“We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.”
John Pilger

Friday, August 29, 2014

The European Court of Human Rights: would Marx have endorsed it?

Başak Çalı

Open Democracy - 27 August 2014

It’s not hard to find a critic of the European Court of Human Rights these days. I have no intention, in this post, of joining this increasingly voluble choir of nationalists, fear-mongers and far right or authoritarian regimes. What I want to do is to approach the ECHR in the context of this series of articles on human rights and liberalism, in particular market liberalism, and ask whether Marx would have endorsed the Court as an ‘intrinsic human good’ for  Europeans?
Could the ECHR have convinced Marx that it has succeeded in lifting the veil on abstract rights masking substantive injustices as per his critique of rights in Capital? Could it persuade him it has fought against civil rights becoming a banner for liberal egoism and individualism as per On the Jewish Question?

READ MORE.....

No comments:

Post a Comment