The Lives of Others

Moyn argues that the origins of human rights are not in the places historians have traditionally looked—the French Revolution or postwar idealism—but in more recent developments. Historians need look no further than the 1970s, when international lawyers and nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International embraced them—and when human rights broke through to general public consciousness. The key to understanding the success of human rights in the 1970s is, for Moyn, disillusion with the radicalism of the 1960s and the collapse of socialism as an attractive politics. Discontent with communism meant that idealists in the 1970s (and after) needed a new political project. Human rights, “the god that did not fail,” stepped in. If other historians have focused on providing a deep history for rights, Moyn offers a vision of human rights circa 1977.