Neoliberal human rights legitimize state violence to protect global markets.

Evidence

Faced with the rise of collectivist mass politics, mid-twentieth-century neoliberalism was a defensive liberalism. Breaking with the optimism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the early neoliberals believed the survival of the competitive market required the re-establishment of its moral foundations. It was through this lens that they viewed human rights. Redefined to exclude social protections, human rights, they believed, could protect the market order by securing property and private investment and fostering the morals of the market. From the neoliberal perspective, the UN human rights process, with its expansion of membership beyond the bounds of the ‘civilised’ family of nations, and its challenges to racial hierarchies, threatened the continuity of civilisation. But the neoliberals saw the potential for the language of human rights to provide that ‘generally observed and undisputed code of moral norms and principles of behavior’ which, the German ordoliberal Wilhelm Röpke argued, was the precondition of economic integration. Human rights, from this perspective, were not a product of international consensus. They were a product of ‘Western civilisation’, and their role was to support the extension of capitalist social relations by fostering the legal security, morals and forms of subjectivity conducive to an international market order. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

While the human rights advocates of LSF mobilised neoliberal economic analyses to challenge Third Worldism and the NIEO, the neoliberal economists embraced the language of human rights. They soon saw that this new language, and the organisations that mobilised it to curtail the range of feasible political options and to license interventions into postcolonial societies, could bolster their own agenda of imposing market discipline on former colonies. Neoliberal human rights dispensed with the project of guaranteeing broad popular rights to basic welfare, but not with ‘economic rights’ per se. Rather, they saw in human rights the possibility of securing the rights of investors and the wealthy in the face of challenges to their property and power. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 428 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Human rights discourse can be mobilised to defend property owners against popular demands — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 4; Neoliberalism and human rights are commonly seen as opposing globalizing logics. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 39; Neoliberal human rights primarily preserve the market order rather than protect individuals — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 45 (+19 more)

Related

• Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital (similarity 0.92)
• Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order (similarity 0.92)
• Neoliberals adopted human rights language to enshrine a moral order for global capital. (similarity 0.92)
• Neoliberalism and human rights are commonly seen as opposing globalizing logics. (similarity 0.91)
• Neoliberal security rights legitimize state violence policing the market order (similarity 0.91)
• Neoliberal human rights primarily preserve the market order rather than protect individuals (similarity 0.91)
• Early neoliberals championed human rights as instruments for market order, not as social protection (similarity 0.90)
• Neoliberalism converged with human rights activism around shared political aims. (similarity 0.90)
• Neoliberals judged human rights solely by whether they supported market relations. (similarity 0.90)
• Human rights NGOs reinforced the neoliberal split between violent politics and peaceful markets (similarity 0.90)
• Neoliberals crafted their own human rights account supporting market order. (similarity 0.90)
• Neoliberals redeployed human rights to protect investors and property (similarity 0.89)
• Neoliberal thinkers reframed human rights as protections for market freedoms. (similarity 0.89)
• Neoliberals reframed human rights as instruments of market submission (similarity 0.88)
• Neoliberalism’s founding manifesto borrowed human-rights language to frame markets as civilization’s defense. (similarity 0.88)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital #corroborates (0.90)
• Neoliberals redeployed human rights to protect investors and property #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 428
• Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Human rights NGOs reinforced the neoliberal split between violent politics and peaceful markets #corroborates (0.85)
• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450
• Neoliberal market freedom required state violence to enforce submission to the market #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 328
• Neoliberal human rights discourse entailed a duty to spread capitalism globally #expands (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 283
• Neoliberal freedom is recoded as negative liberty to protect market supremacy #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2130