ABSTRACT
The chapter argues that international law should abandon its agnosticism towards economic systems and support and endorse productive rights. These rights are the economic freedoms to own and use private property, to invest and to contract. Both economic theory and empirical evidence speak in one voice: the recognition of productive rights is essential to achieve prosperity and alleviate poverty. There is no reason to keep pretending that societies may “choose” their own economic system, and that those choices are equally acceptable or permissible. The chapter first presents the evidence for the correlation between productive rights and human welfare. It then rejects the application of John Rawls’s injunction to respect different conceptions of the good. This is because economic beliefs are empirical, not normative, and false empirical beliefs cannot be part of a conception of the good worthy of respect. Saying that international law should be neutral between capitalism and socialism is like saying that it should be neutral between medicine and witchcraft. Finally, the chapter examines possible reasons for the human rights community’s hostility to productive rights.
