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Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets

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tagsja-picks, xref, seed, contrarian_or_surprising, trade, corroborated, category/contrarian-or-surprising
aliases@whyte_morals_2019, loc. 40

4 min read

Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets

Evidence

But Friedman’s account deserves to be taken seriously, even if it illuminates the time in which he was speaking more than it does the mid twentieth century. While one scholar has noted that human and political rights were ‘notably absent’ from the 1947 MPS statement of aims, at that time human rights were not yet an obvious aspect of a liberal tradition. The phrase ‘human rights’ is similarly absent from the Oxford Manifesto, issued that same year by representatives from nineteen liberal parties as a statement of principles of the ‘Liberal International’. The discourse of human rights was still under construction, and there was no consensus even among liberals on the relationship between the newer language of human rights and earlier affirmations of the ‘rights of man’, ‘fundamental rights’, humanitarianism, or individual freedom under the rule of law. The neoliberals were active participants in that process of construction. Human rights played a significant and overlooked role in neoliberals’ mid-century efforts to challenge socialism, social democracy and state planning, and neoliberal thinkers contributed more than has been acknowledged to the version of human rights that came to prominence decades later. By 1992, when Friedman spoke, the neoliberal argument that only a liberal market economy could foster human rights was taken as self-evident by many major international human rights NGOs. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 40

But Friedman’s account deserves to be taken seriously, even if it illuminates the time in which he was speaking more than it does the mid twentieth century. While one scholar has noted that human and political rights were ‘notably absent’ from the 1947 MPS statement of aims, at that time human rights were not yet an obvious aspect of a liberal tradition. The phrase ‘human rights’ is similarly absent from the Oxford Manifesto, issued that same year by representatives from nineteen liberal parties as a statement of principles of the ‘Liberal International’. The discourse of human rights was still under construction, and there was no consensus even among liberals on the relationship between the newer language of human rights and earlier affirmations of the ‘rights of man’, ‘fundamental rights’, humanitarianism, or individual freedom under the rule of law. The neoliberals were active participants in that process of construction. Human rights played a significant and overlooked role in neoliberals’ mid-century efforts to challenge socialism, social democracy and state planning, and neoliberal thinkers contributed more than has been acknowledged to the version of human rights that came to prominence decades later. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 40

Categorization

  • XREF: Connects to the whole premise of the book as well as to debates on whether human rights are inherently emancipatory or compatible with market liberalism — echoes Samuel Moyn’s work on human rights and neoliberalism. — connects to: Capitalism absorbed its critics’ language to legitimize neoliberal privatization — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 439; Geneva School neoliberals co-opted human rights language to defend market freedoms — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the
, 906; Human rights discourse flourished alongside welfare-state retrenchment and anti-revolutionary politics — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights
, 8 (+24 more)
  • SEED: Angle: a piece on how ‘human rights’ as a discourse was built in part by market liberals as an anti-planning weapon, complicating the common progressive origin story of rights.
  • corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights
, 40

Broader Connections

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