/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Thomas Jefferson would be aghast that any non white or non male being involved in anything

Rights, like god, are social constructions of man.

If your rights are given by god, then why does the government just take them away? check mate atheists.

if there was no government we would have rights; if we had unlimited government we would have no rights. simple.

The concept of rights is hocus pocus

>>2462109
no it isnt. its the axiom of civilisation; self-ownership.

>>2462109
True. My constitution is full of rights that do not exist in reality. It's not a real thing.

>>2462111
Strange statement since "civilization" is much older than the concept of "rights"

has this idiot never read literally any of the founding documents

god we are run by a bunch of zionists

>>2462088
It's not laws or the government that gives people "rights" it's the result of hundred of years of class war. Now that there is essentially no more revolutionnary threat, the ruling class is cracking down on the achievements our forefathers have brought on.

>>2462088
>I wanna hear leftypol thoughts on this quote, do you agree with Sen. Kaine, or not?
Jefferson would write about God-given rights but that really meant that people have inherent rights by virtue of their nature or reason and stuff like that. This all comes out of the Enlightenment. The Iranian government believes that there is something similar in that there's a higher, divine authority but they established a system ruled by clerics which is the complete opposite of what Jefferson was about.

>I personally as a libertarian (who thinks religion should be fully separated from the state) do not agree with this sentiment, because if we have GOD given rights, then no government can just take them away.
Well, God doesn't exist IMO, so rights don't actually come from God. Some people here will say that means rights are bullshit but I don't believe so. These "negative rights" more emerged out of the economic system and act as legal protections around private property, individual liberty, formal legal equality, etc. which are narrow in scope although that's better than feudalism. I think a socialist could believe in something like "social rights."

>>2462088
If rights come from something other than the government, then there is an entity outside the state which can hold the state to account. If rights come from the government (which is what they do under bourgeois democracy) than the state basically owns you. Kaine is just stirring shit for culture wars reasons.

>if we have GOD given rights, then no government can just take them away.
A state can do what it wants. What it God given rights really mean is that there's a moral language that's not dependent on the state which citizens can use to criticize the state and demand justice, whereas in a fully laic secular state (France, Turkey etc) the only legitimate way of doing politics is through the channels the state has set up to govern civil society.

One of the reasons Iran is so unstable and has frequent protests is because the state (in theory) is supposed to uphold religion, which leaves it open to criticism when people feel its values are out of step with divine mandates. At the same time, Khomeini insisted that the Islamic republic could abrogate or ignore religion if it wasn't in the interests of the state. This is why the IRI is constantly at risk of tearing itself apart.

>>2462137
>Well, God doesn't exist IMO, so rights don't actually come from God.
Slowly I've come to believe that God (or at least something like that, something transcendent) has to be the basis of rights or obligations or something similar. The bourgeois state is built on secularized theological concepts where the sovereign state takes the place of God and rights are given by the state through a social contract, effectively meaning the state controls everything.

if government infringes upon natural right - why then, is there government? as locke (1690) and smith (1776) confer, the order of the state is class warfare of the propertied against the propertyless.
>Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book05/ch01b.htm
>[§94]… And therefore, though perhaps at first, (as shall be shewed more at large hereafter in the following part of this discourse) some one good and excellent man having got a pre-eminency amongst the rest, had this deference paid to his goodness and virtue, as to a kind of natural authority, that the chief rule, with arbitration of their differences, by a tacit consent devolved into his hands, without any other caution, but the assurance they had of his uprightness and wisdom; yet when time, giving authority, and (as some men would persuade us) sacredness of customs, which the negligent, and unforeseeing innocence of the first ages began, had brought in successors of another stamp, the people finding their properties not secure under the government, as then it was, (whereas government has no other end but the preservation of* property) could never be safe nor at rest, nor think themselves in civil society, till the legislature was placed in collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm
the preservation of property then entails an inequality of right, which is also the order of slavery and all further class domination by a monopoly on violence. the government then does not grant right, but only preserves the inequality of its freedom for some over others.

marx (1842) comments upon this regarding free press:
>No man combats freedom; at most he combats the freedom of others. Hence every kind of freedom has always existed, only at one time as a special privilege, at another as a universal right.
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1842/free-press/ch04.htm
this relates hegel's (1831) philosophy of history:
>The Orientals have not attained the knowledge that Spirit — Man as such — is free; and because they do not know this they are not free. They only know that one is free. But on this very account, the freedom of that one is only caprice; ferocity — brutal recklessness or passion, or a mildness and tameness of the desires, which is itself only an accident of Nature — mere caprice like the former. — That one is therefore only a Despot; not a free man. The consciousness of Freedom first arose among the Greeks, and therefore they were free; but they, and the Romans likewise, knew only that some are free, — not man as such.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/history3.htm#III
here as he writes, freedom is the universal spirit of man in general, but may nonetheless be expressed in a singularity or particularity. marx (1858) repeats this:
>Why should not the historic childhood of humanity, its most beautiful unfolding, as a stage never to return, exercise an eternal charm? There are unruly children and precocious children. Many of the old peoples belong in this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm of their art for us is not in contradiction to the undeveloped stage of society on which it grew.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm
and as plain exposition here (1848):
>The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
so freedom of all ages is experienced from the view of the state's class domination; as the security of property rights of one class over the rest. the actuality of spiritual potential is then the realisation either of universal property and/or a universal state. this is equally the aim of bourgeois revolution; the conversion of man into a universal subject.

