Furthermore, Kinley has avoided the disconcerting conundrum of illiberal political thinking that fights the supremacy of global finance on nationalist grounds. But then, what to make of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s attack on financier and speculator George Soros’s initiatives to promote liberal-democratic globalisation in Central Europe? Orbán infamously revived anti-Semitic rhetoric to harness global finance’s unfettered power to pervert social standards of fairness and justice, which is pretty much what Kinley is arguing. Nevertheless, the reader is left hanging with the compelling issue of interpreting the electoral favour of illiberal politics that impinge on civil rights when they become (or are perceived as) a political barrier to the socio-economic protection of those who are unequivocally left behind by the polarising externalities of global finance. After all, this issue is no longer the exclusive playground of abrasive fearmongers, à la Steve Bannon, as there is a growing body of authoritative literature on the retreat of human rights-based politics in globalising liberal democracies. For one, Harvard political economist Dani Rodrik’s seminal paper ‘The Inescapable Trilemma of the World Economy’ comes immediately to mind. It is perplexing that Kinley did not develop arguments on the significance for human rights’s reconciliation with finance of Rodrik’s seminal paradox: ‘Democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full.’

Similarly, Kinley does not delve into the arguments of anti-finance popular protest emerging from the radical left, such as Occupy Wall Street, or of the resulting political platforms, such as Bernie Sanders’ 2016 US presidential bid and anti-austerity movements in Europe. There was much to discuss about the radical-left push to subvert, or possibly revert, the drift of mainstream social-democratic parties in the West that, since the roaring 1990s, have embraced or at least succumbed to the neo-liberal policies pursuing Milton Friedman’s ideas of near total institutional deregulation and capital’s liberalisation. Upon reading Kinley’s Necessary Evil, one may think that the 2008 global financial crisis happened somewhat in a political vacuum, as there is hardly any analytical link to the crucial role played by Tony Blair’s New Labour policies and Bill Clinton’s presidency in shaping global finance as we know it today. After all, it was Clinton’s successful campaign against sitting president George H.W. Bush that coined the famous phrase: ‘The economy, stupid!’, alongside, many tend to omit, ‘Change vs. More of the same’ and ‘Don’t forget health care’. In a curious flip of history, if nowadays a centrist presidential candidate used Kinley’s book as inspiration, they would probably turn Clinton’s slogans into: ‘The human rights, stupid!’ together with ‘Less of the same vs. More of the same’ and ‘Don’t forget finance’. Yet the substance wouldn’t change much at all.

Occupy Wall Street Solidarity March, October 5, 2011 (Photo by Daniel Albanese)

The point here is that Kinley’s book offers a cogent literature review of finance’s abysmal impact on the protection of human rights, but it does not really help us to understand what to make of the relentless decline of left-of-the-centre politics in the West. One would expect from a book on human rights to explain why since 2008 the working and destitute classes, typically the frontline beneficiaries of human rights emancipation and advancement, have been increasingly switching allegiance and electing to office either the alt-right (like in the United States, Austria, Italy, Poland, Hungary, the Philippines) or the radical left (think of Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, and Andrés Obrador in Mexico). These are all parties and leaders that are somewhat ready and willing to dispense with the liberal (Western) appreciation of human rights protection if global finance’s push comes to the national/popular sovereignty’s shove.  

David Kinley (Photo via the University of Sydney)Even as he solidly critiques the abuses of the financial system and its failure to take into account what he calls human rights externalities, Kinley’s tunnel vision leaves the reader stuck with the good old aspirational but staid protection on the paper of human rights by centrist mainstream (i.e. élitist) political parties. Without much acknowledgment and discussion of the current siege of liberal values by populist and anti-establishment forces, Necessary Evil essentially preaches to the converted. Its conclusive solution of appealing to the financiers’ empathy and desire for professional esteem is rather hackneyed and implausible. Ultimately, Kinley plays it safe and does not come up with new ideas for substantial change: it’s TINA (There Is No Alternative) all over again. It feels like his line of argument merely runs: be nice to finance, and let’s hope it will behave more decently than before.

This book is a good conversation starter on the fraught relationship between finance and human rights in contemporary capitalism, but it falls short of the author’s ambition to bring the two phenomena closer together.