Postwar human rights and neoliberal orders began from deep disagreement over welfare and planning.
Evidence
In 1947, the divergences between those who drafted the UDHR and the neoliberals of Mont Pèlerin were more significant than their convergences. While both were concerned with threats to human dignity and liberty in the wake of World War II, their solutions differed markedly: the human rights delegates adopted an extensive list of social and economic rights, while the neoliberals depicted state welfare and planning as totalitarian threats to ‘Western civilisation’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 12
Categorization
- XREF: Challenges the common narrative that human rights and neoliberalism were always allied; useful against both triumphalist histories of each. — connects to: Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 40; Human rights discourse flourished alongside welfare-state retrenchment and anti-revolutionary politics — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 8; Postwar social-democratic welfare concerns displaced market faith, alarming both neoliberals and conservative diplomats. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 142 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Postwar social-democratic welfare concerns displaced market faith, alarming both neoliberals and conservative diplomats.
#expands(0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 142 - Early neoliberals championed human rights as instruments for market order, not as social protection
#expands(0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76 - The UDHR’s social and economic rights were sharply opposed by early neoliberals as totalitarian.
#exemplifies(0.78) - Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets
#expands(0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 40 - Human rights discourse flourished alongside welfare-state retrenchment and anti-revolutionary politics
#qualifies(0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 8 - Neoliberals deployed human rights language to justify property rights and dismantling welfare
#expands(0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 7 - Neoliberal thought framed welfare rights as contradicting rather than completing civil rights
#expands(0.74) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 162 - Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations
#expands(0.72) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450 - Neoliberalism converged with human rights activism around shared political aims.
#complicates(0.72) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 36 - Neoliberalism emerged partly as a critique of national sovereignty and democratic budgeting.
#expands(0.72) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 399