than political rights. The former emerges in natural state and goes through political society; while, the later only emerges in a political society. On the other hand, it is because political rights are more of rights of measures or tools. The purpose of political rights is to restrain a political power, to prevent it from deviating from its fundamental purpose. Yet no matter political rights or political power, the fundamental purpose is always to secure and realize the property rights of social members. 

 

Above all, Marx’s analysis on narrow rights of man is consistent with classic theory on the rights of man. Both of them stress that economic right (property right) is the most fundamental right of man.

 

 

The proposition, “a civil society decides a political state”, and another one deriving from it, “an economic right prevails a political right”, are actually Marx’s real judgments on enlightenment ideas and the real social life, which are also the origins of his critics on the rights of man in Enlightenment Movement. To Marx, the propositions above express “an especially puzzling fact” or “upside-down” relations.¹¹ The limitation of modern Bourgeois Revolution lies in the political state’s attitude to a civil society. “It regards civil society, the world of needs, labor, private interests, civil law, as the basis of its existence, as a precondition not requiring further substantiation.”¹² In order to “take away the firewood from under the cauldron”, Marx focused his critics on a civil society, which inevitably directed to economic rights.

 

Stipulating citizen’s fundamental rights in the constitution and laws and securing them with state power are only the external manifestations or realization forms of the rights of man. The purpose or spiritual core of the rights of man is humanity, that is, to admit and realize the subjectivity that each individual owns. It also means that liberty should be an important value of the rights of man. The theory of natural rights just expresses economic liberty by the right of property. Based on this, it develops other rights and liberties of man, and man’s subjectivity in political community. However, through the observation of a civil society, Marx discovered that the right of property was unable to bear the subjectivity and liberty of man. He noted precisely that “in this society (i.e., the civil society), man act as private individuals, take others as tools and degrade themselves as tools and further become the toys of the dissident power.” This at least reveals two defects of a civil society. The first is the conflicts and belittle between man and man; the second is the denial of man’s essential liberty in the conflicting relations. The second is the key. According to egoism, man always considers meeting his own needs as the origins of his behaviors and minds. In other words, man’s egoism and behaviors are desired by his needs, which show man’s relying on things. Man’s egoism and behaviors, in the end, are not out of self-awareness, but are restricted by his desires and natural necessity. Thus the analysis based on egoism will overthrow the relation between man and things. In the second part of On the Jewish Question, Marx noted that it was dissident power that enslaved man in a civil society. By observing “daily Jews”, Marx found the worldly “Jewish spirits”. Totally there were three spirits: the secular bases of Judaism were Practical need and self-interest; the worldly religion of the Jew was Huckstering; and, his worldly God was Money.¹³  These are actually the principles of a civil society. “Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society; … The god of practical need and self-interest is money.”¹⁴ Thus the relations of a modern civil society and a political state constructed by political revolution is that “Jews liberated themselves in a Jewish way”.¹⁵ The conflict between Jews and actual political power, or the conflict between a civil society and a political state is just the conflict between money and politics. The former only outmatches the latter in concepts. In reality, the community life represented by politics is enslaved by the latter. In the enlightenment thinkers’ justification of the property right, such rights or values as liberty, equality, security and others only exist in private property. The completion of political revolution and its declaration of the rights of man create the general Jews in a modern society, who, through the gaining of money and property, obtain the identity of “man” and citizens. In this way, money is no longer the money of man, nor is property. They gained independence and become the measure of basic human life. 

 

On this issue, Marx made a deep analysis with the theory of alienated labor in the Paris Manuscripts. The alienation is developed in four levels: things enslaving of man, the compulsory alienated labor on man’s body and spirit, the existence of man and the estrangement from his nature, and the separation and confrontation between men. The former two levels are the alienation of man in economic process and constitute the sources of latter two levels. “It estranges from man his own body, as well as external nature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect.…What applies to a man’s relation to his work, to the product of his labor and to himself, also holds of a man’s relation to the other man, and to the other man’s labor and object of labor.”¹⁶ Labor is the most basic real economic activity. Marx’s assertion above, on one hand, illustrates that social relations decided by economic relations are exactly the expressions of alienation; on the other hand, it notes that alienation takes place in the field of economy at first. Correspondingly, as an economic right, the right of property is a necessary result of alienation. “Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself.” The right of property and alienation also interact with and reinforce each other. “On the one hand private property is the product of alienated labor, and that on the other (hand) it is the means by which labor alienates itself, the realization of this alienation.”¹⁷

