In the current century each of us define ourselves as individuals and by individual we refer to the

biological being that we are, capable of exercising our own choice and will. This individuality of
ours would not have been possible without a society forged around the concept of rights which are
authorised and protected by the State.
This sovereign isolation of an individual was possible because of the nature of rights. When
a person says that he has a right over anything what he literally means is that he has an absolute
claim over it, which is recognized and protected by the State. A unique characteristic of a right is its
capability of exclusion, ie- A person claiming a right can exclude all others who do not have a right
over it. This naturally creates hardships upon the other persons who do not have the right. Suppose
there is a person with vast acres of land, much of which he keeps unused, on the other hand there is
a landless farmer. The farmer is excluded from the lands because he does not have a right over that
land even though he needs it badly. Thus we can say that the current theory of rights is rather
aggressive and burdensome in nature. The Marxists envision a socialist society where the concept
of rights do exist but in a non-aggressive manner, the people in this society are more co-operative
and are caring towards one another. They envision a society where the holder of rights is the
individual- the real tangible human being. However, our Capitalist society has theorised a dualistic
theory of man. Here the concept of individual as the holder of rights does not recognise the real
individual as the holder of rights, but the trancendental entity of a juristic personality which is the
holder of rights. Each person has a juristic personality equal to that of others- this formal equality,
according to the Marxists, is nothing more than a device to veil and legitimize the stark reality of
inequality. This conception of individual is essential in a Capitalist society to ensure that the real
individuals powers and capacities are up for sale. His dignity is safe and inviolable with his juristic
entity and he need not feel that by selling his powers and capacities he is actually doing slavery. The
Marxists observe that this illusion of equality in transcendental form makes the worker ignore the
real inequality that is in existence- as a worker he remains tied to the Capitalist class. The Marxists
are determined to solve this problem by evoking noble human emotions and sentiment- a society
where people can develop their human capacities and powers through cooperation with others. This,
they contrast with Capitalist society where every individual is interested in the accumulation of
property, pursuance of private interests and the exercise of power over others.
The pre-modern society on the other hand managed to do without a system of rights. The
freedoms we recognize today as rights were enjoyed by them without in any way feeling self-
conscious about them. They took these rights for granted. Each party was expected to act in a
contracted manner because he had a duty to do so, not because the other party had a right to require
him so to act. However a major difference that lies between the modern and the pre-modern society
is the conception of individual. The people in pre modern societies found themselves connected to
each other through communal bonds and traditional ties. They did not define themselves in isolation
to each other. The Chinese saw the family as an indissoluble organism, linking ancestors and their
descendents into a living union, and having a highly complex conception of the individual. The
Marxists lament this loss of communal being of an individual and considers it a bourgeois
conspiracy to divide the them.
The Capitalist society society finds itself at a loss of conventional morality based on
communal ties and bonds and moving towards a civil morality. The pre-modern State did not have
the responsibility of defining the relations between the individuals, which in the modern era the
State finds itself burdened with. When the individual broke away their conventional bonds and
moved towards starting their life as a seperate individual which they could define as they wished to,
they needed someone to make sure that their individuality was ensured, for this they turned to the
State. The individuals invested the State with the monopoly of violence and the monopoly of
legislation. So that the State could enforce a civil morality that would ensure that the rights of an
individual were not infringed by other individuals. It is not as if the pre-modern society did not
understand rights, but the way they perceived rights was completely different from the way we
define it today. The Roman society, which was the first western society to develop the concept of
right in europe found themselves unable to seperate right, law and justice. Rights were created by
the law, and the law was an articulation of the communitys conception of justice. The right
consisted in enjoying what was right. The individual enjoyed rights because it was believed that
only thus could the community realize its general ends. They pertained mainly to the civil society,
not to the state or the family, and governed the relations between the individuals and not between
them and the State. The Marxists allege that the Capitalists have tapped the self interest motive of
every individual and have turned the society into a self interested, property accumulating, power
hungry, competitive, isloted individuals. They argue that it is possible to reconcile the the
conception of rights and the conception of cooperation in a socity which they call the socialist
society. They envision it as a society where the individuality of the individual is maintained and at
the same time they recognise that it is in their interest to form a co-operative society where each
individual can develop to his full extent. The communist society aims to evoke and utilize many a
noble human emotion and sentiment; the motives of self-interest and fear lying at the basis of
modern society play only a minor role.
Now, the pre-modern constraints on what can legitimately become an object of right, and
how far it may extend has more or less disappeared. The natural world gets desacrilised and the man
with his sovereign will is capable of plundering the natural world at will. Everything in the natural
world is an object of right- even the powers and capabilities of each human being has to be seen as
property which can be sold off. Thus the dualistic theory of man. This right based system dominates
our social order to such an extent that it is impossible to talk even about morality without defining it
in terms of rights. This conception of civil morality has conditioned us into thinking that every duty
presupposes a right, that human dignity can only be preserved by endowing men with rights. So,
when men do good to others they have to again define this act in terms of rights. For this they
conceive a category of rights, known as moral or natural or human rights. They feel that they
ought to help those in need and intuitively find this ought to be a duty and consequently those in
need have to define this help in terms of their rights. This right centred moral thinking is taken to
strange extremes when it is contended that the children have rights to paternal maintenance, love
and even inheritence. The family obviously is not a civil society, however the way we have the
conception of rights, even the family is turned into a civil society. We believe that whenever there is
a smoke of duty, there must be a fire of right smouldering somewhere in the background, we have
conceptualized duties as responses to rights. Thanks to the right dominated concept of morality in
the civil society there is no place for moral emotions and people find themselves nervous and shy
admitting them.
The initial emphasis was placed on rights such as the rights to life, liberty and property- all
rights to protection. However it was recognized in the 19th century that people also needed the rights
of provision- the provision of sustenance, the means of material well being, employment and even
basic opportunities for personal growth. For this, they require the government to play an active role
in economic life. This means that citizens not only have the duty to forbear from interfering with
others rights but they have to make a positive contribution by taxes and other means to the
resources which a government requires. These social and economic rights presuppose a different
view of man. This again is an indirect contribution by individuals and consistent with the system of
rights which makes it next to impossible for one one human being to help other human being
without conceiving a sort of right emerging from the person in need of help.
Marx observed the inherent contradictions within the Capitalist system that gave the
inviolable status to the juristic personality of every individual but at the same time saw that labour
power was the sole source of profit and declared it to be a saleable entity. The Capitalists gave the
freedom of choice and will to the individual but restricted the options available to the worker in the
sense that they had to sell their labour to a capitalist on which they exercised no freedom. For him
the socialist society consists of people that respect each other and work according to their capacity.
This replaces the aggressive right based system where the people are forced to deliver exactly
according to the rights and no compromises are allowed. This system recognizes the individuality of
people and focuses on the individual capabilities and co-operation for development. He visualises a
sensitive society in which men grow up and caring enough to offer their co-operation without
having to bludgeon each other with their titles and rights.