The Socialist Conception of Human Rights and Its Dissident Critique

IF 0.2 Q2 HISTORY
M. Kopeček
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Much has been written about human rights language as a keystone of democratic dissent in Eastern Europe as well as about its damaging impact on the communist dictatorships—the so called “Helsinki effect.” This article analyzes the less familiar criticism of the core of the socialist theory of human rights and discusses whether this criticism proved to be particularly damaging for the socialist regimes’ legitimacy, self-esteem, and international standing, leading to their defensive stance in this sphere. Simultaneously, it will question, to some extent, the prevailing and rather one-sided “liberal” reading of dissident human rights theory itself. With this aim in mind, the article begins with the specific “developmental” socialist conception of human rights elaborated in the 1950s and the 1960s by prominent legal scholars and philosophers such as I. Szabó and I. Kovács, and outlines how this theory served as a tool of self-confident state socialist human rights politics in the first decades of the Cold War. Second, it will follow the diverging paths of this socialist human rights theory during the period of consolidation and the authoritarian turn in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Third, the article turns to some of the 1970s–80s dissident criticism of human rights abuses in communist countries. It will focus not on the best-known cases, which serve to emphasize encroachments upon civil and political rights and freedoms, but rather on critical approaches (like those of J. Tesař, J. Šabata, O. Solt, M. Duray, or the Solidarity’s Charter of Workers Rights) directed at the heart of the socialist theory of human rights, that is the abuses and unfulfilled promises in the area of social, economic, and—prominently in the Hungarian case—cultural rights.
社会主义人权观及其异议批判
关于人权语言作为东欧民主异议的基石,以及它对共产主义独裁政权的破坏性影响——即所谓的“赫尔辛基效应”,已经写了很多。本文分析了人们不太熟悉的对社会主义人权理论核心的批评,并讨论了这种批评是否被证明对社会主义政权的合法性、自尊和国际地位具有特别的破坏性,从而导致他们在这一领域的防御立场。同时,在某种程度上,它将质疑对持不同政见的人权理论本身普遍存在的、相当片面的“自由主义”解读。带着这一目标,本文从20世纪50年代和60年代由著名法律学者和哲学家(如I. Szabó和I. Kovács)阐述的具体的“发展性”社会主义人权概念开始,并概述了这一理论如何在冷战的头几十年里成为自信的国家社会主义人权政治的工具。第二,它将沿着这一社会主义人权理论在巩固时期和20世纪60年代末和70年代的专制转向时期的分化路径。第三,文章转向了20世纪70年代至80年代对共产主义国家侵犯人权的异见人士的一些批评。本书将不关注那些强调侵犯公民权利和政治权利及自由的著名案例,而是关注直指社会主义人权理论核心的批判方法(如J. tesazov、J. Šabata、O. Solt、M. Duray或《工人权利团结宪章》的方法),即社会、经济领域的滥用和未兑现的承诺,尤其是匈牙利的文化权利。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.40
自引率
0.00%
发文量
23
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