Freeman, Michael --- "Beyond Capitalism and Socialism" [2006] ELECD 66; in Dine, Janet; Fagan, Andrew (eds), "Human Rights and Capitalism" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Human Rights and Capitalism

Editor(s): Dine, Janet; Fagan, Andrew

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845422684

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Beyond Capitalism and Socialism

Author(s): Freeman, Michael

Number of pages: 25

Extract:

1. Beyond capitalism and socialism
Michael Freeman

1. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION, HISTORY AND CRITIQUE
Linking the concepts of `human rights' and `capitalism' suggests something
obvious and something else that is puzzling. Advocates of capitalism believe
it to be the most efficient known method for the production and distribution
of goods, the creator of employment and prosperity, and friend to the rule of
law. As such, it is the economic system most likely to fulfil economic and
social rights, and, in doing so, to promote civil and political rights. Its critics
believe, to the contrary, that capitalism creates enormous inequalities, ex-
ploits its workers, `hollows out' the state with consequent violation of social
and economic rights, corrupts political and economic elites in the developing
countries, and cooperates with authoritarian governments in the repression of
dissent, with consequent violation of civil and political rights. These ideas
are familiar and clear enough, and it is plausible to suppose that capitalism
and human rights are related in all these ways quite often. The fact that it is
possible to tell plausible `positive' and `negative' stories about the empirical
relations between human rights and capitalism suggests that they are com-
plex, but that empirical research could, in principle, describe that complexity.
What is more puzzling is that the concepts of `human rights' and `capital-
ism' derive from different theoretical discourses, and therefore relating them
systematically may be conceptually difficult. The concept of human rights
derives primarily from international law, which in turn took it from the
...