Abstract
Jessica Whyte, a political theorist and an associate professor at the in the School of Humanities and Languages and the School of Law at the University of New South Wales, chose a clever title to her new book, finished around June 2018 (p. 236) and issued in November 2019. It is precisely in the ‘and’ particle inserted between ‘human rights’ and ‘the rise of neoliberalism’ that the whole work unfolds. Even if deciding who has been the most influential in the mutually-dependent pair is a matter open to the reader, her book presents a well-documented statement that the relationship goes beyond mere coexistence, by exploring an intricate discursive game between leading figures with transit in both fields.
It is not trivial to formulate such a relationship. Neoliberalism may eventually be perceived as a monolithic body of thought, despite the different levels of orthodoxy put forward by intellectuals, politicians and international organisations. Human rights, however, carries a certain polyvalence, as its meaning changes depending on the speaker and its context (p. 3). At the same time, even if the broader notion of human rights has become widely accepted in contemporary narratives, the actual content is still subject to controversy. The author pays special attention to the dispute for hegemony, both in terms of a positivist hegemony in the scope of legal documents and of broader political consensus (more on this later). However, her main goal holds throughout the book; it consists of analysing ‘hegemonic conceptions of human rights, rather than uses of human rights by marginalised and subaltern groups’ (p. 33).
To the same extent that alternatives to the dominant position of neoliberalism in Western political economy are considered in this very capacity – as alternatives that lost the struggle for general acceptance – Whyte does not generally refer to human rights as a synonym of a wider scope of fundamental rights grouping every civil, political, social and economic right listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Instead, she refers to the concerted effort observed during the past hundred years to re-define and enforce a set of rights that are compatible with the market economy, while also relegating the remaining rights to a position of enmity. Thus, if (liberal) civil and political rights constitute a pre-requisite for the prosperity of a global neoliberal project, social and economic rights, those that presuppose a level of state intervention on unrestricted income distribution and wealth accumulation, should be dealt with not only in the arena of political economy. For Whyte, they should be faced in the field of morality.
As a consequence of the fluidity of the subject under analysis, it can be said that the author examines human rights through three distinct, although intertwined, stages. The first one focuses on human rights as a set of principles derived from the colonial argument of the civilising mission, one that assumes the moral superiority of the West and its consequent (and sacred) ambition of enlightening different peoples throughout the globe, even if this could mean, according to a passage from Mises repeated a few times, ‘beat people into submission’ (pp. 25, 170, 239). This approach goes in line with other critical analyses on international law in general, specifically the effort to elaborate and enforce a conceptual standard of civilisation that should be pursued by postcolonial nations if they were ever to develop as their former colonial masters, 1 and is acknowledged specifically in such a context (pp. 40–45).
The second stage examines human rights in the scope of the political arena, where the meaning itself is open to dispute. As detailed in Chapter 3, the number of United Nations members almost doubled following the decades of anticolonial struggles (p. 116). Awareness about the consequences of past colonial exploration and the ongoing armed conflicts in the 1960s, especially in Algeria, Malaya and Palestine (p. 138), supported the dispute for a conception of human rights aimed at structural causes of harm and at reparation, subsequently grouped under the pejorative umbrella of Third Worldism (pp. 199–200).
In the third stage, Whyte analyses the rise of neoliberal human rights to a condition of hegemony. This is pursued in Chapter 4, which focuses on Pinochet’s Chile (1973–1990), where the recipe of a Chicago-style shock doctrine in economics was developed alongside state-sponsored extreme violence and the well-depicted participation of Amnesty International in the humanitarian front (see especially pp. 179–184). From this part onwards, Whyte’s thesis gains momentum, before reaching the summit in Chapter 5. Despite several references made up until this point, it is in analysing Amnesty International’s public agenda and reports that she situates herself in an ongoing debate between Naomi Klein and Samuel Moyn (pp. 158–159). The first author argues that, for the sake of political impartiality, humanitarian advocacy in Chile obscured possible links between neoliberal economic agenda and political violence, what is later referred as ‘human rights as “blinders”’ (p. 180). Conversely, the second author points an exaggeration in such claims, arguing instead that the incapacity of the left in escaping repression or mobilising support was partially responsible for the success of an a-political model of human rights movement.
