The right to security, according to Marx, was manifested in the police, who secured the universal egoism of civil society. With the global extension of capitalist social relations, neoliberal thinkers were met with the challenge of globalising this policing function. They believed that promoting a regime of rights would support the extension of the world market. 'People without rights', Mises warned, 'are always a menace to social order'. They gave the state the role of protecting the competitive market from those who are unable to adjust themselves to its demands. Mises was typically clear about the role of the state in a 'peaceful' liberal market order: noting that the market itself is free of coercion and the state must not interfere with it, he wrote that, in a liberal order, the state 'employs its power to beat people into submission solely for the prevention of actions destructive to the preservation and the smooth operation of the market economy'. A central function of neoliberal human rights has been to globalise this function, legitimising state violence aimed at the global dissemination of capitalist social relations. The neoliberal right to security is a right for states to beat into submission those who threaten the market order.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 50