This article addresses Marxism and its relationship to human rights in a contemporary context. Our main argument is that universal human rights, as formulated, e.g., in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), cannot be fully realised under capitalism, but that a politics defending and promoting such rights has the potential to contribute to the advancement of internationalist, working class politics furthering political emancipation within the current order, and even to contribute to a socialist critique of the capitalist mode of production aiming for human emancipation.