Sneh on Spagnoli, 'Making Human Rights Real'


Filip Spagnoli. Making Human Rights Real. New York: Algora, 2007. 191 pp. ISBN 978-0-87586-569-0; ISBN 978-0-87586-570-6.

Reviewed by Itai Sneh (Department of History, CUNY-John Jay College of Criminal Justice)
Published on H-Human-Rights (April, 2008)

An Attempt toward a Meta Theory of Human Rights

Post 9/11, with the USA Patriot Act; the Iraqi War; Abu Ghraib; attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, London, and Madrid; and revelations about waterboarding and torture, there is an urgent need for an updated, sophisticated restatement of human rights. These core principles embody timeless norms and instrumental principles founded on secular convictions and historical experience, but continue to evolve.[1] What is and what should be the practical core and the actual meaning of human rights? Do human rights transcend politics, identities, and cultures? Should human rights constitute a claim for the rights of the needy and the vulnerable, a conduit to maximize individual liberties, or a protection from the power of states? Based on the past, are human rights nurturing aspirations of goodwill, or concrete and operational principles to address atrocities? What ought to be the future agenda of human rights advocacy? Could good intentions result in harmful actions to vulnerable individuals and needy people?

Some answers to these questions are available in a new book, Making Human Rights Real by Filip Spagnoli. In a language consciously designed to be within the grasp of ordinary people (Spagnoli uses the term "accessible" three times in his two-page preface), this monograph is useful, although it is not easy to digest. The volume's themes focus on civic liberties more than social justice, typical of Western thought. The scope of this timely inquiry is aptly broad, the method of research is academically rigorous, and the style of writing is challenging. Its focus on an interdependent world is on providing a comprehensive framework to support the moral and political desirability of applying and observing human rights, simultaneously, everywhere, equally, to everybody, in all conditions. As a universal creed, as an ethical proposition, and as a practical agenda, a duty to respect and implement the promotion and protection of human rights standards in their broadest scope is the lesson imparted by this nuanced study that reads like a series of erudite, contemplative lectures.

While the arguments above are common in modern discourse, recent challenges and political spins from benighted and insular perspectives have turned since the 1970s into a forceful, normative, and political challenge known as cultural relativism, or camouflaged as "Asian Values." This agenda, espoused by authoritarian leaders, such as Singaporean Lee Kwan Yew, misrepresent human rights. They are cast as a postcolonial imposition that validates past Western imperialism, facilitates exploitation of labor and materials in the developing world, and justifies latent racism, while allowing selfishness and neglect of traditional responsibilities to local communities.[2]

As a framework for civil and political liberties, the causes of human rights and democracy were not helped by the frequent uses of these terms by U.S. President George W. Bush. While waging wars and toppling totalitarian, genocidal governments in Afghanistan and Iraq that helped terrorist groups internationally, he marshaled noble ideals of equality and justice in his speeches. Simultaneously, however, Bush consistently helps pro-American oppressive rulers throughout the Middle East in such countries as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, refusing to acknowledge fundamentalist Moslem parties regardless of their grassroots popularity in Lebanon and Palestine. Arguably, Bush's preference of international order and stability over democratic reforms that challenge the status quo which endanger the supremacy of allies limited the yearning for human rights.

As in his previous two books on closely related topics, Spagnoli is suspicious of overreliance on state actions, preferring self-advocacy, individual freedoms, and societal boundaries. He is especially wary of such superpowers as the United States that arguably possess hegemonic and imperialistic tendencies worldwide. Instead, Spagnoli urges education and expansion of international law norms with a leading role for strong global institutions that possess monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. That pattern was evident already in the two previous, quite recent books he published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in Britain: Democratic Imperialism: A Practical Guide (2004) and his doctoral dissertation revised as Homo-Democraticus: On the Universal Desirability and the Not So Universal (2003). Spagnoli explicitly built on these works in the volume under review, this time printed and distributed mostly in North America by Algora Publishing, a small independent press specializing in introducing Americans to international authors who write on global questions.[3] This book also highlights differences among rights in terms of their degree and kind, and between theory and action, distinguishing in the process dissidents, tolerance, and diversity from violators, exploiters, and pretentious deniers. Trying to espouse justice in the face of those who want to subvert it, and largely avoiding orthodoxy and aiming to diverge from common thinking, Spagnoli divides his presentation into an introduction and eleven chapters that are unequal in length and importance.

The introduction is highly epistemological in its analysis of competing opinions, a single Truth, plural truths, politics, democracy, religion, and the dynamics of human existence. Spagnoli preaches tolerance, pluralism, and adherence to human rights, but also advocates a firm stance against fanatics who abuse freedoms to gain absolute control that would negate any sense of liberty. His main conclusion is that "one cannot fail to notice the inconsistency of those rejecting human rights; their rejection takes place in the public space created by human rights. It is difficult to reject human rights without using them" (p. 8).

