Rights, Karl Marx and the Cross
Few Christians look to the writings of Karl Marx for inspiration, however if they did, they might find that he has a lot to say about attitudes to “human rights” today. The Amateur Christian has recently been reading about Marx and is interested in how his views might compare with Jesus’ teaching.
Today’s Scene
Today we are very familiar with the concept of human rights protecting, life, liberty, freedom of religion, thought, political expression, speech, and organisation. Also providing for due process of law, education, employment, health, property ownership, cultural preservation, family rights and freedoms from persecution, unjust punishment, and oppression.
In practice however, things have become a bit more complex. So, the rights of the homosexual community came into conflict with the religious rights of Christians in the famous “Asher's Bakery” case. Asher's Bakery were asked to provide a cake with a wording promoting homosexual marriage. They declined the order as this was against the owner's personal Christian beliefs. It took 4 years of legal dispute to conclude that the bakers could not legally be forced to promote a message they fundamentally disagreed with.
There has been a steady flow of controversial cases where rights are seen to conflict. Two weeks ago, Janet Daby was forced to resign her job as Shadow Minister for Faiths in the UK because of her comments on same-sex marriage. When interviewed she commented that “There needs to be something in place that protects people of faith as well as those who think the other way. It is an issue of conscience. It is like people having a choice who for reasons of conscience cannot participate in conducting an abortion” The Labour Party could not accept her views, wishing to prioritise gay rights over religious rights and she was forced to apologise and resign.
Of course, the way to exercise your rights is to allege discrimination based on your membership of a “protected group.”
Since the Race Relations Act of 1965 granted special protection based on race, other groups have mounted successful campaigns to provide protection based on Sex Discrimination (1975), Disability (1995), Religion (2003), Sexual Orientation (2003), Employment Age (2006), Sexual Orientation (2007).
All of this was brought together in the Equality Act 2010 since when it is now against the law to discriminate against someone because of age, disability, gender reeassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternaty, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.
As most people are members of, at least, one protected characteristic, we now live in a world where we are all potentially victims and where the potential for any person to be deemed an aggressor, either accidentally or with intent, has grown exponentially over the last decade.
Political campaigning groups, seeing the opportunity offered have sought to use the sympathy society has towards protected groups to their advantage.
Trevor Phillips became head of the Commission for Racial Equality in 2003, and on its abolition in 2006 was appointed full-time chairman of its successor, the EHRC (initially called the Commission for Equality and Human Rights), which had a broader remit of combating discrimination and promoting equality across other grounds (age, disability, gender, race, religion and belief, sexual orientation, and gender reassignment). The EHRC also had the role of promoting and defending human rights. So, I was most interested to hear him speak about how “BLM uses race as a battering ram to change society”
Phillips is careful to draw the distinction between the slogan “Black Lives Matter” which he suggests no-one should disagree with, and the organisation Black Lives Matter who are using race as a means of advancing their Left-wing political objectives. Read more about this here.
What is clear is that both basic human rights, as well as the less obvious rights we as a society have chosen to confer are now being used as weapons to beat up the rest of us, particularly those deemed to be either the majority or those holding power. So, watch out white Christian males – your time is up!
It is difficult to be certain where this “rights culture” will take us. The UK Law Commission have recently started a consultation process reviewing hate crime and providing further laws to include new protected characteristics such as misogyny and ageism, and hostility towards other groups such as homeless people, sex workers, people who hold non-religious philosophical beliefs (for example, humanists) and alternative subcultures (for example goths or punks).
Origins
The American Declaration of Independence (1776) included the key phrase that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
The concept of natural rights gained popularity during the American and French Revolutions in the late 18th Century. In America, a Constitution and Bill of Rights was developed and in France they adopted The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens. Sadly however, rights were not extended to slaves and indigenous peoples or in any full measure to women.
After the tragedy of the WW2 holocaust, nations came together to form, firstly the United Nations and then to draft the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The European Convention on Human Rights followed shortly later.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, implemented in 1976 provided for human rights in international law. However, it provided some limitations to free speech saying that the exercise of these rights carries "special duties and responsibilities" and may "therefore be subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "or respect of the rights or reputation of others" or "or the protection of national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or morals".
