International law does not generally protect economic liberties. By economic liberties I mean private property rights and freedom of contract, including the individual right to trade. Even if we could say that international law encourages inter-state capitalism (to an extent, given the protectionist exceptions embedded in the WTO system), international law has remained largely silent about domestic capitalism. It does not recognize any right of individuals to engage in trade, domestic or international. Moreover, international instruments repeatedly affirm the right of “peoples” to choose their own economic system. This translates into the power of states to curtail or suppress private property and freedom of contract if they judge that such action is required by the national welfare or the public good. Following Bas van der Vossen, I will call these economic liberties productive rights.

After World War II, victorious nations designed international law in this economically-agnostic way for one simple reason: one of them, the Soviet Union, had socialist institutions that did not protect productive rights. To prevent conflict, world leaders sought to create a mechanism of collective security that would be agnostic between capitalism and socialism, that is, a system that would not be biased for or against either of these two economic conceptions. In this way, the system created by the UN Charter appeared tolerant: nations should not impose their economic views on other nations. Peaceful coexistence, it was thought, required tolerating diverse forms of economic organization. Choosing between capitalism and socialism is, on this view, a central prerogative of sovereignty.

In his book The Law of Peoples, John Rawls picks up on this idea by proposing an international public reason of sorts. In a world where different states (peoples, nations) endorse and pursue different conceptions of the good, it is wrong for liberal states to impose liberal values on illiberal states. According to Rawls, as long as states are decent they remain members in good standing of the international community. This applies a fortiori to economic regimes. It is for each state to choose its economic system as it sees fit. Some states have capitalist economies, others have socialist economies, and yet others have mixed economies. All of them should tolerate the others, and international law should not unduly favor one economic system over another. International principles, he thinks, must reflect global reasonable pluralism. Many societies sincerely endorse illiberal doctrines, and liberal foreign policy, as well as the principles of international law, must acknowledge this fact. Prominent among these illiberal views is the denial of productive rights. Given that persons in different societies have different political conceptions, it follows that societies must respect one another (provided they meet certain minimal conditions.) Liberal tolerance here does not merely mean that liberal societies are not entitled to interfere with (much less invade!) illiberal societies. Liberal tolerance does not even merely mean that liberal societies must accommodate illiberal ones for reasons of peaceful coexistence. Liberal tolerance means something stronger: liberal leaders must respect, and cooperate with, decent illiberal societies. These illiberal regimes, Rawls thinks, must be treated as free and equal members of the international community. On this view, called public-reason liberalism, just as individuals have different conceptions of the good and the state should remain neutral among them, so nations have different conceptions of the good and the international system should remain neutral among them.

I think this idea is flawed. False empirical beliefs are not and cannot be the proper objects of tolerance and respect. On Rawls’s own view, the objects of liberal tolerance are illiberal reasonable comprehensive theories of the good. International public reason encompasses both liberal and illiberal comprehensive doctrines as long as they are reasonable. But then, liberal tolerance applies to normative beliefs, not to empirical beliefs. Any theory of global justice must be consistent with the best empirical theories available. If most people in a society believe that the Earth is flat, then that is not a conception of the good that deserves respect. It is a mistaken empirical belief, and as such it is unreasonable. If robust markets are a necessary condition for prosperity, which in turn is a necessary condition for the alleviation of poverty, those who endorse the suppression of productive rights are in error, just as those who deny climate science are in error.

Economic beliefs are not normative beliefs. Say there is a debate within a society about whether or not Ricardian trade theory is sound. The government then submits the issue to the popular vote. The referendum yields, by a slim majority, that Ricardian theory is false and that protectionist laws benefit the country. Would then public-reason liberals say that such erroneous belief is part of the country’s conception of the good? Would they say, for example, “Burma’s conception of the good rejects Ricardian trade theory”? This is absurd. Or imagine the World Health Organization is fighting an epidemic in a country. The cure, consisting in medications, is well known. But the government prohibits the introduction of the medications because it says that administering them would violate the national tradition of healing diseases with magic rituals. This is an unreasonable belief and thus not entitled to respect as part of a comprehensive conception of the good.

The superiority of market-friendly policies over market-suppressing policies is as well-established an economic truth as any can be. It follows that international law, if it is supposed to help people and especially the global poor, cannot be agnostic between capitalism and socialism (and other market-suppressing policies.) To say that international law should be neutral among economic beliefs is like saying that international law should be neutral among medicine and witchcraft. The international law of human rights, which ended international law’s traditional agnosticism toward doctrines that authorize the oppression of women and minorities, should not be agnostic toward doctrines that immiserate everyone. International law, to a degree, encourages political liberalization. It should also encourage economic liberalization.