Book Review: The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History

Given their ideological hegemony over the last thirty years, it is perhaps surprising that so little is written on the history of human rights. In this sense Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History is badly needed. The book seeks to challenge the accepted histories which tend to project a slow and steady progression from the ‘dawn of civilisation’ through the European revolutions, and into ‘our age’ of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The argument is that while human rights gradually emerge after the Second World War, they only become politically significant in the decade after 1968 – when other utopias have collapsed. It contains a number of heretical assertions for the human rights establishment, whose attempts at historical narrative Moyn elsewhere calls a ‘church history.’

The myth-making of the conventional narratives seek to legitimate the present state of human rights. Paul Lauren Gordon, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his contribution, is perhaps the worst example of this phenomenon. He suggests that human rights emerged because of the quasi-mystical ‘vision’ of a string of martyrs and visionaries. Gordon appropriates visions of justice or right in the ancient world as authentic human rights moments. Against this, Moyn argues that there is no necessary and inexorable progression from these ancient notions of justice to the current doctrines of human rights, but rather that many of the classical traditions of justice and rights are largely insignificant for the emergence of the modern human rights, and certainly don’t explain their hegemony. We are told that the ideas of Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau, along with the American and French Revolutions should be seen as a distinct framework. While they talked in terms of ‘rights,’ they were concerned more with national liberation than the universal assertion of a global politico-legal order. The significance of this cannot be understated.

At times the book is startling. Moyn tells us that during the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – a sacred text for the movement: ‘The general consensus about the itemization of the rights suggests that little was at stake in the proceedings’ (63). Or, discussing Roosevelt’s use of human rights in 1942, he says they ‘entered history as a throwaway line, not as a well-considered idea’ (51). The idea that human rights were almost accidental initially, and then politically still-born in the post-war era, challenges the widely accepted idea that human rights emerged directly as a moral response to the ravages of the holocaust and Second World War. It challenges the image of a united globe, convulsed in compassion and responding with a great moral declaration. Instead, Moyn demonstrates the contingency at the heart of the movement.

It would appear, then, that this work would strike against much of the history of human rights currently in print – whether that is in the more conventional or critical form. However, in this there is a crucial distinction that remains unemphasized. In the literature on the emergence of human rights, we can see quite clearly those authors who seek to unify human rights into one stable progression (Gordon, ¹ Orend ² ). However, there is another strand who see multiple (hi)stories, both minor and major, dissonant and consonant in the long birth of human rights (see for instance Shuler, ³ Linebaugh, ⁴ Slaughter, ⁵ Douzinas ⁶ ). These are the genealogists, and Moyn’s critique falls a little flat when addressed to them. Their goal is not simply to understand human rights as they are currently presented, but rather to see them in their potentiality.

Human rights tend to be understood as a fait acompli, and while The Last Utopia challenges the edifice, it does so by providing another relatively mono-vocal story. At a number of moments Moyn alludes to other ideas of rights, Negritude for instance (94). However, these remain ephemeral and passing. By excluding these voices and instead focusing upon the causal relations, Moyn establishes another stable sense of the discourse, tending to elide any excess. While he addresses himself to this problem in the final chapter, he does so with a sort of realist gesture, saying: ‘correctly identifying the historical origins of contemporary human rights aspirations is the only way to reckon with the profound dilemmas human rights continue to face as a utopian ideal and movement’ (214). His recognition of the contingency at the heart of the movement goes some way to mollifying this critique, but I remain suspicious of any history that talks of ‘origins’ in order to reveal current practice. Despite this reservation, I would strongly recommend this book, it is a compelling read and its incision and erudition have been badly needed in this field.

Dr Illan rua Wall Senior Lecturer in Law, Oxford Brookes University