“Inalienable Rights: Part I The Basic Argument” Against the Employer-Employee System and for Workplace Democracy
https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/
This article discusses how the contemporary system of labor relations treats employees as things rather than persons thus denying their humanity, and violating rights they have because of their personhood. Instead, work should be democratically controlled by the people doing it
Private property is a construct.
Natural rights is a construct.
Neither represents a transcendent truth.
The best account for natural rights is that it provides elegant packaging for values and norms already shared. The danger emerges because whoever controls the packaging is the one who also determines what becomes elegantly packaged.
In a sense, all ethics are constructs of our minds. If this were grounds to reject human rights (it isn’t), it would be a reason against any reason to do anything (e.g. abolish capitalism) including egoism. The transcendent truth about ethics is unknowable. The best we can do is build moral theories on appealing moral principles.
Inalienability is a theory not merely a catalogue of personal views. Hegel’s inalienability critique of slavery shows this with nonsense added to not attack wage labor