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66(P) - Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World ft. Samuel Moyn (Patreon)

Published:
2018-12-30 22:09:10
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2026-06
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Content

Samuel Moyn (@SamuelMoyn), author of 'Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World' joins us to discuss how modern human rights suffered from its development alongside neoliberalism. Why it's not simply enough that the worse off do better, that sufficiency must also be paired with equality. Marx's concept of 'human emancipation' and "Critique of the Gotha Program." Distributional fairness as overlooked to neoliberal human rights movements. Human rights at the so-called "end of history" missing a structural critique. How human rights were militarized in places like Iraq.

Buy Samuel's book here.

Comments

Bijou Smith

The two seemingly conflicting principles of equality and merit upon which rights are often based are not incompatible. Far too many people fail to realize that economic markets are not efficient and are naturally (dynamically) highly unequal in long run outcome, and thus cannot be the basis for determining merit worth. The only valid measure of merit is one that goes back to Marx and the theory of labour value: it is based upon physics really, the amount of value people contribute to society is in rough proportion to the time and intensity of their socially necessary labour. If we (via our governments) used a fair wage and salary commission no one person would ever be earning more than twice or maybe at most thrice the average worker in wages, it would be impossible it would violate the basic laws of thermodynamics. That goes for "intellectual labour" as well, since that is also subject to time and energy limits (time to think and invent and food to eat). The principle of equality in human rights thus naturally fits with merit based rights, if both are used together we would never get massive unequal wage rates. It's worth pointing out even in worker coops wages are often unfair, at Mondragon I think senior workers can earn up to max 30 times the lowest paid worker (at least they use that as salary cap which is some small comfort). To me, that wage gap is still physically and morally impossible to justify, it signifies something very unfair and unjust unless it is democratically agreed upon by all in the coop. And yet Coops like Mondragon are among the most fair and decent places for workers on our planet, other than in completely hierarchically flat cooperative societies. I would really love the historians like Moyn to dig much deeper into the ethical and moral issues over a right to a fair wage for work, and intersect the principles with the basic thermodynamics and a modernization of Marx's socially relevant labour-time value ideas in the light of so much intellectual work (knowledge economy jobs) which seem to be grossly over-paid.