Social justice activists often believe that the corollary of “rights” is obligations and responsibilities, and that social injustices exist not because of problems with the concept of “rights” as such but because the concomitant of “rights” – “obligations” and “responsibilities” – have been erased from our thinking and from debates about “rights”. In part, misunderstandings about “rights” persist within social justice movements because they have forgotten the history of “rights” and the critique of “rights” by revolutionary thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the political programmes of the successful movements for socialism and national liberation struggles to alter the nature of “rights”. As a result, social movements, instead of learning from and developing those revolutionary experiences, have discarded the history of struggles against “rights” and feel frustrated that “rights” do not work, but have nothing to offer beyond “rights”. If we wish to move forward, it is important therefore to grasp the concept of “rights”, its history and the critique of “rights” by radical movements of working people in the past. When social justice activists speak of “rights” they have in mind this classical ideal, but often it is forgotten that the institutional and legal basis for objective “rights” do not exist any more. Socialist revolutions of the early twentieth century extended the philosophical critique to the political arena and removed property from the idea of “rights” and tried to infuse the idea of “rights” with positive substance, so that the right to a job meant that everyone should have a job, not just the possibility of finding a job; the right to education meant that schools should be free so that every child could go to one, and not just the possibility of education for those who could afford it, or those supported by charities. Read More