 

The relations between the right of property and alienation show that man is always driven by external force and natural necessity in economic life, and can’t act on his own will freely. Alienated economic relations become the measure of man’s life in a society. Only following its relations with materials, can man truly confirm his position in a society; and, only taking materials as intermediary can man establish relations with others. In other words, the property right’s denial of man not only exists in the relations between men, but also in man’s nature. Therefore, in the end, the property right’s denial of man’s subjectivity and liberty does not lie in the economic exploitation and oppression, but in the oppression from economic relations and property itself as external forces. 

 

Stressing economic equality and putting forward new types of economic rights such as the right of just and good working, the right of social security and the right of adequate standards of living are rectifying the pauperization and dehumanization caused by partial recognition of the right of private property. However, though Marx’s critics on economic rights only focuse on the right of property, in the end, it directs to the whole alienated economic relations and social conditions. Actually substantive critics are on economic rights of all forms in the alienated world. This is not partially about poverty or richness in economy, but about the nature of liberty of man. Marx clearly specified, “An enforced increase of wages (disregarding all other difficulties, including the fact that it would only be by force, too, that such an increase, being an anomaly, could be maintained) would therefore be nothing but better payment for the slave, and would not win either for the worker or for labor their human status and dignity.”¹⁸ At the same time, he criticized the “crude communism” which had jealousy and desire of equalitarianism to richer private property with fierce words. It was unable to abandon the alienation in real economic relations but was only abstract denial of the world.  It did not exceed the level of private property, but was merely one form in which the vileness of private property, which wanted to set itself up as the positive community system, came to the surface.¹⁹ Marx’s fierce words were actually emphasizing that as long as alienated labor and the alienated economic and social relations emerging from it were not eliminated, no matter how equal it was in the distribution of economic interests, man’s subjectivity and nature of liberty could never be truly realized. Specifically, even though increasing workers’ wages and providing them with adequate and considerable social welfare, as long as labor was still alienated labor, still the compulsion of natural necessity, and still taken as means of subsistence but not liberty of individual activities, once the compulsion ended, once workers no longer needed to meet their living needs by labor wages, they would still consider labor as alienated activities, or even like what Marx said “labor is shunned like the plague”.²⁰ Clearly, partial asserting “economic rights prevail” only falls into the trap of alienation, and is unable to realize the basis of the rights of man, the humanity. 

 

 

Looking into Marx’s attitude to political rights, first of all one issue must be correctly construed: how Marx viewed politics. In On the Jewish Question, two key opinions kept appearing--“civil society decides political state”, and “political revolution can’t reach the level of ‘human revolution’”. Superficially, it seems Marx paid no attention to politics. Yet the question is how Marx defined “politics” in the end. 

 

Only to admit the reality that “civil society decides political state”, Marx wouldn’t have wasted so many paragraphs stressing the dualistic confrontation between a political state and a civil society in On the Jewish Question, and would not criticized it as “upside down”. All these showed that on the question of the relations between a political state and a civil society, Marx actually held an attitude contrary to facts and values. In his assertion on the dualistic confrontation, Marx modified it especially with the phrase “by its nature”.²¹ The “nature” here is obviously different from that above. The “nature” here refers to “the life of species”, which is contrary to the material life in a civil society. 

 

The phrases that “the life of species” and “species-being” are frequently used in On the Jewish Question to illustrate the natures that a civil society lacks, yet Marx never made instructions on these concepts in that article. It wasn’t until in Paris Manuscripts the meaning of “species” was finally revealed. The primary character of “species-being” is that it can break up the restriction of natural necessity, and take nature as its product and means. Thus only “free, conscious activity” is the real labor of man. Man created the external world with his measures and purpose, invested his own strength into the external world and transformed the internal objects into the external objects. In this sense, man is the creator of himself (including human society and history) and the external world. The liberty of man is “the liberty of creator”.²² By exploring the nature of labor, the most basic economic activity, Marx illustrated that the nature of man’s liberty was to surpass economy. In other words, the liberty of man was to break away from actual needs and the restriction of economic life, and to decide one’s own economic life with free will. 

