Has The Social and Economic Rights Movement Failed?

a post by Dylan Brethour for Rights Info: Human Rights News, Views & Info

“We’re living in the age of the victory of the rich,” or so argues Professor Samuel Moyn in his new book Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World.

Tracing the evolution of human rights from the French Revolution to the present, he asks why the human rights movement has failed to tackle material inequality and if we’ve actually gone far enough.

Moyn points to rising material inequality in both wealthy and developing nations, noting that this has happened during the post-World War Two era of human rights. He argues that this is a result of human right’s focus on ‘sufficient provision’, meaning a basic bottom line in terms of living standards, rather than distributive fairness. The end result is that while human rights may not be responsible for material inequality, the movement lacks the tools needed to address it.

Moyn tells me more about the role of human rights, the 1 percent, and why he believes economic and social rights struggle to challenge inequality.

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