Whyte ponders about a possible middle-ground between the two authors, considering the argument in favour of recognising the importance of a seemingly pragmatic approach adopted by humanitarian organisations as complementary to that of ‘critiques of economic shock treatment’ (pp. 180–181). She rejects this view, withdrawing from Klein’s claim that human rights targeted political violence alone and opted to ignore the underlying economic measures in place, but also distancing herself from Moyn’s account of neutrality and even lack of capacity from humanitarian organisations in dealing with structural issues. She argues, instead, that specifically because of the explicitly narrow focus and of human rights advocates’ deliberate choice in not getting involved in politics that neoliberal economics was able to flourish, now supported by adequate moral grounds. As long as peaceful and obedient subjects were protected from highly individualised abuses, like torture and denial of free speech, economics remained unchecked. For Whyte, this distinction was visible in Amnesty International’s ‘test of the prohibition of violence’, in defining who was entitled to the status of prisoner of conscience, which led, for instance, to the exclusion of Nelson Mandela for his early support of an armed wing in the scope of the African National Congress, and a controversy over the impossibility of classifying every communist as such, due to their shared intention of using violence to overthrow capitalism (p. 182).
While Whyte discusses Moyn’s ideas taking into account mainly one article he published in 2015, 2 his ideas remained unchanged for the most part in a subsequent book. 3 Recalling Klein’s account on the complicity between human rights and neoliberalism in the scope of the Chilean coup d’état, Moyn argues that the goal was to seek ‘status equalization, especially when it came to discrimination against women and other subordinated groups’, while their ‘focus on a floor of sufficient protection in a globalizing economy […] did nothing to interfere with the obliteration of any ceiling on distributive inequality’, which ultimately rendered human rights ‘a powerless companion’ of the neoliberal project. 4
The longer quotation is relevant for two reasons. First, it highlights the unfolding of an important debate that is still in the making, with relevant publications being issued in the past few years. Second, because it sets the stage for Chapter 5, which opposes Moyn’s metaphor of human rights as the ‘powerless companion’ with Whyte’s own ‘fellow traveller’. 5 In a detailed analysis of the genesis and activity of Liberté sans Frontières (LSF), the political offspring from the same leaders of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), Whyte identifies the explicit incursion of the neoliberal dichotomy between politics and markets into human rights discourse, which is also identified among major humanitarian organisations from the Global North (pp. 198–201). It relies on defining ‘politics as violent, coercive and ultimately ‘totalitarian’, on the one hand, and the market or ‘civil society’, on the other, as a realm of free, mutually beneficial, voluntary relations’ (p. 201). The negative connotation surrounding inequality was substituted by the positive notion of difference, ‘the apolitical condition of a competitive economy’ able to justify substantial unbalances in income distribution and wealth accumulation (p. 214). In choosing a specific set of priorities that are aimed towards the protection of the individual against individually-specified harms, in opposition to structurally-induced ones, human rights advocates ended up reproducing and reinforcing the same dichotomy experienced in the political level. Specifically, it helped undermine much of the efforts headed towards postcolonial reparation and the dispute surrounding the rights-based approach of the New International Economic Order, partially shaping what she called ‘the morals of development’ (p. 216–218). In the end, arguing in favour of social and economic rights meant favouring state intervention, which was itself a violation of other, seemingly more fundamental, rights.
The final part of the chapter defines the symbiotic relation explored throughout the book. On the one hand, human rights advocates had been challenging what they saw as the totalitarian inspiration of redistributive projects, focusing instead on immediate harms that demanded individual empowerment and responsibility (p. 226). On the other, neoliberal economists employed the language of human rights as a means of entrenching ‘the institutional and moral foundations of a competitive market economy […] constraining sovereign power, especially in the post-colony, and in restraining the politicisation of the economy’ (p. 227). Together, they provided the criteria for viable discourses in the scope of North-South relations, measured by the conformity not only with the free market, private property and contracts but with the broader liberal-conservative mentality that informed the idealised Western individual (p. 63). In doing so, the author claims, it expands the understanding of neoliberalism, which can no longer be seen as state-phobic; instead, it aims at providing clear, heavily-policed boundaries against state intervention in income distribution and the consequent social hierarchy it implies (pp. 228–229). 6 This context of interdependence supersedes previous accounts on mere co-existence, so as to justify human rights and neoliberalism as being not contemporary powerless companions, but rather fellow travellers.