This reviewer, however, found it hard to grasp and reconcile the statements "Democracy requires opinions, nothing more and nothing less. Opinions are based on arguments and reasons, not on evidence, proof certainty, prejudices, feelings or beliefs," with "Politics becomes a tool to transform reality, to shape the world according to some theory or utopia considered to be true teaching. This is the mindset we find in Fascism or adherents of other ideologies who are convinced that they possess the truth or unwilling to recognize the views of others as valid opinions based on sound arguments" (pp. 5-6). The incongruity is due to the need for open minds in a market of ideas. Democracy requires political actions.

Chapter 1 is by far the longest. Its contents reflect opposition to any notion of cultural superiority by one civilization, an advocacy for cultural fluidity, and separation between religion and state. Highlighting the rigors of universality, equality, and open-mindedness inherent in human rights as a remedy to contemporary sufferings, this chapter offers a devastating criticism of cultural relativism as a shield for oppressive regimes and racism. According to Spagnoli, individual freedoms and civic liberties are much more important than group rights. The essence of this portion is that "All cultures have values and principles that reflects the values embedded in human rights" (p. 17). It might be "tempting to see this as an expression of Western individualism but essentially it is based on global consensus," as the relationship between groups and individuals is defined and limited by human rights (p. 19).

To be sure, Spagnoli rejects the normative supremacy of universal human rights as an archaic fib from the bygone days of colonialism and imperialism, as a prejudice that cannot be justified by limited cultural, ethnic, political, or social identities, or as Marxist atavism in the name of collective goals or communal harmony. In this context of preferring adversarial politics to respecting traditional authority, and free markets to centralized economies, he also castigates the "self-interested misconceptions," such as the self-righteous and imposed dogmas of both Moslem fundamentalists and Christian Evangelicals (p. 21). Spagnoli could have strengthened this section if he listed the exact components of human rights in the start of his presentation rather than consigning them to a footnote linking to an appendix at the end of this book. That weakness was based on a false assertion, even among the cognoscenti in the Western world: "Most people know their human rights pretty well" (p. 11).

Chapter 2 is perhaps the most controversial in this book. In the often-repeated name of real rights, Spagnoli is critical of affirmative obligations and supportive of self-reliance (Spagnoli often italicizes derivatives of "real"). In particular, he militates against the intrinsic value of some fundamental right. The most important example is his resistance to enforcing concrete economic standards for the underprivileged in the name of social justice unless an emergency situation prevails. Instead, he argues for the ever elusive equality of rights, hoping for stability and order in countries with a hierarchy based on merit. Spagnoli does endorse minimal interventions by the state, but only for those who cannot reach even the most meager level of subsistence in the era of unfettered capitalism and aggressive globalization. He asserts that "the importance of the right to food, work, housing, social security, healthcare, etc. is a matter of dispute even among the most convinced proponents of human rights" without naming or providing any examples for such advocates (p. 47). He also explicitly undermines the legal strength and moral power of the 1948 United Nations' proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a source of "active protection" (p. 49).

In chapter 3, Spagnoli argues in six short pages that rights are not absolute or evolutionary. He opines that "the proliferation of rights, the constant talk of rights violations in countries that do reasonably well in the domain of rights, and the continuous expansion of the field of application of human rights (expansion both of the number of rights and of the number of meanings of rights), all of this is just as dangerous as outright attacks on human rights. Human rights that lose their content because of overuse are just as unreal as rights that are violated" (pp. 69-70, emphasis in original). Spagnoli accentuates the need to avoid chaos, abuse, and expectations that cannot be realistically honored.

Through arguing against group privileges as causing injustice, chapter 4 claims individual rights as the core of human rights. Spagnoli highlights his thesis through marshalling the need to fight crimes and discrimination, and to go beyond the interests of the bourgeoisie in whose name human rights expanded in the eighteenth century. He considers collective rights as subordinate to individual rights, and opposes conformism to larger identities.

Most of the rest of the book is predictable given the scope of human rights and its current agenda. Chapter 5 defends the need for religious liberties. Spagnoli uses a contextual approach to reconcile the freedom to believe and worship with diversity, and the ability to be secular within autonomous communities. Chapter 6 demands the rule of law and an open society free of state intervention even in a representative democracy. This section concentrated on the need for political activity based in a participatory society rather than in state institutions, and for a hybrid of privacy and public activity.

