Neoliberal human rights primarily preserve the market order rather than protect individuals

Evidence

For all their undoubted diversity, the neoliberals of the early Mont Pèlerin Society were largely united around the programme outlined in Friedman’s short paper. At the inaugural MPS meeting, Hayek argued that, while it is known that a functioning market relies on the ‘protection of certain rights, such as property and the enforcement of contracts’, it was only once this was accepted that ‘the real problem begins’. In The Road to Serfdom, he faulted previous liberals for neglecting the fact that a competitive market requires an ‘appropriate legal system’, and stressed that it was ‘by no means sufficient that the law should recognise the principle of private property and freedom of contract’. Human rights played an important role in the neoliberal attempt to develop an appropriate legal system and moral framework for a global capitalist market. The rights they formulated were not the rights of man that Marx had criticised. The correlate of seeing the competitive market as the sine qua non of peace, freedom and rights is that that neoliberal human rights exist not so much to protect the individual – even the egoistic individual – as to preserve the market order. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 45

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This inverts the taken-for-granted moral valence of human rights: rights discourse as a market-preserving technology, not an individual shield. The whole book turns on it.
• XREF: Challenges the mainstream human-rights-as-progress narrative (Moyn’s ‘Not Enough’, Samuel Moyn’s work on human rights and inequality) and echoes the critique that rights fail the poor. — connects to: Geneva School neoliberals co-opted human rights language to defend market freedoms — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 906; Neoliberals crafted their own human rights account supporting market order. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 38; Neoliberalism and human rights are commonly seen as opposing globalizing logics. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 39 (+20 more)
• SEED: Article angle: how human-rights discourse became a legitimation tool of the market order — Whyte’s thesis mapped against the current human-rights-and-neoliberalism debate.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order #corroborates (0.95) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Neoliberals redeployed human rights to protect investors and property #corroborates (0.95) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 428
• Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital #corroborates (0.90)
• Neoliberal freedom is recoded as negative liberty to protect market supremacy #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2130
• Neoliberal ‘freedom’ is internally redefined to mean market autonomy, not political liberty #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 166
• Market ideology functions to repress freedom rather than secure it #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 600
• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations #responds-to (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450
• Neoliberal human rights legitimize state violence to protect global markets. #expands (0.80)
• Rights-based anti-neoliberal struggle can inadvertently entrench the market #qualifies (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 66