Human Rights as Hinge Principles

The standard interpretation of human rights models them on the constitutional rights of citizenship familiar from the history of liberalism. Human rights are, in this view, universalizations of nationally particular liberal rights of citizenship. This interpretation invites a Marxist critique. Like the rights of citizenship, human rights fail to address the deep causes on inequality, domination, and social violence: market forces that drive states into conflict over scarce resources and capitalists to intensify the exploitation of labour. I agree with this critique, but argue that it does not necessarily apply to human rights as such, but only to the standard interpretation. I conclude by excavating from major human rights documents a different interpretation. This counter-reading focuses on the life-value of human rights: their potential to expose the life-destructive forces that drive capitalism. Read in this way, human rights can serve as hinge principles that legitimate mass democratic struggle against capitalist oppression and violence. On their own human rights under any reading cannot solve the problems supporters think they can solve. But as hinge principles they can help legitimate the mass struggles that can solve those problems.