Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World

It is conspicuously a general feature among the Marxian scholars to lambast the whole concept of human rights as a neoliberal phenomenon. In his famous ‘On the Jewish Question’ Marx rejected the individual rights as the reflection of the egoism in the society and that contention held its canonical status among the Marxists as the cardinal argument for their conflicting views with human rights. It is against this backdrop that Marxian scholars frame the dissent on the relationship between neoliberalism and human rights. For the past four decades, neoliberalism has reigned over both Global South and North as the dominant political project, creating significant challenges to the many aspects of Keynesian welfare state structure which arose in the post-war context. In particular, the persistent objection posed by neoliberal policymakers regarding public expenditures on social services enabled the governments to curtail socio-economic rights. In general, the concept of socio-economic rights stands antithetical to the notion of neoliberalism. At such a critical juncture the book titled Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World edited by Gillian MacNaughton and Diane Frey is a gem for human rights scholarship as there is a lacuna in the literature examining the impacts of neoliberalism on socio-economic rights in different countries. It is worth noting that this volume has come up as a collective international endeavour representing different countries affected by the neoliberal policy reforms. Contributors from eight countries have provided 11 chapters covering the states of Israel, Columbia, New Zealand, South Korea, South Africa, Peru, USA, Egypt, Mexico, Ecuador, and Brazil. Situating their edited work within contemporary neoliberalism, the editors provide a brief analysis on neoliberalism in the introductory chapter, which sets out the issues that have sprung from the neoliberal agenda. The introductory chapter highlights the anomalous relationship between human rights and neoliberalism as the editors discuss how the first-generation rights civil and political rights remain compatible with neoliberalism while socio-economic rights become redundant in the neoliberal era. Gillian and Frey clearly state that their edited work intends to address three main issues: the first issue deals with identifying the ways in which the requirements of socio-economic rights conflict with neoliberalism. Second, this book tries to fathom whether economic and social rights are effective in confronting the global expansion of neoliberal ideology. The third and most important task is to assess the gravity of the impacts made by neoliberal policies in the implementation of economic and social rights. One of striking features of this edited volume lies in its efforts to take an interdisciplinary approach to the unfolding of the interaction of neoliberalism with socio-economic rights through the lenses of history, economics and law. Chapter 2 by James Hentiz, for instance, astutely examines neoliberalism’s relationship with inequality from both legal and economic perspectives. Even though the chapter seems to be a bit descriptive in its outlook, it provides a theoretical understanding of neoclassical economic theory as the foundation of neoliberal policy arguments. While discussing the relationship between inequalities and human