Human rights could be institutionalized to shield market inequalities from politics.

Evidence

If, in 2016, Chile still shared with Mexico the dubious honour of being the most unequal country in the world, this was in no small part a product of the success of the Pinochet regime in consolidating its economic agenda through constitutional means. It is through this lens that we should view debates about the status of the human rights defined in the constitution. Defenders of the constitution note that it enshrined more rights than the constitution it replaced, while critics have tended to dismiss these rights as window-dressing that entrenched the arbitrary power of Pinochet and the military. For Americas Watch, the move to establish a new constitution that limited sovereignty by ‘respect for the essential rights originating from human nature’ (Article 5) was a flawed but positive step. From the perspective this book has advanced, human rights were not mere window-dressing. Rather, the Pinochet constitution embodied the realisation, which the neoliberals had achieved as early as the 1940s, that the institutionalisation of human rights could prevent political interference with the inequalities of the competitive market, and depoliticise civil society. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 368

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The central inversion of the chapter — human-rights constitutionalization as a neoliberal depoliticization tool rather than a left victory — resists one-sentence summary and reframes how to read any rights-based constitution.
• XREF: Directly bears on the ethics-of-markets debate: constitutionalized rights as private-enterprise shields rather than social guarantees. Connects to literature on the pinochet constitution and ‘constitutional capture’ of markets. — connects to: Rights-based anti-neoliberal struggle can inadvertently entrench the market — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 66; Neoliberal human rights primarily preserve the market order rather than protect individuals — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 45; Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 76 (+7 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: how defensible rights provisions (‘more rights than its predecessor’) were instrumentally drafted to lock in market supremacy — the architecture of depoliticization.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450
• Rights-based anti-neoliberal struggle can inadvertently entrench the market #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 66
• Neoliberals crafted their own human rights account supporting market order. #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 38
• Neoliberal human rights primarily preserve the market order rather than protect individuals #corroborates (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 45
• Ordoliberals wanted to reduce democratic participation to protect the market #exemplifies (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 525
• Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order #corroborates (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Subordinating politics to markets failed to produce either freedom or equality #expands (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 457