no rights under communism - yeah, right

dlawbailey dlawbailey at netzero.net
Thu Apr 4 18:03:34 PST 2002


James Heartfield writes:

"For Marx there are no competing interests under Communism, so no need for human beings to conceive of themselves as 'rights-bearing subjects'."

I feel no fear of contradiction in saying that any reasonable person may simply reject this daft concept out of hand.

Though we must ultimately blame Marx for it, Comrade Heartfield continues:

"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."

I see, so under communism individuals will not need the protection of rights because murder, robbery, brutality, venality, fraud and power-madness will simply vanish as a "historical redundancy".

Right, pull the other one.

"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."

Right, a world without agreements, contracts, promises, obligations, and - most importantly of all - disputes. One need hardly take the trouble to argue against the idea of a dispute-free world, but let's just say that nothing less than the immutable laws of physics - the expressions of the probabilistic nature of the very universe - stand in such stark contrast to this notion that it shrinks to insignificance - it's proper place in the order of things.

As long as there are disputes, there must be a system of logic for resolving disputes. THAT, is the historical constant of human society.
>From the stone-age Iroquois Constitution (that Marx was in love with) to our
present laws to fifty generations past the Revolution, people will have agreements among themselves to resolve disputes - laws and rights by any other name. Because humans are a social animal, we must cooperate; because we must cooperate, disputes are inevitable; because disputes are inevitable, there will always be laws and rights. Communism is the ultimate expression of the social contract.



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