The UDHR’s social and economic rights were designed to pacify, not radicalize

Evidence

From a neoliberal perspective, the UDHR’s adoption of social and economic rights seemed evidence of a desire for security, which would enable the state to usurp the traditional role of the family. But many of the UDHR’s drafters were concerned to uphold the family as what its Article 16 (initiated by Charles Malik) calls ‘the natural and fundamental group and unit of society’. The pacifying, governmental approach of Roosevelt’s New Deal deeply informed the social and economic rights in the declaration. Just as Roosevelt sought to avoid ‘talking politics’, the drafters sought to detach social and economic rights from political challenges to the exploitation of labour, the existing division of labour and the reproductive role of the nuclear family, and transform them into minimalist guarantees for the most needy. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 180

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s existing knowledge of human-rights discourse being critiqued as depoliticized — relates to the later chapter argument and to critiques of rights as neutralizing radical politics. — connects to: The UDHR’s flexible social rights language proved compatible with neoliberal poverty management — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 64; The UDHR preamble’s religious language encoded Western-civilization claims against Islam and Communism.; The Great Depression and socialist threat drove inclusion of social rights in the UDHR — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 150 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• UDHR social rights were compatible with market order, not a threat to it #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 224