Thursday, August 5, 2010

Karl Marx

Above all, we note the fact that the so-called rights of man, the droits de l'homme as distinct from the droits du citoyen, are nothing but the rights of a member of civil society, i.e., the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community. Let us hear what the most radical Constitution, the Constitution of 1793, has to say:
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Article 2. "These rights, etc., (the natural and imprescriptible rights) are: equality, liberty, security, property."
What constitutes liberty?
Article 6. "Liberty consists in being able to do everything which does not harm others."
Liberty, therefore, is the right to do everything that harms no one else. The limits within which anyone can act without harming someone else are defined by law, just as the boundary between two fields is determined by a boundary post. It is a question of the liberty of man as isolated monad, withdrawn into himself.

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