Basically...

Basically, orthodox Marxists are against man’s having inherent right to freedom and property, believing that this form of defending human rights is an individualistic outlook arising from the bourgeois trend of thought which ultimately will end in justifying the interests of the ruling class in the capitalist system. What in their view can be used, as the main basis for human rights is the concept of expedience and public rights.

In their eyes, social rights and interests have priority over the individual’s rights and privileges. Indeed, what is called human rights serves the interests of those that safeguard the capitalistic system or those that benefit from it. Thus, human rights can be violated when social well being is jeopardised.[^2] Many of the gruesome events, which took place during the Marxist period in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, were justified in the name of defending social welfare.

The violation of the most fundamental human rights such as freedom, the right to property and even life was perpetrated under the pretext of public welfare, which assures true human rights. It goes without saying that what we endeavour to express in this article is radically different from this outlook on human rights.

Discussing the limits that social welfare and rights can create for individual rights does not mean discounting the inherent rights of individuals or justifying the violation of human rights under any circumstances. The Clash Between Individual and Public Rights According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights With a brief glance at the first steps taken in formulating the new human rights, one wonders if granting extreme freedom to man does not lead to social chaos.

With this view, the formulators of human rights have striven to find ways to protect human rights and to forestall social chaos. Therefore, individual and public welfare has become so complicating an issue that they have not yet found a fundamental solution to it. The first indication of this perturbation can be observed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen approved on August 26, 1789.

According to this Declaration, “men are born free, remain free and equal in rights; the aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptable rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.” In Article four, liberty is thus described.