• Coincy [they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I feel like the human rights Marx is talking about in this excerpt are more like Locke's 'natural rights' rather than you shouldn't starve or torture people. That seems more in line with the historical context. But I've never read the whole Jewish Question so idk

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Lol I find it hilarious that Marx wrote an article called "on the Jewish question" which was a critique of an article on "the Jewish question". Like I think he could've titled it better.

      • Coincy [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Well I've had multiple people use it to say marx is antisemitic so yeah, probably lmao

    • rolly6cast [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      There will always be a normative component to our behavior (we should act to the interests of the proletariat as a class, in the goal of revolution to abolish commodity production and property and overturn the law of value, rather than be guided by moral principles), but even for moral principles human rights is pretty bad for our interests. Marx isn't saying "go and starve and torture a bunch of people", but that doesn't rely on human rights. Morality in general is superstructural and is based on the class structure and mode of production of the time, but human rights specifically assumes atomized individual man and evolved most definitively with capitalism and liberalism, so this text was specifically critiquing one very historically limited application of morality. Rights have existed for longer, and are also superstructural, but not in the human rights sense.