Against the autonomy of the Right. The critique to the Human Rights according to Ernst Forsthoff and Antonio Negri

Abstract

The definitive establishment of public-private governance has forced to abandon the theories of political autonomy that were valid until a few decades ago. In return, there has been a boom in the autonomy of the right conceived as a recovery of the natural law inherent to Human Rights. This article rescues from oblivion the two main criticisms made in the second half of the twentieth century to Human Rights: that of the conservative jurist Ernst Forsthoff and that of the Marxist philosopher Antonio Negri. Although these thinkers are completely antagonistic from the point of view of their political projects, both agree that, in the current technical societies where collaborative work prevails, the liberal conception of right is no longer able to function as a guarantor of the freedoms and empowerment of citizens: it has lost all capacity for control and organization of material production relationships.