The statement comes just after mentioning that LSF was dissolved in 1989. One could be left asking if it is at all possible to generalise the role of this particular organisation in substantially shaping human rights discourse, or if it is representative of the diversity there is among major, hegemonic humanitarian organisations. After all, the conclusion is preceded by excerpts from an interview with Rony Brauman, former president of MSF and director of LSF, where he reflects on the fact that they were just following the trend, despite seeing themselves as part of an intellectual vanguard (pp. 232–233). Thirty years have passed since then, a threshold that interestingly coincides with the purported end of history marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the general acceptance of capitalism throughout the world.
As the conclusion itself was somewhat contained in the final part of Chapter 5, Whyte indirectly addresses the possibility of generalising LSF in her relatively brief afterword (234–242), providing a contemporary account on the persistence of similar discursive traits in depoliticising human rights. Most notably, she highlights the vivid presence of political arguments referring to both human rights and free markets as an essential condition for peace and prosperity as recently as in 2016. The final words reflect on the fact that accepting freedom as dependent on the market economy ‘has led neither to equality nor freedom’, and calls for ‘a political struggle against those institutions, governments and corporations’ that flourished on or due to the inequality made possible during the neoliberal age, concluding that a ‘break with neoliberalism requires a break with the morals of the market’ (p. 242).
Not much was said about the hiatus between the extinction of LSF, in 1989, and discrete remarks on events where human rights and neoliberalism were again treated alongside. For all the detailed account provided since the 1940s until the late 1980s, this void is certainly demanding more attention if the underlying thesis is to prevail. At the same time, much of the normative assessment on the content of human rights relied on the experience of Amnesty International in the context of the Chilean dictatorship (Chapter 4) and the rather short 4-year lifespan of the aforementioned LSF (Chapter 5). It was said before that Whyte openly intended to explore what she referred to as hegemonic conceptions of human rights instead of its subaltern or marginalised versions. Still, it is hard to avoid challenging how the notion of hegemony was conceived in her book. If there are ongoing rights-based projects informing strategies of resistance throughout the world, and if a crucial aspect of such rights was left out of the scope of the Western definition, then it seems reasonable to argue that neoliberals deployed a simulacrum suitable to their particular undertaking, but that can hardly be called human rights.
In defining its hegemony as a function of geopolitical power relations – the same that forced the adoption of neoliberal prescriptions in much of the contemporary world, but particularly in the Global South – Whyte could be implying that human rights were also a tool deployed by the powerful in the scope of postcolonial struggles. In the competition for meaning, they prevailed by the use of violence, either directly or through its socio-economic consequences. But would not this be a subtle recognition of the neoliberal rationality that kidnapped the emancipatory force of human rights? After all, the essence of humanitarian advocacy was drawn from two institutions conceived in very specific contexts, in two of the most relevant former colonial powers (UK and France). From this perspective, the hegemonic version of human rights can only be the one that is adopted by hegemonic powers in other fronts, most notably in geopolitical terms. This forcibly situates human rights in the position of ‘fellow travellers’, but it does so at the expense of other approaches that openly reject the definition, from dependency theorists 7 who denounced the structural consequences of neoliberalism to political philosophers that contested the purported prosperity derived from neoliberal reason. 8
It is true that Whyte explored the struggle for meaning when analysing the conception of the notion of Third Worldism and the attempts of enforcing a New International World Order (see Chapter 5). What the reader may reflect upon is the implied consent towards an eventual pacification of that struggle, as if history had in fact ended after 1989. This question may well be solved by accepting her clear methodological statement in addressing specifically hegemonic human rights and not others (p. 33). Still, the challenge of awarding the entitlement of human rights to the hegemonic project of neoliberalism is a matter open to discussion. It is about deciding who has the power to define their content and criteria of accomplishment. The Morals of the Market is a rewarding book that leaves the floor open to further reflection and academic inquire. It is a timely contribution to a field that, at least to some, could be facing its twilight (p. 236). If we are to dislodge human rights of its condition of fellow travellers, it is important to maintain Whyte’s critical approach, not less when reading her own work.
