Jessica Whyte - The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism (London, UK: Verso Books, 2019)

I read this book a while ago, but it has stayed with me. I learned a lot from its methodology that bridges intellectual history together with a critical approach to human rights (Whyte’s book mixes interviews with archival research). I also found the book’s aims to be far-reaching and ambitious (in a good way). In exploring the politics and epistemologies of neoliberalism, Whyte is also offering a lens through which to understand how the work

of neoliberal (and ordoliberal!) thinkers and economists (von Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Ropke, to name a few) has so profoundly shaped the world we lived in today.

In centering how these thinkers constructed a morality of and for the economy, Whyte’s book helps us appreciate why neoliberalism —today often used as a blanket term that signifies anything from the social architecture of financialization to political rationality— has proved so attractive starting the second half of the 20th century. She examines the different social, political, ethical, and philosophical facets of neoliberalism: the moral imaginations inherent to this economic project, views on science and rationality, knowledge, technology, expertise, role of the family, gendered and (to a certain extent) racialized divisions of labor, relationships between nations, states, global forces, and the environment, and finally (something that is very central to the arguments this book makes) conceptualizations of welfare, charity and the question of human rights as something that cannot challenge the market order.  

In fact, the market itself is presented as a form of ‘pragmatic and realistic common sense’ endowed with a pacifying role. Whyte delineates neoliberalism’s political and moral arguments. Drawing directly from Montesquieu's idea of a doux commerce, these emphasize the power of the market as an order that civilizes people and dissuades them from resorting to violence. Equally pertinent are the links (temporal, geographic, epistemological) that the author draws between the UN universal declaration of human rights and the rise of the Mont Pelerin Society which concur to produce depoliticized notions of human rights for the post-World War II world order. Excluding socioeconomic rights, these are both the byproducts of the market and essential to preserving it.  

I cannot recommend this thought-provoking book enough; it will prompt many discussions and debates especially in light of a continued and deepening erosion of all forms of rights.

—CK