But Friedman's account deserves to be taken seriously, even if it illuminates the time in which he was speaking more than it does the mid twentieth century. While one scholar has noted that human and political rights were 'notably absent' from the 1947 MPS statement of aims, at that time human rights were not yet an obvious aspect of a liberal tradition. The phrase 'human rights' is similarly absent from the Oxford Manifesto, issued that same year by representatives from nineteen liberal parties as a statement of principles of the 'Liberal International'. The discourse of human rights was still under construction, and there was no consensus even among liberals on the relationship between the newer language of human rights and earlier affirmations of the 'rights of man', 'fundamental rights', humanitarianism, or individual freedom under the rule of law. The neoliberals were active participants in that process of construction. Human rights played a significant and overlooked role in neoliberals' mid-century efforts to challenge socialism, social democracy and state planning, and neoliberal thinkers contributed more than has been acknowledged to the version of human rights that came to prominence decades later. By 1992, when Friedman spoke, the neoliberal argument that only a liberal market economy could foster human rights was taken as self-evident by many major international human rights NGOs.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 40