Capitalism and natural rights: Marx, Locke and the moral justification of capitalism: inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University

Abstract

Inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes UniversityRhodes University Libraries (Digitisation)ONE of the commonplaces among political philosophers and theorists is the contempt with which Marx regarded Natural Rights theory. In 1843 he wrote that "the so-called rights of man, the droit de l'homme as distinct from the droit du citoyen, are nothing but the rights of a member of civil society, that is the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community." And again "the real man is recognised only in the shape of the egoistic individual, the true man is recognised only in the shape of the abstract citoyen."1 Marx saw Natural Rights as means for the justification of capitalism, and so, as justifying inequalities of wealth and property-ownership. And of course it is true that many writers, in supporting Natural Rights, have stressed, as Stuart Brown expresses it, that "They are the rights of a man to the protection of what is in his interest. The moral interests of one man may differ radically from those of another. Different men may have radically different needs and capacities. And these differences, in conjunction with unavoidable differences in opportunity, produce differences in estate. "2 Expressions of this kind make clear the point of Marx's critique. I wish tonight to argue and to attempt to establish two main theses. The first is that, despite Marx's expressed attitudes to Natural Rights, his own theory of capitalism cannot easily be disentangled from Natural Rights theory, and, if my argument is right, it in fact depends upon it. Secondly, I shall try to show, through an examination of the theories of John Locke, that if Natural Rights theory is to be taken seriously, it is at odds with the very capitalist theory which it is generally taken to support, and that Natural Rights cannot therefore provide an adequate under-pinning of capitalism, at least not without generating self-contradictions within the theory of Natural Rights. If the arguments which I shall present are right, I shall hope to have established what might be termed two paradoxes