 

At the same time, the “species nature” of man lies in that man is “a social being”. Just as the final manifestation of the alienated relation between man and economic economy is man’s estranging from each other, man’s control of economic activity will inevitably reflects in the social nature of man. “Man does not lose himself in his object only when the object becomes for him a human object or objective man. This is possible only when the object becomes for him a social object, he himself for himself a social being, just as society becomes a being for him in this object.”²³ In other words, nothing but the human society is the ultimate manifestation of man’s “species nature”. This social activity is a willing, free and general social combination, but not dominated by alienated economic relations. Man in this situation does not treat each other as means of economic interests, but admits each other as members of the “species”, as subjects of one’s life and the entire world. Thus a civil society is not what Marx named “society”. The subject of this social bond is the alienated man, who is only the alienated form of social bond, the caricature to species life or man’s society.²⁴ On the contrary, political life, thought manifesting as general life of man transcending economic relations. Even political state in alienated era manifests such nature, abstractly and illusorily. Therefore only politics of nature can be considered as real society of man; correspondingly, only man in political practice can truly prove himself as socialized man. 

 

Therefore, on the level of “life of species”, Marx revealed that there existed politics of nature, which he took as the measure to criticize the civil society. In a political state, man takes part in public affairs with identity of citizen; yet in a civil society, man pursues private interests with private identity. In a collective life, man makes free combination with each other, yet self-containment in pursing private interests. Man gains his subjectivity in combination, yet lose it in egoism and self-containment. 

 

Besides, Marx’s criticism on a real political society only focused on its manifestations in an alienated society, that is, a civil society decided a political state and the identity of citizens were only means of private interests. In other words, for Marx, the defect of real political state was that it didn’t realize its nature in reality. Thus the conflict between Marx and Hegel is not whether a political state has a natural character, but how to realize it. Actually, Marx’s fundamental disagreement with Hegel was his “state formalism”. Hegel only realized a political state’s sublation of a civil society, but made no further efforts with the dual life of a civil society and a political state in reality. However, Marx aimed to eliminate this dualistic confrontation in reality, and realized the transcendence of the life of man to alienated life. For this, he brought up an approach to replace the revolution of politics with “the revolution of man”. Yet this is belittling politics, because political revolution refers to nothing but modern bourgeois revolution, which just exiles man’s private identity, i.e. alienated personality, from a political state into a civil society, and obtains a general and free political life in an abstract or hypocritical sense. The result just comes to be the dualistic confrontation between a political state and a civil society. Yet political revolution still owns some meaning of progress. “Political emancipation is, of course, a big step forward. True, it is not the final form of human emancipation in general, but it is the final form of human emancipation within the hitherto existing world order. It goes without saying that we are speaking here of real, practical emancipation.”²⁵ The progress of political emancipation is that it, in some degree, though only on abstract and illusory level, expressed that man was able to show his general liberty and subjectivity in political life, and separated political state from civil society in form. 

 

What needed to be thoroughly overthrown in man’s emancipation is “the relations of heaven to earth” between political state and civil society, to bring the politics in “heaven” back to the reality on earth. Marx’s classic assertion on man’s emancipation revealed his anticipation for the real return of nature politics. “Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his “own powers” as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.”²⁶

 

The proposition “a civil society decides a state” is further developed to the proposition that “economic base determines superstructure” in later historical materialism theories. In the Preface of Critique of Political Economics, Marx clearly defined this proposition in the “prehistoric period of man” before middle class society. Obviously, Marx refused to admit that this proposition is universally effective. Only when human emancipation was finally accomplished, the true history came, the “life of species” shown as the nature of politics was truly decisive. Thus, for Marx, there are two dimensions in the relation between civil society and political state (i.e. the relation of economics and politics): in alienated “prehistoric history”, economics determines politics, “civil society determines political state”; yet, for the ideal society “around the corner”, human can entirely control economics, break away from  the restrains on society--politics relation from material force. Article 10 of Theses on Feuerbach, “The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity”, expressed the same idea. Therefore, human emancipation is to across two dimensions. Though not called “political emancipation”, it is “for political emancipation”.

