The Socialist Contributions to Human Rights: An Overlooked Legacy

The nineteenth century industrial revolution and the growth of the labour movement opened the gates to previously marginalised individuals, who challenged the classical liberal economic conception of social justice. Yet, despite the important socialist contribution to the human rights discourse, the human rights legacy of the socialist - and especially the Marxist tradition is today widely overlooked or dismissed. Bearing in mind the atrocities committed by communist regimes in the name of human rights, this article attempts to correct the historical record, by showing that the struggle for universal suffrage, social justice and worker's rights principles endorsed in the major UN documents of human rights - were shaped by socialist ideals.