The "communist" states of the twentieth-century were just that, "communist". If we adhere to Karl Marx's dialectical theory of communism, we can observe a range of preludes which are necessary for communism to come about, so to speak. Firstly, we must acknowledge (for those not versed in the history of socialisms) that there were many, what are considered, utopian socialists, who pre-dated Marx and thus his theories. They largely concerned themselves with industrial society and its relationship with class. These early utopian socialists are who constructed the framework for Marx to build around. He pioneered socialism from utopian to what he considered "scientific socialism", and rose to prominence due to his engagement with the history of class struggle, rather than just offering his opinion on industrial society. Marx employed and reformed Hegel's dialectic theory and applied it to society, observing that society was constantly evolving, i.e. from ancient Roman society to medieval society to capitalism (where we currently reside). What he specifically observed throughout the evolvement of society was the hierarchal structures which existed in society. For thousands of years, humans consistently organised themselves exploitatively, with one class benefitting off of another "freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf). This is scientific socialism. Marx professed that communism - a societal state (not to be confused with 'state' as in a political entity) - where the capitalists (bourgeoisie) and working-class (proletariat) would collapse, forming a single class, thus communism would be classless. It would be a proletariat only. Did we witness such a society in the so-called "communist" states of the twentieth century? I think not. My initial thoughts on hierarchal society in these regimes are more so - the leader, political elite and sycophants, military, population - although I am sure one could provide a far more critical and thorough analysis if one desired to. Therefore, where was the classlessness? Alongside this, Marx predicted that communism, once arrived at, would be stateless, simply meaning that the intrinsic characteristics of the state would not exist, because, in Marxist theory, the state is an agent of the bourgeoisie. Thus, simply put, there was no communism observable in these regimes. And they never claimed to be communist as far as I am aware. The use of "the revolution" to achieve communism was an often deployed tactic of autocrats in order to silence opposition.

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Karl Marx is sometimes, simplistically, referred to as the theorist of equality. Equality is central to Marx's revolutionary communism. The whole idea of socialism is that industrial society has produced extreme class cleavages and inequalities which must be addressed and revolutionised to form an egalitarian society. Therefore, and to answer your question directly, yes, Marx does address the rights of humans, along the social facets of class and labour, for example, where he notably says "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". However, does Marx adequately address individual rights along the lines that other notable political theorists did? To be up-front and honest, I am not well learned in the area of Marx and his approach to human rights. But the general consensus seems to be that he rejected human rights. Now I will be turning to lecture notes (posted below) from Professor Robert Fine's module on Marx/sociology at the University of Warwick. In his lecture notes, Fine addresses this incontrovertibly accepted principle. He first points to Marx's early attitude to human rights, when he criticised censorship by Prussian authorities in the pursuit of freedom of the media. "He maintained that a free press is vital because it is the medium through which the public spirit expresses itself whilst censorship can only create an ‘oligarchy of the spirit’ and act as a ‘preventative measure of the police against freedom". Censorship, he wrote, asks ‘unlimited trust in the officialdom ‘but flows from ‘unlimited distrust of all non‐officials'." Fine also establishes that Marx defended the rights of the poor to gather wood, where newly introduced Prussian laws prohibited such acts. "He argued that these theft laws (which were similar in content to the Black Act in England) corrupted the idea of the state itself by privileging the private interests of the landowners over the idea of right and the freedom of all."On religion, Fine says " For Marx rights of man and citizen were a ‘great step forward’. The private right to be religious (or not) in any way one wishes is the necessary first step toward freedom from religion as such. Freedom from religion presupposes freedom of religion. By emancipating the state from religion, it represented the first step in ‘turn<ing> the affairs of the state into the affairs of the people’. Nothing could be further from this argument than the notion that Marx was a rights‐nihilist, an antinomian who sought to trash the very idea of rights."

Sources consulted:

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Oxford University Press.

Paul Wetherly, Political Ideologies, Oxford University Press.

Robert Fine, Sociology of Human Rights, Lecture on Marx's Critique on Rights, University of Warwick: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/staff/robertfine/home/teachingmaterial/humanrights/lecturepodcast/marxs_critique_of_rights.pdf