Neoliberals reinterpreted inalienable rights as instruments to foster economic initiative

Evidence

Pinochet’s Chile was not the only place where Friedman had identified a dual miracle. Two years prior to heralding Chile’s miraculous transformation, he and his wife, Rose Director Friedman, declared that the ‘story of the United States is the story of an economic miracle and a political miracle’. The Friedmans attributed these earlier miracles to two complementary sets of ideas, both published in 1776. Alongside Smith’s account of the market as a realm of voluntary social relations that requires ‘no external force, no coercion, no violation of freedom’, they placed the US Declaration of Independence’s contention that all individuals are ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights’, among them ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness’. According to the Friedmans, these two ideas were mutually constitutive. ‘Economic freedom’, they argued, ‘is an essential requisite for political freedom.’ The market enables individuals to pursue their own values and ends, while the guarantee that they will be unmolested in doing so fosters economic development. Both Smith and Jefferson, the Friedmans argued, saw concentrated government power as the great danger, and ‘protection of the citizen against the tyranny of government as the perpetual need’. The inalienable rights of the American Declaration of Independence, from this perspective, existed not to found a sovereign state, but to ensure that state power was used to foster economic initiative. It would ultimately be towards this same end that the neoliberals would mobilise individual rights in Chile. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 335

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader debate the reader is pursuing on how human-rights language was repurposed by market ideology — links to Brown’s ‘Undoing the Demos’ and to the neoliberal critique of state sovereignty. — connects to: For most neoliberals, property rights are contingent instruments for competitive order, not absolutes — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 194; Neoliberals held that rights originate from capitalism rather than nature; Understanding the rights-neoliberalism convergence requires treating neoliberalism as more than an economic doctrine. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 14 (+12 more)
• ADDENDUM: Runs parallel to how rights discourse was mobilized for market ends, echoing themes in the sacrifice article about how sacred-seeming commitments get instrumentalized by power structures.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals weaponized human rights language to protect private property and market order #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital #corroborates (0.82)
• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations #expands (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450
• Neoliberalism economizes justice, sovereignty, and the rule of law #expands (0.78) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 32
• Rights function as instruments of governance, not just limits on power #expands (0.78)
• Human rights law and neoliberal economics converge to regulate conduct by quantifying freedom #expands (0.72)