We wouldn't need human rights in the perfectly good state. However the perfectly good state doesn't exist and probably never will. And even if we lived in a free socialist society where the state had the best intentions and the highest morals we could never be totally sure that it would have it all the time. People holding power should always be mistrusted.
I agree that all that matters is results. I also think that ultimately we get the best results by not letting the state do things like torture or racial discrimination.
The state exists to serve a class's interests, and it currently exists pretty effectively at maintaining capitalists' interests while production continues as is. The human rights concept is used to serve that state and its beneficiaries, not citizens or humans. The issue isn't "people holding power" necessarily either, as some liberal "power corrupts absolute power etc", but it exists as superstructure, derived from and in ways alleviating concerns as one class dominates the others. The concept is not the thing "not letting the state do things like torture", it would be the exercising of power that does that. Human rights are not that useful of a construct for us as the proletariat.
But wouldn't the concept of human rights still serve a purpose in that case to limit the power of individuals within the state from abusing their power?
I do not think so. I think superstructural elements like ideology and morality and the like might always exist, but human rights specifically are very fitting for a capitalist mode of production. There likely might be a post-commodity production morality, but it is not the goal of communists to find the optimal morality (whether in general to guide the movement, or to limit opportunistic individuals in the organizing, preparation for revolution, and revolutionary period), but to organize structures and organizations that can resist opportunism and serve the interests of the proletariat to gain power, and then abolish commodity production, classes, property, and move to production for need, etc.
We wouldn't need human rights in the perfectly good state. However the perfectly good state doesn't exist and probably never will. And even if we lived in a free socialist society where the state had the best intentions and the highest morals we could never be totally sure that it would have it all the time. People holding power should always be mistrusted.
I agree that all that matters is results. I also think that ultimately we get the best results by not letting the state do things like torture or racial discrimination.
:anarchy:
The state exists to serve a class's interests, and it currently exists pretty effectively at maintaining capitalists' interests while production continues as is. The human rights concept is used to serve that state and its beneficiaries, not citizens or humans. The issue isn't "people holding power" necessarily either, as some liberal "power corrupts absolute power etc", but it exists as superstructure, derived from and in ways alleviating concerns as one class dominates the others. The concept is not the thing "not letting the state do things like torture", it would be the exercising of power that does that. Human rights are not that useful of a construct for us as the proletariat.
But wouldn't the concept of human rights still serve a purpose in that case to limit the power of individuals within the state from abusing their power?
I do not think so. I think superstructural elements like ideology and morality and the like might always exist, but human rights specifically are very fitting for a capitalist mode of production. There likely might be a post-commodity production morality, but it is not the goal of communists to find the optimal morality (whether in general to guide the movement, or to limit opportunistic individuals in the organizing, preparation for revolution, and revolutionary period), but to organize structures and organizations that can resist opportunism and serve the interests of the proletariat to gain power, and then abolish commodity production, classes, property, and move to production for need, etc.