'Needs and interests only rise to the level of rights UNDER A CONTRACT. Under communism, natural rights are still SUPERIOR to needs and interests. People cannot be killed, robbed or enslaved to provide "fair" distribution of resources. The communist social contract presumes the same pre-existing rights as the liberal-democratic social contract.'
For Marx there are no competing interests under Communism, so no need for human beings to conceive of themselves as 'rights-bearing subjects'. In other words, communism is not a social contract (or a contract of any kind) since there are no contracting parties. Social administration, ceasing to be contentious, will lose its special character to settle alongside any other scientific endeavour.
The subtext that perhaps 'dlaw' finds difficult is that, for Marx (whether you agree with him or not) rights have no natural foundation, but remain a social product, and a historically transient one, that in given circumstances could fall away as a historical redundancy.
What dlaw says of communism as a social contract might apply to the period of socialism, or the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', the seizure of the state, but that is merely preparatory to communism the falling away of the state, and of conceptions such as rights. -- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP5.01 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org