Historical Origins of Human Rights

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Historical Origins of Human Rights

• Lecture 19
• Non-Western Responses to Human Rights
• April 16, 2007

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Human Rights Violations Unscientific Google
Search

• Iraq
• Chechnya
• China
• Cuba
• Venezuela
• Libya
• East Timor
• Eritrea

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outline

• UNDHR and imperialism
• The Third World Movement and the Cold War
• Why didnt anti-colonial movements appeal to the
  language of human rights?
• Modernization and human rights
• How European is the Enlightenment? (the return of
  Burke)
• Asian values vs. Development as Freedom?

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UN on decolonization

• Similar to Leagues mandate system
• UN charter Chapter XI, Article 73
• Members of the United Nations which have or
  assume responsibilities for the administration of
  territories whose peoples have not yet attained a
  full measure of self-government recognize the
  principle that the interests of the inhabitants
  of these territories are paramount and, to this
  end
• a. to ensure, with due respect for the culture of
  the peoples concerned, their political, economic,
  
• social, and educational advancement, their just
  treatment, and their protection against abuses
• b. to develop self-government, to take due
  account of the political aspirations of the
  peoples, and to assist them in the progressive
  development of their free political institutions
• c. to further international peace and security
• Problem which goals are given priority? Do
  economic goals conflict with political and social
  ones?

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Imperialism didnt go away in many places

• much of decolonization didnt happen until the
  late 50s and 70s
• Algeria - 1962 (FLN vs. France)
• Vietnam - 1945 (Independence recognized)1954
  (French withdraw from South Vietnam) 1976 (US
  withdraws from SV)
• Much of Africa
• Nigeria - 1960
• Mozambique - 1975

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some important exceptions

• Some British colonies with prewar anti-colonial
  movements
• India - 1947
• Egypt - 1953
• Places occupied by Axis powers
• China -1945 (PRC - 1949)
• Indonesia - 1949
• Libya - 1951

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Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War

• Bandung 1955
• Key figures leaders of early, successful
  anti-colonial movements
• Nehru (India), Sukarno (Indonesia), and Nasser
  (Egypt)
• Committed to democracy, modernization, and peace
• In line with UN version of universalism
• India as early model
• Gandhi non-violent resistance

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Bandung anti-colonialism as an alternative
universalism?

• Experience of imperialism didnt lead to rights
  talk, but didnt turn the anti-colonial movement
  against enlightenment values either.
• Nehru functionalist critique of the
  enlightenment
• Reporter What do you think of Western
  Civilization?
• Gandhi I think it would be a good idea!
• And that is the great thing I hold against
  pseudo-humanism that fortoo long it has
  diminished the rights of man, that its concept of
  thoserights has been--and still is--narrow and
  fragmentary, incomplete andbiased and, all
  things considered, sordidly racist. -- Aimé
  Césaire,Discourse on Colonialism, 1955
• Anti-colonial movement tries to transcend class,
  culture, and religion
• democracy, secularism, reason
• Political, but doesnt quite conform to Cold War
  divisions
• capitalism vs. communism or colonizer vs.
  colonized?
• US criticized movement as neutralism

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Non-Aligned Movement leaders at the UN 1960
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3rd-World Agenda and the United Nations

• In contrast to the League, UN does not appear to
  be an imperialist tool
• UN as forum for militarily weak nations that
  represent most of the globes population
• Lack of security council veto
• Peace
• Disarmament - unsuccessful
• Recognition anti-colonial movements
• Economic development (social rights implicitly
  emphasized)

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The revolution was a success now what?

• Perceived need to catch up
• Two competing versions of progress US and
  Soviet
• USSR version Leninist stage theory
• Lenin Imperialism The Highest Stage of
  Capitalism (1916)
• Socialism as state monopoly?
• Dictatorship of the proletariat
• Two-front class war directed against capitalists
  and parasitic landlords (perceived to be a
  remnant of feudalism)
• Economic prosperity should result from this

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Linear Development
Capitalism
Development
Metropole
Feudalism
Colony
Time
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US Version of Now what?Modernization Theory

• W.W. Rostow -The Stages of Economic Growth A
  Non-Communist Manifesto (1960)
• It is possible to identify all societies, in
  their economic dimensions, as lying within one of
  five categories the traditional society, the
  preconditions for take-off, the take-off, the
  drive to maturity, and the age of high
  mass-consumption.
• Rights or development? Not the right the
  question because no one was talking about rights.
• Democracy and development part of the same
  package (modernity)
• Need to industrialize quickly in order to prevent
  Communist takeover.
• Samuel Huntington military modernization
  (1968)
• Two paradigms come to seem not that different?

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Grappling with global unevenness

• Gap between third-world and first-world economies
  keeps growing.
• Import-substitution theory
• Cartels
• OPEC - 1960
• Economic divergence workers employed in
  profitable development industries vs. the rest of
  the population (very poor)
• Dictatorships, inequality
• Laying the foundation for anti-enlightenment
  criticism?
• 1) US and USSR modernization plans seemed
  increasingly similar as the Cold War intensified
  in the 1960s.
• 2) These development plans often failed to
  produce the expected results.

