VI. Human Rights

The issue of human rights has emerged as the most crucial problem of the last half of the 20th Century and the most important issue facing the next century. It is also an issue on which the maximum possible confusion has been generated. On the one hand, human rights are defined in the narrowest, most self-serving way and, on the other hand, the concept is expanded to include all kinds of other issues which have nothing to do with the rights of human beings. The basis of this confusion is a consistent refusal to define human rights in anything other than class terms. It is our position that any class-based definition of human rights must necessarily turn into its opposite, as it violates the basic premise that a human right is something which belongs to an individual simply by existing as a human being. A class-based definition places restrictions on that definition which reduces the concept of a right to the level of a privilege.

If we look at the definition of human rights championed by the U.S. and the European Union, it is clear that it is a self-serving definition. They define human rights in terms of the right to a free market economy and a multi-party electoral system, in terms of the rights of an individual to own capital and to make a profit through the exploitation of the labour of other individuals. By this definition, every anti-communist dictator is a fighter for human rights, while the communists and revolutionaries are violators of human rights. But how can the ability to exercise a human right be conditional on the possession of wealth and power? How can human rights be based on a definition which excludes the vast majority of human beings on the face of the earth and which violates the fundamental right to conscience? This definition of human rights, which was a powerful weapon in the destruction of socialism and the current setback to the revolutionary movement, is now turning into its opposite before our eyes, as all of the self-serving, anti-communist propaganda of the so-called champions of human rights is used against those very same anti-communist dictators.

In the Soviet Union and other socialist countries the definition of human rights was also based on class considerations. There human rights were based on what served the interests of the working class and the socialist system. This narrowing of the definition of human rights led to serious violations of the right to conscience, first amongst the intelligentsia and then gradually against anyone who disagreed with the leaders. As a result the extension of human rights only to those who served the interests of the working class was gradually transformed into human rights which served the interests of the ruling elite and enslaved the working class.

Marx said that the working class was the first class in history which by emancipating itself would also emancipate all of humankind. This also means that it is the first class in history capable of ensuring rights to all members of society, based on the simple fact that they exist, without any pre-conditions or restrictions. Far from weakening socialism, such a definition of human rights would make it invincible. Failure to recognize such a modern definition of human rights was one of the most important reasons for the collapse of socialism. From being the most ardent defenders of human rights in the immediate post-war period, by the mid-1950s the communists had become synonymous with building walls to keep their populations at home and with imprisoning people for their ideas.

In discussing human rights, we should be clear that we are talking about those rights that belong to everyone and not to a minority. There may be certain conditions which require special measures to ensure that these rights are fully implemented, as in the case of women, but the rights themselves have to be universal. They cannot be exclusive to only one section of human beings. One of the most basic of these rights is the right to conscience. Over a period of 50 years since the end of World War II, first the U.S. and then the Soviet Union raised their hands against the right to conscience. This right was held in such contempt that it was "granted" only on the basis of which camp an individual or a country belonged to. Following Winston Churchill's formal declaration of the Cold War in his Iron Curtain speech on March 5, 1946 in Fulton, Missouri (which put the right to conscience in utter disrepute), U.S. President Harry S. Truman began this by calling upon the U.S. Congress to set aside millions of dollars to support the fascist forces in Greece. The aim was to ensure the defeat of the democratic struggle which was underway in Greece and thereby guarantee the geopolitical interests of the U.S. in that region. By this act, not only was Greece deprived of the right to self-determination but the Greek people were also stripped of their right to conscience.

In the late 1950s and thereafter, the world witnessed the Soviet Union also defining what was progressive on the basis of whether the country, organization or individual in question was its friend or enemy. What has become quite clear, as the dust of the past few years has settled, is that the right to conscience is again being trampled underfoot by the national interests of the big powers, as they once more attempt to re-divide the world between their own spheres of influence. Today, as in the past, the right to conscience is said to belong only to those who are opposed to communism or who serve the interests of this or that power. However, such a right cannot be connected to any system but only to the act of being. Does it exist in real life or not? Is it inviolable or not? The judgment has to be made on the basis of the merit of the thing itself and not on the basis of whether or not invoking the right would help this or that power or this or that system. The right to conscience must be a matter above such considerations. During this post-Cold War period, there is no need to issue an endless number of formal declarations. What is needed is to ensure that the right to conscience exists in fact and not as a mere formality. It has to be an integral, essential feature of the conditions in which people work and live, and not a footnote which has no relevance to real life.

