Neoliberals embraced human rights language as interventionist enforcement of private capital rights

Evidence

By drawing attention to the violence of previous attempts at conversion, Baroody worked to challenge the legitimacy of European civilizing missions. In this sense, it is accurate to depict his argument as a ‘relatively mild’ foretaste of the anti-imperialism that later became prominent in UN forums. In response, the neoliberals would draw the missionary and interventionist implications of the new human rights language, which framed human rights as a means to enforce global standards to support the old rights of private capital. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 139

Categorization

• SEED: Thesis: the human-rights-vs-markets debate is fundamentally about who gets to set global standards — a piece could contrast Baroody’s non-interventionism with neoliberal missionary universalism, showing that opposition to ‘civilizing missions’ and support for free markets could be two sides of an anti-interventionist coin.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the grafting piece’s theme of moral-political ideas being institutionally deployed: here missionaries and interventionists weaponize universal rights to enshrine private-capital rights — a parallel to how moral formalism gets co-opted.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberals reframed human rights as instruments of market submission — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 120; Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 76; Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital (+10 more)

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 framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital #corroborates (0.95)
• Neoliberals redeployed human rights to protect investors and property #corroborates (0.93) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 428
• Property rights discourse was wielded as a human rights claim to justify neoliberal privatization #corroborates (0.92) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 7
• Neoliberals deployed human rights language to justify property rights and dismantling welfare #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 7
• Neoliberals adopted human rights language to enshrine a moral order for global capital. #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 65
• Capitalism absorbed its critics’ language to legitimize neoliberal privatization #corroborates (0.85) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 439
• Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets #qualifies (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 40
• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations #expands (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450
• Human rights law and neoliberal economics converge to regulate conduct by quantifying freedom #expands (0.75)
• Neoliberals held that rights originate from capitalism rather than nature #qualifies (0.72)