Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right

This third book by Bos ton University pro fes sor Quinn Slobodian car ries for ward his pro ject of deconstructing neo lib er al ism, first artic u lated in Globalists (2018) and fur ther devel oped in Crack-Up Capitalism (2023).By "deconstructing," I mean two related inter ven tions.The first is con cep tual: Slobodian chal lenges the assump tion that neo lib er al ism con sti tutes a coher ent intel lec tual tra di tion, instead reveal ing it as a loose and inter nally frac tured con stel la tion of pro jects whose ten sions are often obscured by the term itself.The sec ond is polit i cal: He argues that, across its var ied his tor i cal forms, neo lib er al ism has con sis tently oper ated as an anti dem o cratic enter prise.This dynamic was pres ent from the out set, in early efforts to engi neer a global eco nomic order insu lated from pop u lar sov er eignty and designed to dis ci pline nation states.It resur faces today in the ambi tions of technolib er tar ian bil li on aires who seek to exit dem o cratic con straint alto gether-through tax havens, privatized enclaves, and exper i men tal "char ter cit ies" meant to place cap i tal beyond pub lic account abil ity.Although Hayek's Bastards was almost cer tainly writ ten prior to Donald Trump's recent reelec tion, the broader rise of farright pop u lism-and in par tic u lar the elec tion of Javier Gerardo Milei in 2023-con sti tutes an impor tant back drop to the cen tral ques tion the book addresses.More spe cifi cally, it calls into ques tion the the sis according to which this polit i cal resur gence should be under stood as a reac tion against glob al iza tion and, by exten sion, against neo lib eral ideology.If such an inter pre ta tion were cor rect, how should one account for the rel a tive absence of dis rup tion within the busi ness com mu nity fol low ing the ascent to power of nation al ist lead ers who openly advo cate tighter con trols over trade and migra tion?Slobodian's response is to argue that a form of pop u list neo lib er al ism does indeed exist-one that has incor po rated key ele ments of what would later coa lesce as the altright.This cur rent can be traced back to the 1970s, dur ing yet another frag men ta tion of the neo lib eral intel lec tual milieu, though it ini tially remained rel a tively mar ginal.It gained greater trac tion in the 1990s, in the imme di ate after math of the col lapse of the Soviet bloc.