Hayek defined humanity in terms that precluded domestic redistribution and state sovereignty

Evidence

Humanity played a central role in the neoliberal challenge to political sovereignty and collectivism. The ‘very concepts of humanity and therefore any form of internationalism are entirely products of the individualist view of man’, Hayek wrote in The Road to Serfdom, ‘and there can be no place for them in a collectivist system of thought’. The neoliberals mobilised this account of humanity against their own welfare states and postcolonial affirmations of sovereignty. In a world in which governments increasingly interfered with business, they argued, ‘the principle of each nation’s unrestricted sovereignty’ is a challenge to all other nations. When, later in life, Hayek formalised his account of the morals of the market, he argued that a ‘universal humanism’ required that we limit our moral obligations to others to the avoidance of harm. Hayek believed that thinking in terms of humanity precluded domestic redistribution, which he framed as a throwback to tribal loyalties. The market order was the only one that potentially embraced all of humanity, the neoliberals believed, so defending humanity required preventing harm to the international market. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 54

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the ethics-of-markets debate and to universal-humanism arguments in Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum that the reader is likely weighing against Hayek. — connects to: Hayek endorsed ranking human lives by their utility to the community; Hayek makes private property, gender norms, and tradition supervenient over government — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 121; Hayek rejected social and economic rights as incoherent and unenforceable — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 145 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: How does Hayek’s ‘universal humanism as harm-avoidance’ interact with the duty-based, positive-obligation human-rights frameworks this book juxtaposes against it?

Broader Connections

• Hayek endorsed ranking human lives by their utility to the community #corroborates (0.80)
• Hayek rejected social and economic rights as incoherent and unenforceable #corroborates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 145
• In his final book Hayek endorsed ranking human lives by utility #corroborates (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 29
• Hayek makes private property, gender norms, and tradition supervenient over government #corroborates (0.78) — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, 121