Neoliberals reframed human rights as instruments of market submission

Evidence

If economic disintegration was a product of moral disintegration, then a revival of dreams of perpetual peace required the development of moral and legal standards to support the global spread of the competitive market by protecting private property and human dignity. The market economy, Röpke argued, ‘belongs essentially to a liberal social structure and one which respects individual rights’, while non-market, collectivist coordination is coercive, ignoring such rights. The attempt to draft a universal human rights declaration might have made a contribution to the revival of such shared moral standards. But, of course, everything depended on how those rights were understood. For the neoliberals, human rights could only play this role if they broke with the rationalism of the French Revolution and fostered submission to the market order. While Christianity could not provide history or the market with a providential guarantee, they believed it could secure the moral foundations of a competitive market order ‘truly compatible with human dignity’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 120

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reading purpose on market ethics: human rights as submission-enforcing rather than emancipatory. Overlaps with the Islamophobia-and-novel material on ‘rights talk’ serving power. — connects to: Neoliberals judged human-rights claims by their conduciveness to markets — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 27; Neoliberal thinkers reframed human rights as protections for market freedoms. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 56; Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 450 (+17 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the distinctively neoliberal meaning of human dignity: compatible with market order, opposed to French revolutionary rationalism.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals judged human-rights claims by their conduciveness to markets #corroborates (0.95) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 27
• Neoliberal thinkers reframed human rights as protections for market freedoms. #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 56
• Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital #corroborates (0.90)
• Neoliberals embraced human rights language as interventionist enforcement of private capital rights #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 139
• Early neoliberals championed human rights as instruments for market order, not as social protection #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450
• Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 40
• Neoliberals crafted their own human rights account supporting market order. #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 38
• Neoliberal human rights legitimize state violence to protect global markets. #expands (0.75)
• Human rights become market-dependent floating signifiers of personhood #expands (0.75) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 765