Neoliberals rebranded market restrictions as human rights abuses to contest the NIEO.

Evidence

In an article written with John O’Sullivan in 1977 – Moyn’s human rights ‘breakthrough’ year – Bauer explicitly mobilised the language of human rights to contest the NIEO. Under the heading ‘Human Rights in the Third World’, Bauer and Sullivan contended: ‘Western liberal opinion has been strangely and culpably blind to the extent of the persecution of economically productive, perhaps relatively well-off but politically unpopular, minorities’. This account of the human rights abuses carried out by postcolonial states merges cases of assault on classical civil and political liberties with violations of economic (or market) freedoms. Third World governments, they argued, had persecuted minorities, discriminated against them in employment, and conducted expulsions and ‘even massacre’. They had suppressed freedom of the press, engaged in forced collectivisation of agriculture, restricted the inflow of foreign capital, established state monopolies and restrictive licensing of economic activities, and suppressed private firms. It was these human rights abuses, Bauer and O’Sullivan argued, that had resulted in the ‘poverty and economic backwardness’ of Third World societies. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 429

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages Moyn’s human rights ‘breakthrough’ thesis — the reader’s stated frame for this book. — connects to: NIEO opponents reframed Global South demands as an assault on liberal trading principles. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 798; The 1970s NIEO represented developing countries’ collective demand for redistribution and sovereignty. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 163; Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 76 (+9 more)
• SEED: Angle: how political opponents weaponized human-rights language against the NIEO — a counter-history to the progressive origin story of human rights.
• DEFINE: Shows how ‘human rights abuses’ got expanded to include licensing, state monopolies, and capital controls.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order #corroborates (0.92) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Neoliberals redeployed human rights to protect investors and property #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 428
• Neoliberals deployed human rights language to justify property rights and dismantling welfare #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 7
• Neoliberals crafted their own human rights account supporting market order. #corroborates (0.88) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 38
• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450
• Heritage’s UN project attacked the NIEO’s regulation of transnational corporations. #exemplifies (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1812
• Neoliberal intellectuals coordinated an attack against the New International Economic Order. #expands (0.82) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 163
• Market competition was framed by neoliberals as guarantor of rights and peace #expands (0.80)
• The NIEO threat spurred the neoliberal counterrevolution in development policy #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1733
• Neoliberal advocacy outlasted the NIEO’s political viability as a threat #qualifies (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1751