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Criticizing the enlightenment Jalal Al-e-Ahmad

• Jalal Al-e-Ahmad cosmopolitan intellectual,
  novelist, translator of Sartre, Camus,
  Dostoyevsky
• Occidentosis A Plague from the West
• Parts written in 1961, but marginal until
  uncensored version appears in 1978 after Iranian
  revolution begins almost 10 years after his death
  in 1969.
• Modernization (whether US or Soviet-style) means
  the obliteration of history and tradition
  enslavement to the machine
• If we define occidentosis as the aggregate of
  events in the life culture, civilization, and
  mode of thought of a people having no supporting
  tradition, no historical continuity, no gradient
  of transformation, but having only what the
  machine brings them, it is clear we are such a
  people. (34)
• The occidentotic has no character. He is a
  thing without authenticity. His person, his
  home, and his words convey nothing in particular,
  and everything in general And because suspicion
  dominates our age, he must never open his heart
  to anyone. The only palpable characteristic he
  has is fear. (95)

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A convergent critique? Vaclav Havel and Jalal
Al-e-Ahmad
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Vaclav Havel and Jalal Al-e-Ahmad

• Occidentosis appears uncensored the same year as
  Havels Power of the Powerless (1978)
  coincidence?
• Criticize enlightenment tendency towards
  technology-driven totalitarianism from opposite,
  converging directions
• Al-e-Ahmad If conformism in life and thought is
  such a danger in an advanced machine-making
  society, dangerous enough to make one a slave to
  the machine, it is doubly dangerous to us, who
  are only consumers of the machine it enslaves us
  to the machine twice over. (105)
• Havel Is not the grayness and the emptiness of
  life in the post-totalitarian system only an
  inflated caricature of modern life in general?
  And so we not in fact stand as a warning to the
  West, revealing to it its own latent tendencies?
  (145)

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Vaclav Havel and Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (part 2)

• Both Havel and Al-e-Ahmad influenced by Heidegger
• Havel Technology - that child of modern
  science, which in turn is a child of modern
  metaphysics - is out of humanitys control, has
  ceased to serve us, has enslaved us and compelled
  us to participate in the preparation of our own
  destruction. (206)
• Al-e-Ahmads response neither submit to the
  machine nor return to primeval means of
  production
• The third road - from which there is no recourse
  - is to put this jinn back in the bottle. It is
  to get it under control The machine should
  naturally serve us as a trampoline, so that we
  may stand on it and jump the farther by its
  rebound. One must have the machine one must
  build it. But one must not remain in bondage to
  it one must not fall into its snare. The
  machine is a means not an end. (79)

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Where they might disagree

• What fails to conform to technological
  authoritarianism? Though Havel and Al-e-Ahmad
  draw on similar sources, they inspire quite
  different movements
• Havels answer life
• Characteristics freedom, plurality,
  authenticity, rootedness, living in truth
  (human rights as tool)
• Al-e-Ahmads answer life
• Life authenticity
• Authentic Islam possible defense against
  occidentosis
• Khassi dar Miqat (1966) - turn towards Islam.
• Questions Is there any way for this dispute over
  what life really is to be resolved?
• Does this constitute an insurmountable impasse
  for human rights?
• Is there something limiting about the terms of
  this debate?
• Echoes of Burke and Montaigne? Remember, there
  exists a European genealogy associated with
  Al-e-Ahmads views.

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Criticizing the enlightenment Lee Kuan Yew

• Singapore becomes model as 3rd-world economic
  development stagnates.
• Lee Democracy and economic development not part
  of same package.
• Good government as universal
• 1991 Interview - Universality of Democracy?
• All peoples of all countries need government. A
  country must first have economic development,
  then democracy may follow What is good
  government? This depends on the values of a
  people. What Asians value may not necessarily be
  what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners
  value the freedoms and liberties of the
  individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural
  background, my values are for a government which
  is honest, effective, and efficient in protecting
  its people, and allowing opportunities for all to
  advance themselves in a stable and orderly
  society, where they can live a good life and
  raise their children to do better than
  themselves.
• Democracy and freedom of speech Western
  unsuitable for multi-cultural Asian societies

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Amartya Sen The Enlightenment Strikes Back

• Development as Freedom (1999)
• Democracy makes sense for both cultural and
  economic reasons.
• Achievement of development is thoroughly
  dependent on the free agency of people
  (innovation, etc.)
• Asian cultural traditions provide justifications
  for democracy and human rights
• Buddhism
• Ashoka
• Akbar
• European history has plenty of historical
  examples that could potentially justify human
  rights abuses
• Aristotle supporting slavery, etc.
• Therefore, the turn to historical exemplars
  doesnt solve the problem neither tradition can
  be simply characterized as individualistic or
  group-centric

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The debate continues

• How can human rights respond to culturalist
  arguments?
• Given human diversity, is it impossible to appeal
  to humanity?
• If so, what alternatives are there?
• Development and social rights?