From welfare state to savage capitalism: human rights and neoliberalism at the end of 20th century

Abstract

At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, the world experienced a process of profound material, economic, social and technological transformations. Trade liberalisation, labour deregulation and mass impoverishment were the hallmarks of this period. In neo-liberalism, human and social rights are foreshadowed, but, from the outset, they are made to be ineffective. That said, from a dialectical-historical-materialist perspective, the present study revolves around the question of whether the political, economic and social phenomenon called neoliberalism is politically compatible with the practice of human rights. The hypothesis is that human rights would not be inured by the neo-liberal world project, insofar as savage capitalism relegates these rights to the place of ideals that are positively stated on the abstract level, but never put into effect in the world of facts. In conclusion, it is observed that Joaquín Herrera Flores’ theory of human rights, the theoretical framework adopted, is not in harmony with the neoliberal world-system, because it is that one, in ideology and in practice, a call for constant struggle against exactly everything that this system represents, there being no room for rights as objects given by a mercadological-transcendental nature.