<In Congress, July 4, 1776

<The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

<We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

TIL the US is Iran

Typically the secular version of "God given" rights is just "natural rights", where some 18th century philosopher man tried to deduce self evident laws of nature and translate these into political rights. In reality of course rights are a social construct that emerge from the mode of production and nature of the hegemonic social order. They don't actually exist in nature or otherwise. They only exist because states and social structures exist to conceptualize and enforce them.

>But if we have government given rights, well the government can just take them away.

Exactly, property rights flow from the government. Without government there is no such thing as property rights. Congratulations you know have realized why your ideology is utterly self-contradictory.

>>2462137
Op here. I agree. As a christian tho I believe in god but nature/god i think either is fine, anyone can interpret it in its own way.

>>2462122
>god we are run by a bunch of zionists
Yep

>rights
lol

>>2462088
Genuinely very funny that nobody in the US government actually disagrees with this belief but need to act like it's the most evil thing because it's Iran.
>if we have GOD given rights, then no government can just take them away
Went a little too far with the bait here. You made it too obvious.

>>2462217
You can replace god with nature if you like. See>>2462137

>rights
>religion
im a communist, why the fuck would i waste time with any of this retardation

>rights
Shiggy

>because if we have GOD given rights, then no government can just take them away.
But they do.
>But if we have government given rights, well the government can just take them away.
Same as it ever was.

"God given" is just the coating that a state applies to its legal framework to give it a basis external of just themselves. But at the end of the day, the rights are codified, enforced, and given material weight by the state.

>>2462239
Use whatever word you want, doesn't make it any less idealist.

>>2462088
God isn't real so he doesn't "give" anything.
"God given rights" is also a flawed idea because who defines God? If a fundie defines God as hating anyone who's not a WASP then of course non-WASPs don't have any "God-given rights". If anything "God-given rights" become "whoever has God's favor has the right to do anything". It becomes a "right" to discriminate against minorities, it becomes a form of "religious expression".

>>2462088
Thomas Jefferson was by all rights a far more immoral person than anyone working for the Iranian government today.

>>2462088

smarter anons explained it better OP but the crux of the issue is that socialists see whatever rights exist in the society as the result of class antagonisms since that's how we view the state in general. The quality of the various States and rights within there legal systems is the result of however the class struggle was playing out in that region at the time.

>>2462239
I don't understand how nature gives people rights. I don't think forests and oceans care about rights. In fact nature seems determined to deny people rights. Very hostile, that nature. If nature means our rationality then that's just humans making it again. God makes a bit more sense because it's a supposed entity that could do things except the part where the rights keep advancing but the religious texts stay the same. I guess God changed her mind and she couldn't find any new prophets. But also if God exists and says we should do x and y, that's just, like, her opinion, man.

>>2462505
I'm libertarian but I agree with Hasan so much on this

>>2462665
>socialists see whatever rights exist in the society as the result of class antagonisms
aristotle, locke, smith and hegel were not socialists, and marx's theory of historical class antagonism appears entirely continuous with hegel.
>>2462505
>mass surveilance is bad when corporations do it, but good when governments do it

The US is christian Iran

>What do you think?
That its 100% retarded to base any rights on a imaginary fantasy creature like the christian god.

>>2462088
>I wanna hear leftypol thoughts on this quote, do you agree with Sen. Kaine, or not?
Who you think Gave Marx the Inspiration for Das Kapital and fund him by leading him to Engels?

Of course someone came up with rights, that's how ideas work.

Rights do not come from God. Dude watched mofos getting enslaved for thousands of years.

what discussion is there even to have, it's just fucking braindead.

>>2474972
Zeus?

n his "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right" (1843) and, more explicitly, in its Introduction (published in 1844), Karl Marx argues that rights do not come from abstract ideas, God, nature, or reason (as claimed by philosophers like Hegel, Locke, or Rousseau). Instead, he posits a materialist and social origin:

Rights arise from the material conditions and social relations of a given society, and they primarily serve to protect the interests of the dominant economic class.

Marx's primary target is Hegel's idealist doctrine that the state (and its laws and rights) is the manifestation of rational ethical life (Sittlichkeit) and the highest expression of freedom.

Inversion of Hegel: Marx performs a "materialist inversion" of Hegel. For Hegel, the Idea (or Reason) develops and manifests itself in the family, civil society (the realm of economics), and finally the state. The state is the culmination and purpose of this development.

Marx's View: Marx argues that Hegel has it backwards. The state and its legal concepts (like rights) do not determine the structure of civil society; instead, the material realities of civil society—the economic relationships, the class structure, and the system of private property—give rise to and determine the form of the state and its laws.

To put it succinctly, in the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx argues rights come from:

The Material Base: The economic structure of society (e.g., capitalist private property) is the real foundation.

Social Relations: The relationships between classes (bourgeoisie vs. proletariat, lords vs. serfs) determine what needs to be legally protected.

Class Struggle: The specific form of rights is an outcome of historical class conflict. Bourgeois rights were the winning demands of the revolutionary bourgeoisie against the aristocracy.

The Ruling Class: The state, which enforces rights, is not neutral but is shaped by and serves the interests of the economically dominant class.

In essence, Marx dismantles the philosophical justification for rights and reveals them as historical, social, and class-based constructs, not eternal, natural, or purely rational truths. This critique is the foundation for his later, more developed historical materialist theory in works like The German Ideology and Capital.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

Rights are part of the bourgeois concept of self that was created to protect private property. But the American constitution is supposed to limit the government's imposition of your 'natural rights,' so I always thought it sounded similar to how Walz framed Iran's concept of rights. A lazy demonization

>>2462088
My opinion is that that's based and theist anarchism pilled

>>2475162
good post