Cranston, Maurice. "Human Rights, Real and Supposed". In Political Theory and the Rights of Man, edited by David Raphael, 43-53. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1967.

Cranston, Maurice. "Human Rights, Real and Supposed". In Political Theory and the Rights of Man, edited by David Raphael, 43-53. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1967.

• The author objects to the inclusion of social and economic rights in the category of universal human rights, a category which he believes should be occupied by political and civil rights. Essentially, Dr. Cranston objects to positive rights being considered universal, a designation which should be reserved for negative 'natural' rights (43).
• The primary objection is that positive rights can only be enforced by laws, there is no protection outside society from thirst or starvation. The author references the critiques of human rights by Jeremey Bentham and Edmund Burke, who note the same thing about negative rights, namely that outside of the scope of national laws and specific societal institutions they cannot be guaranteed (44).
• The Rights of Man, as produced by John Locke, were originally criticized by Mr. Bentham and Mr. Burke from both sides of the political spectrum, on the same grounds of being useless because the pronouncement of these rights was meaningless if they were not enforcable through defined institutions. Mr. Bentham argued they undermined actual legal reforms, while Mr. Burke contested that they spread directionless revolutionary sentiment (44).
• When a universal bill of rights was proposed at the UN Economic and Social Council in May 1946, the British, American, and Commonwealth delegations suggested a binding legal document mandating certain political and civil rights. The Russian delegation objected to any legally binding agreement, instead suggesting a general declaration of what rights were; the Truman administration later adopted the Russian position (45).
• The Commission on Human Rights created for the drafting process reached a compromise, promising to first produce a non-binding document and then later creating a legally binding agreement, to be called 'the covenant'.  The Declaration of Universal Human Rights was approved in December 1948, as of 1967, no binding agreement has been produced (45-46).
• Part of the difficult in the UN with agreeing to a binding declaration of human rights is the scope of rights established in the Universal Declaration, which includes both negative civil and political rights, as well as positive social and economic rights. The differences between these positive and negative rights forced the UN to adopt two separate covenants: one for positive rights and one for negative rights (46-47).
• The problems of agreeing on legally binding human rights have not been experienced by the Council of Europe -- including during the time the capitalist states of Europe -- which agreed in 1950 to accept a legally binding set of rights limited to social and political rights. This has still had issues, however, as Greece, Turkey, France, and Italy have refused to accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights to actually enforce these rights (47).
• The author proposes a division within human rights between legal rights and moral rights. Legal rights are those rights enshrined in law and protected by national institutions, traditionally protected in that society, nominal legal protections even if not enforced, and legal protections specific to certain groups or persons. Moral rights are those rights to which people are logicially or morally justified but which are not guaranteed by law or custom (47-49).
• Rights can only be considered rights if performing them is within the realm of possibility. If one cannot be reasonably expected to perform a duty, then it cannot be reasonably claimed as a right. The author contends that this is true for most positive rights; the economic situation of giving healthcare or a good standard of living to everyone is impossible, so it cannot be considered a legitimate right (50).
• Negative rights are relatively easy to transform from moral rights to legal rights because they require inaction on behalf of the government rather than action. The author asserts that most positive rights are too difficult to enact as legal rights, meaning that they cannot be considered legitimate (50-51).
• Human rights should also be truly universal, meaning that they cannot be limited to specific groups of persons. The author objects to specific social and economic rights on this logic, since only employees can claim benefits like paid holiday from labor. Rights which are not universally applicable cannot be considered human rights (51).
• A human rights also needs to constitute an issue of 'paramount importance'. Most negative rights obviously fulfill this requirement, since not being tortured or imprisoned indefinitely are obviously important, but the author argues that many positive rights are not of paramount importance, but instead just good things, like social security (51-52).
• I just have to note that 'fuck this guy', I mean serious how far does your head have to be up your own white cracker ass to argue against universal rights to basic nutrition or education. Yeah, paid holidays or social security are easy targets, but to claim that they are representative of all social and economic rights is fucking dense.
• The inclusion of social and economic rights in the contemporary human rights agenda makes it more difficult to make actual progress in securing universal legal rights because it confusing the 'legitimate' and 'important' negative rights with rhetorical and utopian goals embodied in positive rights (53).

The author basically argues that social and economic rights are utopian, based on the fact that the world of the 1960s has utterly failed to implement them, and that focusing on these rights prevents progress on the 'legitimate' negative rights. What comes across is a refusal to recognize that some negative and positive fall into the category of necessity (physical safety, food, shelter), while some fall into the category of pleasant non-necessities (voting rights, unionization, social security), instead all negative rights are considered necessary and all positive rights are considered pleasant but superfluous. Importantly, the author also dismisses all social and economic rights as impractical, simply based on the fact that he cannot imagine -- or refuses to imagine -- that a radically-different world order could exist in which all human beings are actually provided with a basic standard of living.