Neoliberals rejected universal human-rights consensus as a civilisational regression toward tribal morality.

Evidence

For the neoliberals, the very attempt to find an international, cross-cultural consensus on a list of human rights was a profound mistake. In contrast to the model of elite moral authority mobilised by the League of Nations’ mandate process, they viewed the UN as a false bureaucratic unity at odds with the spiritual unity of Europe. Europe, Röpke argued, is ‘more than catch-words, rhetoric and an empty excuse for conferences’; its ‘spiritual heritage’ of Greek culture, Christianity, individual freedom and economic freedom made it ‘the home of humanity, tolerance, reason and religion veneration’. For the neoliberals, the horrors of World War II were not a product of Western civilisation, but the results of the collectivist challenge to the liberalism that had previously defined it. They depicted civilisation as the product of the spread of commerce and the division of labour and a moral order that facilitated the pursuit of individual interest and trade. This meant that any restriction of trade was a civilisational regression – a return from the morals of the market to the egalitarianism and shared purposes of what Hayek described as a tribal morality. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 104

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s ongoing human-rights discourse work and to earlier chapters distinguishing universal human rights from market-based rights frames. — connects to: Neoliberal theorists opposed the UDHR as a false bureaucratic universalism; Neoliberals deployed human rights language to justify property rights and dismantling welfare — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 7; Neoliberals judged human rights solely by whether they supported market relations.
• DEFINE: Names the ‘morals of the market’ thesis as the opposition between trade-based civilisation and egalitarian ‘tribal morality’ — the book’s core conceptual frame.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal theorists opposed the UDHR as a false bureaucratic universalism #corroborates (0.85)
• Neoliberals deployed human rights language to justify property rights and dismantling welfare #contradicts (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 7
• Neoliberals judged human rights solely by whether they supported market relations. #corroborates (0.80)