Rights, rule of law and state capacity served incorporation into global capitalism

Evidence

A central test of whether a non-European state was ‘civilised’ was whether it had the capacity, and the inclination, to protect European commerce, to enter into binding contracts, and to secure the basic rights to ‘life, dignity and property’ of European traders. The protection of rights, the rule of law, and a centralised state with a monopoly on the use of violence and a capacity to enter into contracts were all preconditions for ‘the incorporation of the periphery into an uneven yet fundamentally global system of exploitation and commodity circulation’. … The Berlin Conference of 1884–85 – which carved up the African continent between European states (the ‘Scramble for Africa’) while claiming to break with the rapacious imperialism of the past – framed commerce as a civilising force that would enable ‘backward’ peoples to enter the world market. As the British statesman Joseph Chamberlain put it, ‘We develop new territory as Trustees of Civilization for the Commerce of the World.’ The benevolence of European rule, the civilising role of commerce, and the attempt to extend a list of basic rights were deeply intertwined. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 79

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for the reader’s advanced piece: how the human-rights canon was built to require the very state-and-market architecture that modern economic-rights debates presuppose.
• XREF: Directly echoes the civilizing-mission claims from Black Marxism (Robinson) about ideology legitimating exploitation, and connects with the reader’s earlier curated work on colonial standards as moral-technologies. — connects to: Neoliberal human rights discourse entailed a duty to spread capitalism globally — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 283; Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital; Anti-colonial rights advocates unwittingly armed later coercive interventions in global capitalism’s interests — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 273 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal human rights discourse entailed a duty to spread capitalism globally #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 283
• Neoliberals framed human rights as a tool to enforce global standards protecting private capital #corroborates (0.82)
• Neoliberalism economizes justice, sovereignty, and the rule of law #corroborates (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 32
• Human rights law and neoliberal economics converge to regulate conduct by quantifying freedom #corroborates (0.80)
• Neoliberals reinterpreted inalienable rights as instruments to foster economic initiative #corroborates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 335
• Rights function as instruments of governance, not just limits on power #expands (0.78)
• The World Bank’s human-rights turn framed rights as elements of economic risk governance #corroborates (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 299
• Anti-colonial rights advocates unwittingly armed later coercive interventions in global capitalism’s interests #qualifies (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 273
• Colonialism created the conditions for modern capitalism’s emergence #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 251
• Capitalism created the first global economy based on economics rather than politics #expands (0.72) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 173