ABSTRACT
Democracy and human rights promote the (formerly) revolutionary idea that people are equal. As normative projects, however, they are ambiguous. The autonomy that liberal law provides is therefore flawed as it covers true heteronomy, because people are in reality much less free in their (legal) choices than the law assumes. The project of human rights, as it emphasises (despite all historical exclusions) freedom and equality for all, consequently makes the law susceptible for immanent, i.e. transformative critique. It is therefore also adequate to understand labour rights as a juridical practice to reflect the blind spots of liberal human rights or, to put it in Marx's theoretical framework, an attempt to deal with the paradox of human rights. This idea of law is peculiarly intriguing in terms of the relationship between human rights and democratic processes.
