Deep Dive: Human rights, private property and Karl Marx

 Ideas have consequences. 

Karl Marx memorial in London vandalized

Property rights are a human right. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property."

 

Universal human rights, and the rule of law, exist in order to protect those without power from the abuse of those who have it and exercise it with impunity, but mainstream human rights thinking has grown increasingly hostile to private property rights.

 

Murray Rothbard in his 1959 essay "Human Rights are Property Rights" explained how rights would disappear in a society that did not respect private property rights.

"The human right of every man to his own life implies the right to find and transform resources: to produce that which sustains and advances life. That product is a man’s property. That is why prop­erty rights are foremost among human rights and why any loss of one endangers the others.
For example, how can the human right of freedom of the press be pre­served if the government owns all the newsprint and has the power to decide who may use it and how much? The human right of a free press depends on the human right of private property in newsprint and in the other es­sentials for newspaper production. In short, there is no conflict of rights here because property rights are themselves human rights. What is more, human rights are also property rights!"

In the United States the Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects private property rights, but were eroded with the 2005 Supreme Court decision Kelo vs. City of London which ratified the right of using government power to condemn private homes to benefit a property developer.

 

In international rankings of private property rights the United States has declined from 15th in 1995 to 25th in 2020, and this should be cause for great concern. 

Leaders of the European Union have forgotten the lessons of 1989 and statues of Karl Marx are being erected in Europe once again. https://t.co/VZF1VmZoe5 16/25 pic.twitter.com/bl6AMTy8kt

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) October 19, 2019

Critics of the existing system in the United States provide solutions that only make the situation worse, and their ideas are also gaining credence in the rest of the Western world. The vast majority are following the prescriptions of the nineteenth century German philosopher Karl Marx.

  

Many who want a more just and equitable order in the world have in some cases knowingly, and other cases unknowingly embraced many of Marx's teachings, and specifically the central aim of the Communist Manifesto. According to Karl Marx on page 67 explains, “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

 

However, in a communist state where the rule of law and property rights are under siege, such as China for example, the order is neither just or equitable. Beijing has been described by Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University as "Kelo-on-steroids: neighborhoods are ripped down as skyscrapers go up." In practice the worse aspects of capitalism proliferate, but without the rights and freedoms that make reform possible, or private property rights that protect the weak against the strong. 

 

 

Without private property the allocation of resources rest on political power, not private initiative, or collective bargaining. Communist despots are not a bug, but a feature of the Marxist system. The same holds true today in Cuba, Venezuela, and other communist regimes.

 

There is a moral dimension that economists and ideologues often overlook, but that Karl Marx makes plain in his writings. In addition to Marx's antisemitism, racism, and appeal to terror there is a diabolical component that is usually ignored. Paul Kengor, PhD is professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania and in his book The Devil and Karl Marx, explores the moral and spiritual dimension of Marx's writings and their relevance to Marxist revolutionaries today.  

 

 

It is not an accident that the first Communist state, the Soviet Union, allied with Nazi Germany in August 1939, and a month later invaded Poland and sparked WW2. It is also not an accident that the Soviet Union came to an end on Christmas Day in 1991 with a Polish Pope in the Vatican that one day was recognized as a Saint. 

Professor Peterson is right about Karl Marx, but this thread will reply to Marx apologists on the thread. https://t.co/gMD9fuKCZR 1/ pic.twitter.com/YR1MZybZIj

— Human Rights Violations in Cuba (@freecubafndtn) December 27, 2020

Winston Churchill recognized the historic context of Marxism observing, "Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of Communism… As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism." In more concrete terms Benito Mussolini, the first fascist dictator, was a Marxist before he evolved into a fascist.

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?" - Matthew 7:15-16