The Cold War and Contemporary Paradigm Discourse

Maurice Cranston's book What Are Human Rights? offers not only a theoretical perspective on human rights discourse, but also a critique of the contemporary landscape of the global human rights apparatus. At the time Cranston's book was published, in 1973, the notion of human rights was contested in the backdrop of the Cold War, as the United States and the West, the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc, and international organizations like the United Nations all offered overlapping and often competing visions of human rights. 

Cranston's philosophy fits squarely with the Western model of human rights, namely the idea of the social contract and Lockean theory, but he also looks into how the Soviet Union framed human rights. Article 125 of the USSR Constitution guaranteed four basic freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings, and freedom of street processions and demonstrations. However, given the history of the Soviet Union, Cranston states that the country did not enforce those freedoms and enshire them in national values and institutions the way the West did. Specifically, in the Stalinist era basic freedoms were virtually non-existent and demonstrations against the government were brutally repressed. Despite this, the Soviet Union maintained that they were protecting human rights by offering greater access to education and employment for women, offering protection to marginalized ethnic groups, and promoting a Marxist vision of economic equality. Indeed, when compared to the treatment of women and people of color in segregation-era United States or apartheid-era South Africa, the Soviet Union was able to weaponize human rights as a justification for the superiority of the Marxist-Leninist model of egalitarianism.

Cranston also observes how the creation of international institutions and organizations in the Cold War reshaped the narrative of human rights; specifically he identifies three entities: the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom. Cranston laments that these institutions were too focused on positive rights that the state had to guarantee rather than Locke's negative rights that the West had traditionally espoused. Cranston believed that the state's authority and obligation was to protect the citizens from the overreach of the state, rather than providing citizens with state-subsidized services.

Even in the post-Cold War world, these competing visions play a major role in policymaking and how people view the role of the state. Cranston's observations permeate our discussions on education, healthcare, economic equality, and political equality. In the United States and Europe, politicians and citizens argue about whether the state must provide healthcare or housing, and whether the state must regulate speech and religion in the public sphere. The international institutions Cranston wrote about forty-five years ago still exist and still advocate on behalf of the expansion of positive rights. As we continue to have conversations on human rights and social justice, Cranston's literature serves as an important reminder of how our vision of the rights of man shapes our worldview and our place in these conversations.