When the UN started work on a Declaration of Human Rights after World War II, the U.S., Britain, France and other countries exerted pressure to ensure that the declaration would remain merely formal and have no real content. Rewriting many portions of the Geneva Draft which Committee No. 3 of the UN had prepared in 1947, these powers ensured that the final Universal Declaration of Human Rights contained no measures which would facilitate the realization of the basic freedoms and human rights that it proclaimed. For example, they struck down a proposed amendment to Article 4 that "the state must ensure each person protection against criminal encroachments on his rights and provide the conditions preventing a threat of death from starvation and exhaustion."

The October Revolution in Russia, even though it provided every opportunity for the right to conscience to assume utmost importance in the lives of the people and society, eventually found its destruction in the inability to transcend the class conception of this right which had become archaic and merely a form through which new rising exploiting classes could fight to put the people down. Claims about the leading role of the working class and the truth of Marxism-Leninism were used to justify building an industrial and military complex for conquering the world. When the time was ripe for the society to enshrine human rights, there arose those who pursued the attainment of their own ambitions. The phrases remained, but the conception of rights began to serve the exploiting classes that were resurfacing.

The end of the Cold War has opened the path for the momentous development of the movement for human rights, but it is not a one-sided development without any obstacle or opposition. At the present time, the abuse of human rights by the ruling circles in various countries has degenerated to the point that there no longer seem to be any rights which are inviolable. Various governments and international bodies, such as the Security Council of the United Nations Organization, justify their decisions by asserting their right to take them on the basis of their mandate and fulfilling their duty; and the peoples are doing their duty by demanding their rights on account of their conditions of life. No authority can justify its neglect of duty without having the conditions back it up. When authorities do such a thing, the right to conscience is violated.

Take, for instance, the people of a nation within a state which is established beyond national lines, such as in the case of the British, Russian, Canadian and Yugoslav states among others. Suppose that such a state negates the rights of a nation which exists within it and that people of that nation feel that the state is oppressing their nation and is the cause of their backwardness, economic exploitation, poverty, cultural and social disintegration. Finally, suppose that they call for renewal and for the formation of a new state organized along national lines, following which the member nations of that state, on the basis of an agreement, form an equal union. Clearly, those who demand such a thing claim that a renewal is necessary; but the authorities may interpret such a demand for renewal, such a plan for the creation of a new state based on the rights of all, to be seditious. They may then begin to take away the rights which people have and unleash violence and anarchy to crush the struggle. Imagine that in such a situation, on one hand the people are persecuted in a broad way and, on the other hand, some international power or powers take advantage of the situation and begin to finance anarchy and violence. It is the cause of the people of all lands, their right to conscience, their human fights, which would be the first casualty.

Such things are indeed happening in various parts of the world. Yugoslavia is an example, but it is not the only one. The Yugoslav federation disintegrated in a matter of a few months because the authority in Yugoslavia did not heed the people's right to conscience nor the right of its member nations to self-determination. It did not do its duty to its member republics or to the people co-habiting within that federation. Yugoslavia opted for disintegration, not for renewal. This situation could not but be used by those foreign powers which had an interest in breaking up this federation.

If vigilance about these fundamental questions like the right to conscience is not kept, the end of the Cold War, far from leading to renewal, will take us hundreds of years backwards. This will be a great tragedy and a setback for the struggle for human rights, for the raising of the human personality and dignity. Worse still, it would mean the physical extermination of hundreds and thousands of people in various regions of the world and a broad-scale devastation. Whether or not the right to conscience, which is sometimes presented as merely a demand in the constitutional and juridical sphere, exists in real life, will actually determine whether a people live or die. It is the fundamental question of our time.