CRITICISM OF THE LIMITS OF THE ‘RIGHT TO HEALTH’ IN THE FIELD OF PUBLIC HEALTH SINCE THE MARXIST CRITIQUE OF THE ‘RIGHT’ IN THE TEXTS ON TIMBER THEFT LAW

Abstract

This article aims to criticize the category ‘right’ in relation to its appropriation by Latin American public health as the ‘right to health’, demonstrating the limits of this category in the texts published on the law on timber theft in the Rheinische Zeitung in 1842. Thus, the method of exposing the arguments is essayistic and its contents are structured in three sections. The first section questions how the debate on the right to health developed in the field of public health and how this right can be criticized from the perspective of Marxist legal criticism, in particular, in the theoretical contribution of Evguiene Pachukanis regarding the organic relationship between ‘commodity form’ and ‘legal form’. The second section uses the category ‘law’ in Marx’s analyses of the negotiations of the sixth Rhenish Diet published in the Gazette, demonstrating Marx’s understanding of the relationship between ‘law and private interests’ in the case of the Timber Theft Law in 1842. Finally, the third section presents brief final considerations on Marx’s analysis of law in general and the right to health in particular understood by the field of collective health.