Chapter 7 focuses on traditional requirements for a separation of powers between the three main branches of government. There must be a balance between legislators who vote for laws that promote and protect human rights in a transparent, predictable manner; executive enforcement mechanisms, such as police officers; and an independent judiciary that reviews law and monitors conduct to prevent violations of justice and due process. Spagnoli supports the role of educated, conservative judges as the final arbiters of the common good. He likes their tendency to view politics as more than the will of the people at given moments. Accordingly, he endorses a selective approach to rights and favors limiting the powers of ordinary citizens to civil disobedience while continuing to affirm the need to discern right from wrong.

Tolerance, the methods to avoid imposition of values, and, of course, bigotry and fanaticism are the focus of the six pages of chapter 8. Three times the size of its predecessor, chapter 9 argues persuasively that, ideally, democracy and human rights are interdependent, and largely codependent. Nevertheless, as in Hong Kong and ancient Greece, partial rights and self-rule is often the norm. According to Spagnoli, active participation makes results better, but direct representation may be excessive. His general assertions on the capacity of democracy and human rights, however, overestimates the interest of dominant elites in creating and maintaining potent, transparent, and accountable governments and institutions with an agenda of human rights and/or social justice. The latter, by nature, would challenge the very basis of the monopoly of power enjoyed by the ruling classes.

Chapter 10 is pivotal because Spagnoli addresses the complex relationship between national sovereignty and international intervention, designating it as a "strange paradox" (p. 153). He concedes the inherent reluctance to act militarily against ongoing violations of human rights because dismembering or occupying existing states caused traumas in Europe and in Asia, then abuse in the American invasion of Iraq, resulting in chaos and destruction. Nevertheless, sovereignty is contingent on observing human rights. It must not be used as a shield for crimes by dictatorial regimes. No country can function in isolation, and sovereignty cannot be absolute. International law stands above state jurisdiction; imposing its binding human rights standards is legitimate as a part of democracy that is expressed not only locally but also internationally.

Spagnoli laments the negative consequences of globalization. Beyond the loss of economic sovereignty, it neutralizes the viability of human rights and democracy as vehicles for expressing popular control over public policy. He concludes that the agenda of large, diverse, international institutions is much better than multinational corporations as defenders of the vulnerable and the needy. Thus, such organizations as the United Nations must be able to protect human rights through interventions that violate traditional sovereignty (embodied in the 1945 United Nations Charter), because the latter is often exploited by oppressive rulers or does not exist in failed states.

Chapter 11, the final portion of this book, serves as a conclusion by focusing on human rights as protecting two cherished values: freedom and equality. Spagnoli highlights their positive connection, setting a universal agenda for advocates. Nevertheless, by analyzing the contradictions inherent in the discordant nature of humans and the unfairness in the societies they formed to stop violence and anarchy, he cautions against the anarchy and lawlessness that would likely result from fighting disproportionate accumulations of wealth, or eradicating poverty.

Accordingly, the options offered by liberty were more important than an open-ended coercion that may be wrought by enforcing egalitarianism in a distributive manner; political involvement in the state is the proper vehicle to advance the people's will and their convictions--because public space best guarantees physical security and access to fundamental rights. Thus, respect for laws and authority, coupled with self-control, are prerequisites to such basic freedoms as individual autonomy and to minority protection. Spagnoli does not elaborate on the merits of such plans as the New Deal in the 1930s that helped to save freedom while offering more equality, or such contemporary advantages as the prevention of malnutrition and crime offered by well-funded social services.

While this treatise does not claim to be a monograph, and adducing evidence is not one of its explicit goals, Spagnoli often conveys the obvious in a monotonic voice: "The state, and primarily the justice system and the police, protect us against violation of rights"; or applies such declaratory sentences or clichés as "Democracy proves that 'politics' and 'state' are not absolutely the same thing," in a manner more reminiscent of an opinion essay than a scholarly work (pp. 51, 108). The book offers relatively few footnotes, mostly as an afterthought; the very first one has a stylistic problem. The bibliography is quite short (a page and a half). Disappointingly, it offers no works written since 2000--other than those authored by Spagnoli himself.

In sum, the weaknesses of this book are not negligible, but at the same time they do not compromise its overall quality. Human rights advocacy can only become more real through willingness to sacrifice resources and personal safety, a commitment inspired by persuasive discourse, such as that offered in this compact volume.

Notes

[1]. An interesting perspective on these issues is offered in Alfredo Sfei-Younis, "Violation of Human Rights Is a Threat to Human Security," Conflict, Security, and Development 4, no. 3 (2004): 383-396.

[2]. For a recent, splendid presentation on the subject, read Bret L. Billet, Cultural Relativism in the Face of the West: The Plight of Women and Female Children (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

[3]. See its innovative Web site www.algora.com.

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Citation: Itai Sneh. Review of Spagnoli, Filip, Making Human Rights Real. H-Human-Rights, H-Net Reviews. April, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14409

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