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"Introduction" [2006] ELECD 65; 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 Title: Introduction

Number of pages: 21

Extract:

Introduction
The contemporary form of the ancient debate about the ethics of wealth is the
human-rights challenge to capitalism ... The well-being of many depends on this
project. (Freeman, Chapter 1, p. 26)

Michael Freeman's `Beyond capitalism and socialism' commences the first part
of the book which considers conceptual and ethical issues. His contribution
goes beyond the more familiar positive and negative empirical understanding
of the relationship between capitalism and human rights and examines the way
in which the two concepts relate to each other conceptually. Human rights
concepts derive from the philosophy of natural law which formed the founda-
tion for international law. On the other hand, `capitalism' `derives from late
eighteenth and nineteenth century political economy, which was developed,
especially in the works of Karl Marx, to displace not only the concept of
natural rights ­ the conceptual ancestor of human rights ­ but also the natural-
law philosophy that had provided its foundation'. Thus `the two discourses
could observe each other, but could not meet on the same epistemological
terrain'. The empirical relationship is a different discourse again. Freeman
points out that the relationship between capitalism and human rights is neces-
sary only if they provide complementary or opposing understanding of human
freedoms, if capitalism is necessary to the attainment of freedom or, on the
contrary, if capitalism is associated with oppression and exploitation. In the
light of these conflicting relationships it has become `a common view that
capitalism can, and should, be judged at the bar ...