 

Of course, it is undeniable that the political practices Marx stressed on are actually emancipation, yet he did not deny political rights as common political phenomenon. The basis of Marx’s pursuit of nature politics is to eliminate man’s self-containment and partial egoism, thus man could consider common affairs in human community as his own. No matter in classical concept of citizen, or in natural rights theory’s interpretation on political rights, the identity of citizens and political rights always show as the agglutinants of the community. Though political rights are named with the title “rights”, yet unlike economic rights especially the right of property that estrange individual from others and the community, on the contrary, the enforcement of political rights (typically the right to vote and the right to be elected) just means participation in community affairs. On this issue, political rights are consistent with the nature politics Marx was seeking for. Though, for Marx, political rights didn’t keep promises in capitalism republic, and became the means of individual to seek for economic rights; yet, it indeed in some degree reflected man’s needs for political collective life. , and distinguished itself from egocentric economic rights. In reality, compared with the alienation and loss of subjectivity reflected in economic rights, political rights were able to bear, though in illusory form, the species nature and sociality of man, and manifested the humanity of the rights of man. Besides, when revolution ended, and human emancipation accomplished, in the “free combination of free men”, human politics dominated economy, political rights would no longer be the means of economic rights, but the reality of human life in pure form. 

 

 

That “civil society determines political state” is not a necessary proposition that Marx used to criticize political rights. To the contrary, what this proposition criticizes is, in the theories and practices of enlightening man’s rights, political rights were limited by economic force, especially capital force, in many aspects, which made it rather hard to be purely and effectively accomplished. Such criticism took feet on the level of reality to stress that political rights prevailed rights of man in the hierarchy of values. The development of the second and third generation of human rights drew the eyes of people from abstract political rights to the economic social basis of human rights. However, such a transition could not be interpreted as a transition of purposes, but should only be considered as that the accomplishment of human rights transfers to a more realistic one. It is because the purpose of human rights is always to “make a man a man” and obtain free development, but not to simple satisfy man’s animal needs such as foods and clothing. By re-interpreting Marx’s theses on economic rights, while constructing human rights on economic rights and basis, we can avoid exaggerating these “bases” to be equal to “purposes”. The ultimate purpose of human rights always roots in man’s real and pure political life. Only by interpreting human emancipation from the perspective of politics, sticking to this noble purpose of human rights, can the “continuous development” of human rights be truly accomplished.

 

                                                (translated by Xu Xinyan)

 

· Li Chaoqun, teacher of Administrative Law School of Southwest University of Political Science and Law, JD.

 

· 1. Karl Marx and Frederick Engles, Vol.1, People’s Publishing House, 2009, p. 39.

 

· 2. Ibid., p. 40.

 

· 3. Ibid., p.p. 44-45.

 

· 4. Ibid., p. 30.

 

· 5. Ibid., p. 41.

 

· 6. Ibid., p. 42.

 

· 7. [UK] Locke, Two Treatise on Government (Book II), translated by Ye Qifang, Qu Junong, the Commercial Press, 1964, p. 17.

 

· 8. Ibid., p. 17.

 

· 9. Ibid., p. 19.

 

· 10. Ibid., p. 19.

 

· 11. See FN2, p. 43.

 

·12. Ibid., p. 46.

 

· 13. Ibid., p. 49.

 

· 14. Ibid., p. 52.

 

· 15. Ibid., p. 50.

 

· 16. Ibid., p.p. 163-164.

 

·17. Ibid., p. 166.

 

·18. Ibid., p. 167.

 

· 19. Ibid., p.p. 183-184.

 

· 20. Ibid., p. 159.

 

· 21. Ibid., p. 30.

 

·22. As Marx noted, “A being only considers himself independent when he stands on his own feet; and he only stands on his own feet when he owes his existence to himself. A man who lives by the grace of another regards himself as a dependent being. But I live completely by the grace of another if I owe him not only the maintenance of my life, but if he has, moreover, created my life – if he is the source of my life. When it is not of my own creation, my life has necessarily a source of this kind outside of it. The Creation is therefore an idea very difficult to dislodge from popular consciousness.” See FN1, p. 195.

 

· 23. See FN1, p. 190.

 

· 24. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 2000, p. 171.

 

· 25. See FN1, p. 32.

 

·26. Ibid., p. 46.