Not Enough, Samuel Moyn
Not Enough, Samuel Moyn
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Not Enough
Human Rights in an Unequal World

Author: Samuel Moyn

Narrator: Stephen Bel Davies

Unabridged: 11 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/30/2018


Synopsis

The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. Even as state violations of political rights garnered unprecedented attention due to human rights campaigns, a commitment to material equality disappeared. In its place, market fundamentalism has emerged as the dominant force in national and global economies. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn analyzes how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of a broader social and economic justice.

In a pioneering history of rights stretching back to the Bible, Not Enough charts how twentieth-century welfare states, concerned about both abject poverty and soaring wealth, resolved to fulfill their citizens’ most basic needs without forgetting to contain how much the rich could tower over the rest. In the wake of two world wars and the collapse of empires, new states tried to take welfare beyond its original European and American homelands and went so far as to challenge inequality on a global scale. But their plans were foiled as a neoliberal faith in markets triumphed instead.

Moyn places the career of the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift from the egalitarian politics of yesterday to the neoliberal globalization of today. Exploring why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside enduring and exploding inequality, and why activists came to seek remedies for indigence without challenging wealth, Not Enough calls for more ambitious ideals and movements to achieve a humane and equitable world.

About Samuel Moyn

Samuel Moyn is Professor of Law and Professor of History at Yale University. His interests range widely over international law, human rights, the laws of war, and legal thought in both historical and contemporary perspective. He has published several books and writes in venues such as Boston Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, Dissent, the Nation, New Republic, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nils on April 12, 2018

This marvelous book is a history of the hardest thing to explain: why something did NOT happen. Histories of non-events are inherently difficult to write because of the methodological commitment of historians to stick close to documentary sources, and things that don’t happen rarely leave behind an......more

Goodreads review by Lynn on November 24, 2020

A history of the concept of civil rights through the centuries. It started as a concept that people of the elite or close to the elite dreamed up. It was first relegated to a few in society and in time opened up to those in a well off country and eventually the least well off of them. It then it spr......more

Goodreads review by Jim on October 17, 2018

Five stars! Samuel Moyn is a Professor of Law and History at Yale University. I heard him speak, on the Duke University Campus, last month. He offers a perspicuous explanation of how inequality has grown during the ascendancy of human rights. This is a fine companion read to: Lind, M. (2017). The New......more

Goodreads review by Jasmine on November 18, 2023

Samuel Moyn’s Not Enough identifies a very interesting phenomenon: that discourse around human rights kicked off only as the USSR disintegrated and neoliberalism kicked off. Such an interesting coincidence deserves an explanation. Over the last few decades, human rights have fit quite comfortably wit......more

Goodreads review by Corey on January 30, 2025

"De tragedie van de mensenrechten is dat ze de wereldwijde verbeelding in beslag hebben genomen maar tot nu toe weinig noemenswaardigs hebben bijgedragen en enkel de neoliberale reus op de hielen hebben gezeten. De belangrijkste reden dat mensenrechten een machteloze metgezel zijn van het marktfunda......more