Ted Stolze: Resources of Hope, Logics of Struggle

I'd like to consider three objections to the ideal of self-emancipation. First of all, it could be argued that I should seek a stronger basis for human rights that would be more compatible with Marx's own theoretical commitment to the development and flourishing of human "species-being." In response to this objection, let me stress that my aim is not primarily to reject a "foundationalist" defense of human rights. Indeed, I personally find the "capabilities" approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum and the young Marx's concept of human "species-being" to be extremely attractive ways to ground human-rights discourse in a comprehensive doctrine. My overriding concern lies elsewhere, though: what are the best political means by which to recognize and support human rights?

Here--despite my strong disagreement with him over the current direction of U.S. foreign policy (e.g., note his preposterous claim that "we would not have a global language of freedom without the ascendancy of the American empire" (quoted in Danny Postel, "From Tragedy and Bloodshed, Michael Ignatieff Draws Human-Rights Ideals," The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 8, 2002, p. A15)--I find myself in substantial agreement with Michael Ignatieff when, echoing Rawls, he argues that the best way to defend human rights is not to rely on any especially controversial views regarding human nature but to identify their prudential, historical, and ultimately fragile foundation; in short, he advances a "decidedly 'thin' theory of what is right, a definition of the minimum conditions for any kind of life at all" (Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, p. 56). Although Ignatieff himself appeals to protecting human "agency" (p. 57); Amy Gutmann shrewdly points out in her introduction to Ignatieff's book that there is no reason to think that agency is any less controversial a basis for human rights than dignity, respect, or equal creation (pp. vii-xxviii). And this is precisely why I have used the language of self-emancipation instead of the language of species-being. By privileging the mature over the early Marx, I am doing my own part to reclaim a Marxism that is political not metaphysical. Moreover, a political Marxism need not offer a total explanation of the origin of all forms of oppression; it need only contend that oppressions based on, or due to, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion intersect with, and are powerfully shaped by, class exploitation.

A second objection to my construal of self-emancipation along normative lines is that throughout his writings Marx was hostile to "rights talk." Yet early in his intellectual career Marx also spoke of "the categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a debased, enslaved, neglected and contemptible being . . . " ("Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Introduction," in Early Writings, edited by Quintin Hoare, p. 25). No doubt, too, Marx's point in On the Jewish Question was to criticize merely formal rights in the name of substantive rights, but this hardly means that he rejected the very idea of rights. For example, a careful reader of Capital will find that Marx indicted not just the economic inefficiency of capitalism but also its structural injustice, above all in chapter ten on "The Working Day" and in part eight on the "So-Called Primitive Accumulation." Finally, in The Civil War in France, one of the highpoints of his politically engaged writing, Marx decried in the strongest possible moral terms the French ruling class's bloody suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune and concludes this extraordinary work of political analysis with unbridled fury:

Working men's Paris, with its Commune, will be for ever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem them (The First International and After, p. 233).

But even if Marx had advocated only the heartless scientific critique of capitalism that his detractors and even some of his supporters have claimed, why should this worry me? Surely Marxists today should continue to develop their research program beyond what Marx himself said or did.

This leads me to what I regard as the strongest objection, namely, that my advocacy of self-emancipation is overly utopian. In the dangerous, uncertain world of the twenty-first century, shouldn't we settle for a paternalistic "progress of sentiments," a marginal reduction in human cruelty by the world's oppressors? Now I am in favor of any such improvements, and I readily admit that over the past decade there has been precious little support for the ideal of self-emancipation. But then, as I have already observed, this has been a time in which we have seen a proliferation of "humanitarian interventions" boldly--but in my view fraudulently--proclaimed by George Bush, Sr., Bill Clinton, and now George Bush, Jr. to be in the defense of human rights, indeed, of such universal values as freedom, equality, and democracy. More alarming has been the complacency, occasionally even the complicity, of many human-rights advocates in the face of these essentially imperial state actions. For example, David Chandler has meticulously documented how in the aftermath of the Cold War "humanitarian action has become transformed from relying on empathy with suffering victims, in support of emergency aid, to mobilising misanthropy to legitimise the politics of international condemnation, sanctions and bombings" (From Kosovo to Kabul, p. 51). The problem here, as Chandler sharply observes, is the extent to which proponents of humanitarian interventions have a "disillusioned and negative view"--indeed, a "degraded view"--of humanity and of human beings' capacity to free themselves from oppression (p. 235). Human rights discourse and practice too often rely on experts who substitute themselves for the very victims of oppression:

The form of individual empowerment offered by the human rights framework can only be a vacuous and hollow one. If human beings are conceived merely as passive individuals or victims then the focus of the human rights discourse is to continually look beyond society for solutions. . . . [T]he empowerment of the human rights framework leaves the question of social power untouched. The universal right is to have one's voice heard in a plea before judges or human rights advocates. These rights are protected, not through the political process of collective decision-making, but by legal edict. The defence of rights is disassociated from any collective rights exercised through the political process. Empowerment without political autonomy or collective engagement can only enforce the status quo. In the name of the human rights victim, it is the enlightened elites who are empowered with the final power of decision (pp. 228-29).

James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer have likewise proposed that NGO's have tended to become "internally elitist and externally servile" and to substitute their own expertise for genuine acts of solidarity with the oppressed (Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st Century, esp. pp. 128-138).

Not so long ago it seemed obvious to those of us who were active in the anti-apartheid movement in the United States that our role was not to tell our South African sisters and brothers in the African National Congress, United Democratic Front, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions how to act, but to support them in their own self-emancipatory project. Moreover, I don't recall that anyone--either in the U.S. or in South Africa--advocated the use of cluster or phorphorus bombs, "daisy cutters," or "bunker busters" in order to topple the apartheid regime. In fact, if memory serves me well, there was strenuous criticism in the movement about targeting civilians and the use of such inhumane methods against collaborators as "necklacing." What seemed obvious to many of us in the 1980's is evidently not obvious to others twenty years later. However, that doesn't mean that self-emancipation is off the historical agenda. Quite the contrary: as I write these words, Iraqi resistance to the U.S.-led occupation of their country continues apace despite the collapse of the Baathist regime, the capture and trial of Saddam Hussein, and a succession of "demonstration elections." Likewise, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza continue against all odds to resist a brutal and illegal Israeli occupation.