Demands for 'human rights' and resistance to their violation are rarely out of the news. Yet, their definition is far from a settled matter, their legal status is quite varied, their uses and defense widely inconsistent between jurisdictions, and respect for them is blatantly limited. This stimulating and provocative new work makes the case that 'human rights' are peculiar to an historically given mode of production; in other words, they comprise a public declaration of the principles of the prevailing property relations. That they are proclaimed as absolute and universal is no different than similar declarations and beliefs about the nature of principles in other times or in different social formations. Even though the tenets underlying 'human rights' are distinctive to capitalist social formations after World War II, the demand for their fulfilment in the 21st century draws out implicit goals contained within them that are qualitatively different from any relations yet realized in existing social formations.