ABSTRACT
According to John Locke, rights exist owing to the fact that natural man owns and imputes to himself all his own actions and possessions and, through the reflexive relationship involved in self-imputation and self-ownership, transforms himself into natural person. Rights become the primary property of the person rather than an attribute of the natural man. Marxist socialism differed from both the Historical School and Utilitarianism in its rejection of both the classical conception of individual rights and their bourgeois sublimations, the legal rights of citizens, whether they are explained contractually, in the language of Utilitarianism or the Historical School. Jacques Derrida's deconstructive reinterpretation of the Declaration gives us a glimpse of the postmodern understanding of rights. Michel Foucault's criticism of bourgeois rights as conduits for the legitimization, transmission, and employment of power has been developed, somewhat more recently by Carol Pateman.
