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Human Rights and the Age of Inequality
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GLOSSARY
Human Rights and the Age of Inequality Samuel Moyn
parable (n.): a story told to illustrate a moral or spiritual truth
outstrip (v.): to become larger, more important, than sb/sth
ascendancy (n.): the position of having dominant power or control
destitution (n.): lack of sth
repression (n.): the action of forcing desires
generosity (n.): kindness
genocide (n.): the deliberate killing of a nation or race of people
egalitarianism (adj.): showing or holding a belief in equal rights, benefits and opportunities for everybody
preamble (n.): a statement or introduction that comes before sth spoken or written
enumenical (adj.): relating to, or representing the whole of a body churches
countercyclical (adj.): opposing the trend of a business or economic cycle
doppelganger (n.): alter ego
stigmatized (v.): to describe or consider sb/sth as sth very bad, worthy or of extreme disapproval, etc.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Human Rights and the Age of Inequality Samuel Moyn
Samuel Moyn is Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law and Professor of History at Harvard University. In 2010, he published The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, and his most recent book is Christian Human Rights. His areas of interest in legal scholarship include international law, human rights, the law of war, and legal thought, from both historical and current perspectives. In intellectual history, he has worked on a diverse range of subjects, especially twentieth-century European moral and political theory.
He has written several books in the fields of European intellectual history and human rights history. His book Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (2018) is his most recent work. He is currently working on a new book on the origins and significance of the humane war for Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Over the years, he has written in venues such as the Boston Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dissent, The Nation, The New Republic, the New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
MAIN SUMMARY
The essay "Human Rights and the Age of Inequality" has been written by American writer Samuel Moyn. In this essay, Samuel Moyn deals with the drastic mismatch between the egalitarian crisis and the human rights remedy that demands not a substitute but a supplement. He points out that the human rights regime and movement are simply not equipped to challenge global inequalities.
The writer begins his essay with a parable where he presents an example of Croesus, the last king of Lydia (reigned 560–546). According to the writer, Croesus was a very wealthy king who considered himself the happiest of mortals. He wanted his citizens to be happy and free from all kinds of suffering. But he had a problem; he did not want to invest his money to eradicate the suffering of his people. He had collected a lot of wealth for himself, but after being defeated, his whole possession, as well as his wealth, was controlled by the Persian king Cyrus the Great and his army.
Later, the writer links this situation of Croesus with the modern world, where inequality exists and available means and resources are unequally distributed. The writer says that every year, December 10 is celebrated as Human Rights Day, but no step has been taken for equal access to rights and property between rich and poor in the world. There is only one solution to all these kinds of obstacles: distributive equality, but he feels that this is almost impossible in practical life or reality.
The writer compares the history of human rights with that of political economy. Here, there is the involvement of two big stages. The first was the heroic age of the national welfare states after World War II. The second was that the political economy ascended beyond the nation during the 1940s. Franklin Roosevelt issued his famous call for a "Second Bill of Rights" that included socio-economic security in his State of the Union, but it missed three most important facts: the entry of a provincial US into the North Atlantic consensus; the promise of freedom from desire; and imagining it everywhere in the world.
Human rights suffered greatly after the 1940s as it followed partisanship and divided the world into two groups, referring to the democratic nations led by the US and the communist nations led by the USSR, which resulted in the Cold War. Similarly, the disintegration of the world during the post-war era could not bring about the desired development and human rights among nations as these states favoured 'national welfare' instead of supporting egalitarian human rights.
Samuel Moyn reflects on the issue of whether or not another human rights movement is necessary and then exemplifies the truth and reality described in Herodotus' chronicles, which deal with the need for a redistribution of global socioeconomic justice under pressure from the rich to the poor.
Although human rights activists argue that human rights documents claim and assure equal freedoms and rights for human beings, in reality, this does not apply in current real-life situations. Unless this current economy and socio-political structure exist, man will not have basic and useful freedoms and true rights. Thus, a fair share of the distribution of wealth and property from the rich to the poor, the redistribution of means and resources, the law-making and enforcement of the fair distribution of wealth by the government, and an egalitarian society require large-scale and radical movements. However, all of these are impractical, inappropriate, and very difficult to happen in reality.
Above all, our common destiny is like the world of Croesus, where the rich enjoy happiness, freedom, and everything to the maximum level, like the colonists in the British regime, while the poor live in a world of illusion with their floating equality and independence.
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