ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the way in which insights from the Marxist tradition can illuminate international human rights law. It begins by outlining the key elements of historical materialism. It then selects three key analytics – class, ideology and the structure of capitalism – and shows how they can illuminate the general phenomenon of human rights. It argues that human rights law is a social relation that mediates the struggles between classes. However, the particular form that this takes is one which recasts social conflict as a matter of individual rights violations, drawing attention away from the root causes of social problems. The chapter then goes on to apply these insights to the R.M.T. v the United Kingdom case, concerning the issue of secondary strikes in industrial disputes. It argues that aside from directly advantaging the capitalist class in its judgement, the European Court of Human Rights reproduced the ideological effects of human rights. In particular, it recasts the political-economic logic of class conflict as a technocratic clash of individual rights. The chapter closes with a reflection upon whether it would be possible to articulate a vision of human rights which takes on board the political-economic issues flagged up by Marxist analysis.