The basic principle was that the actions of individuals should only be limited to prevent harm to other individuals. John Stuart Mill articulated this principle when he argued that "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." An equivalent was earlier stated in France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789).
Marx and Human Rights
The statement in the American Declaration of Independence (1776) that “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” assumes that these truths are both universal and perpetual. It is the gap between aspiration and realisation that Marx would critique.
Before going any further it is necessary to say that Christians have for most of the last century kept well clear of anything involving Marx, blaming him for state atheism in Eastern Europe and East Asia and persecution of many Christians, often in appalling circumstances. I was challenged to consider the writings of Marx when reading “Karl Marx and the Trouble with Rights” by Kevin Hargaden. Read the full article for yourself, I will quote from it.
Hargaden quotes Marx writing in “On the Jewish Question.” “The shaking off of the political yoke was at the same time the shaking off of the bonds which held in check the egoistic spirit of civil society.”
His view was that as people gained political freedom, voting rights etc. they gained a new self-centred attitude which tended to overwhelm the non-political spheres of society. Freedom resulted in the self-interested grasping after more and more power.
Writing in “Grundrisse” Marx discusses how different societies have developed different ways of relating to one another. He comments that the further we go back in history, the more does the individual appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole. In a still quite natural way, he belongs to the family, and in the family expanded into the clan, then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of a fusion of the clans.
So, we note that until the modern era it would have been quite impossible to talk about human rights because personal identity was inextricably tied up with our roles and relationships with other people. Marx disputes that a person can be defined as independent without reference to others and this is the core reason that he suspects rights to be bogus. The language of rights obscures the fact that our material conditions are primarily social. The end-product of Marx’s reflections is that “rights are exhilarating promises that will never be realised, indeed perhaps designed never to be realised.”
Having considered what Marx is saying I do agree that rights are given by a society, and as such may need to change from time to time. So, for example, the right to carry a gun, enshrined in the US constitution and considered unchangeable by many Americans, might well need to be re-considered by that society, bearing in mind recent misuse of weapons. A right, considered appropriate in the 19th century, might need to be re-negotiated today. The right did not come from “self-evident truth” but from a community view at a particular point in history.
Joan Lockwood O’Donavan is a critic of rights language. She reminds us of a time when “the reciprocity of obligation between the monarch and his subjects was rooted in their mutual subjugation to divine, natural and customary laws.” So, Marx would have been an ally of one of the leading Christian ethicists today.
Jesus
What I am most interested in is how “rights” are viewed in the Bible and by Jesus. My understanding of God’s relationship with his people was that this was governed by a series of covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and then through Jesus, when he inaugurated the New Covenant in his blood that we regularly celebrate in Communion.
In these covenants God made promises to his people and they made promises to him. When considering the Mosaic Covenant God made with Israel, we read a series of blessings, if God’s people kept the covenant terms, and curses, if they reneged on the agreement. The language is important; blessings and curses, not rights and compensations.
So, God chooses to bless his people. Good News! But John the Evangelist, writer of the 4th Gospel in the New Testament tells us about how Jesus came to this earth, was born, lived, and rejected by them but “to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). And we know that the children of God benefit from many blessings from our loving heavenly Father.
Interestingly, whilst I read of many blessings granted to the children of God, I read nothing further of God given rights.
The nearest I get to this is in that well known passage in Philippians 2 where Jesus, “though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges (rights); he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.” Philippians 2:6-8
Jesus surrendered his rights within the Godhead and was “made nothing” that he might bring salvation to his people. I note the Apostle Paul’s instruction in v5, namely: “You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had” and ask myself what I have given up, and how my attitudes compare to the self-sacrificing attitude of Jesus.
Conclusion
So, thank you for accompanying me on this little journey. The Amateur Christian has discovered that whilst we live in a world of competing political campaigns resulting in a legal hierarchy of rights, there is another way.
Surprisingly, I have discovered that Karl Marx recognised that concentrating on personal rights results in a society of self-interested individualists and destroys community and community’s values.
Jesus Christ demonstrated that sacrifice, the way of the cross, is the alternative and the Apostle Paul challenges each one of us to have the same attitude as Christ Jesus.