There is something presumptuous in writing a chapter which purports to read the European Convention in a Marxist light when one is versed, like me, neither in Marx's voluminous work nor in the many commentaries and theories it has generated. Still, this chapter could not have been omitted: first, because ‘the young’ Marx touched directly upon the ‘rights of man’ in an essay which has become very famous and, second, because the main idea of this text remains extremely pertinent today.

As the statement at the head of the chapter makes clear, Marx felt that the rights of man comforted man (he did not think much about women) in his egoism; as such the rights of man were not destined to have a place in the truly communal society which he did not doubt would one day emerge. Though Marx was not a fan of what we now call human rights, there is nonetheless a sense in which he was less scathing of them than Bentham: for Marx, human rights were not nonsense but a step in the right direction in the long march of humanity's history.

The human rights credo would have us believe that human rights are for every human being. Marxism alerts us that this is not so.