TV rights NGOs were powerless companions of 1970s-era neoliberalism

Evidence

In an article that challenges recent Marxist critiques of the complicity between human rights and neoliberalism, Samuel Moyn notes that the target of the young Marx’s criticisms was the abstraction of political emancipation within the nation-state, not the transnational, NGO-driven, legalistic human rights dominant today. When human rights came to prominence in the 1970s, Moyn argues, they broke fundamentally with the statist paradigm of the revolutionary rights of man that Marx criticised. This transnational politics of human rights may have come to prominence at the same time as neoliberalism, he argues, but human rights NGOs were merely ‘powerless companions’ of neoliberalism. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 43

Categorization

• XREF: Moyn’s ‘powerless companions’ thesis speaks directly to the reader’s interest in the ethics-of-markets debate and the actual causal power of human-rights discourse under austerity. — connects to: Human rights NGOs absorbed the neoliberal civil-society-versus-coercive-state dichotomy — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 60; Modern human rights NGOs narrowed their agenda to civil liberties under neoliberal ascendancy — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 148; Rights advocacy aimed at forestalling revolt repeats neoliberalism’s original pacifying mission — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 456 (+10 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does Moyn defend ‘powerless companions’ against evidence that rights litigation has actively shielded austerity programs?

Broader Connections

• Major human rights NGOs drew on the neoliberal account of rights. #expands (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 58
• Human rights NGOs absorbed the neoliberal civil-society-versus-coercive-state dichotomy #expands (0.88) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 60
• Human rights NGOs reinforced the neoliberal split between violent politics and peaceful markets #expands (0.87)
• Modern human rights NGOs narrowed their agenda to civil liberties under neoliberal ascendancy #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 148
• Neoliberals saw human rights standards as a way to depoliticize international economic relations #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 450
• Early neoliberals championed human rights as instruments for market order, not as social protection #corroborates (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 76
• Neoliberals reinterpreted inalienable rights as instruments to foster economic initiative #corroborates (0.84) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 335
• Rights advocacy aimed at forestalling revolt repeats neoliberalism’s original pacifying mission #expands (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 456
• Neoliberals actively shaped the postwar human rights discourse that later legitimized markets #corroborates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 40
• Neoliberalism’s blindness to politics deformed its institutional project #expands (0.80) — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, 142
• Neoliberal reform shrank public-sector jobs and redirected educated Dalits into NGOs #exemplifies (0.80) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 562
• Neoliberal figures deliberately blurred their boundaries with rival right-wing factions #expands (0.75)
• Neoliberalism existed to crush Sixties democratic socialism and is now failing #qualifies (0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2022