LATE NEOLIBERALISM
- INTRODUCTION
- The Trump Administration: Family Portrait
- The Neoliberals' post-Cold War blues
- Human capital management: nativism, IQ, natalism
- Movement of goods: the praise for tariffs
- On warding off inflation: gold and cryptocurrencies
- From Legislative Encasement to Executive Privilege
- Nostalgia and Technofuturism
- Wrestling as Allegory
- LATE NEOLIBERALISM - FULL VERSION
INTRODUCTION
Prolog
When Donald Trump won the presidential election for the first time, the initial shock, among liberals and progressives, soon gave way to two kinds of interpretations.
For some, the real estate tycoon owed his victory to a misdirected rejection of the neoliberal world order. Billionaire though he was, Donald Trump had managed to galvanize the “losers” of globalization by promising them to bring back industrial jobs, to deport undocumented migrants and to humble arrogant cultural elites. Conversely, the second interpretation emphasized the continuities between the new administration and its predecessors. For all the populist posturing, the argument went, regressive taxes and financial deregulation were more than ever at the top of the agenda. The much-trumpeted radical change, therefore, amounted to little more than a facelift for a capitalist system still reeling from the 2008 crisis.
While unconvinced by the “end of neoliberalism” thesis, the Canadian historian Quinn Slobodian did not believe that the novelty of Trumpism should be underestimated. Hence the relentless attention that his work has henceforth paid to the mutations of neoliberalism eventually leading to Trump’s second coming. For Slobodian, the term neoliberal is not the name of an economic doctrine professing that money, goods and labor should move freely. Instead, he sees it as the changing expression of an ongoing concern: that of protecting the accumulation and profitability of capital from the threats posed by popular sovereignty and democratic oversight.
In the wake of the Great Depression, Slobodian explains, early neoliberal thinkers were mostly alarmed by totalitarianism, whether Nazi or communist. Then, in the postwar era, their worries shifted toward the “creeping socialism” that they associated both with Keynesian economic policies in the West and with the decolonization of the Global South. Their purpose, however, was not to turn back the clock to pre-1914 laisser-faire. Instead, the intellectuals depicted in Slobodian’s book Globalists sought to redeploy state intervention and international legislation in order to shield market mechanisms from social demands for equality.
Until the end of the Cold War, neoliberal intellectuals remained fairly confident about the possibility of disciplining democratic regimes. Paradoxically, however, the fall of the Soviet Empire found them disenchanted but also in the grips of new ambitions. Now convinced that democracy, even duly curtailed, is incompatible with the exercise of freedom as they conceive it, some of them, generally described as libertarians, have been looking for more radical solutions.
A first cohort, whose adventures are recounted in Slobodian’s book Crack Up Capitalism, stake the advent of unbridled capitalism on the proliferation of so-called “free zones”. Whether constituted as sovereign city-states or inserted into the territory of existing nation-states, what distinguishes these enclaves is that they operate without any form of democratic oversight.
As for the second cohort, the protagonists of Hayek's Bastards, Slobodian’s most recent book, their vision of a society impervious to egalitarian demands is predicated on the rehabilitation of long discredited perspectives on money, intelligence and race. Until recently, the views championed by these goldbugs, IQ enthusiasts and so-called “race realists” were confined to the shadiest margins of the academic world. Today, however, they occupy the hearts and minds of the people at the helm of the world's greatest power. This is why we found it so important to interview Quinn Slobodian at this juncture, to help us shed light on the intellectual genealogy of Trumpism.
The interview took place in Place in Paris, on February first, 2025.
Prolog
When Donald Trump won the presidential election for the first time, the initial shock, among liberals and progressives, soon gave way to two kinds of interpretations.
For some, the real estate tycoon owed his victory to a misdirected rejection of the neoliberal world order. Billionaire though he was, Donald Trump had managed to galvanize the “losers” of globalization by promising them to bring back industrial jobs, to deport undocumented migrants and to humble arrogant cultural elites. Conversely, the second interpretation emphasized the continuities between the new administration and its predecessors. For all the populist posturing, the argument went, regressive taxes and financial deregulation were more than ever at the top of the agenda. The much-trumpeted radical change, therefore, amounted to little more than a facelift for a capitalist system still reeling from the 2008 crisis.
While unconvinced by the “end of neoliberalism” thesis, the Canadian historian Quinn Slobodian did not believe that the novelty of Trumpism should be underestimated. Hence the relentless attention that his work has henceforth paid to the mutations of neoliberalism eventually leading to Trump’s second coming. For Slobodian, the term neoliberal is not the name of an economic doctrine professing that money, goods and labor should move freely. Instead, he sees it as the changing expression of an ongoing concern: that of protecting the accumulation and profitability of capital from the threats posed by popular sovereignty and democratic oversight.
In the wake of the Great Depression, Slobodian explains, early neoliberal thinkers were mostly alarmed by totalitarianism, whether Nazi or communist. Then, in the postwar era, their worries shifted toward the “creeping socialism” that they associated both with Keynesian economic policies in the West and with the decolonization of the Global South. Their purpose, however, was not to turn back the clock to pre-1914 laisser-faire. Instead, the intellectuals depicted in Slobodian’s book Globalists sought to redeploy state intervention and international legislation in order to shield market mechanisms from social demands for equality.
Until the end of the Cold War, neoliberal intellectuals remained fairly confident about the possibility of disciplining democratic regimes. Paradoxically, however, the fall of the Soviet Empire found them disenchanted but also in the grips of new ambitions. Now convinced that democracy, even duly curtailed, is incompatible with the exercise of freedom as they conceive it, some of them, generally described as libertarians, have been looking for more radical solutions.
A first cohort, whose adventures are recounted in Slobodian’s book Crack Up Capitalism, stake the advent of unbridled capitalism on the proliferation of so-called “free zones”. Whether constituted as sovereign city-states or inserted into the territory of existing nation-states, what distinguishes these enclaves is that they operate without any form of democratic oversight.
As for the second cohort, the protagonists of Hayek's Bastards, Slobodian’s most recent book, their vision of a society impervious to egalitarian demands is predicated on the rehabilitation of long discredited perspectives on money, intelligence and race. Until recently, the views championed by these goldbugs, IQ enthusiasts and so-called “race realists” were confined to the shadiest margins of the academic world. Today, however, they occupy the hearts and minds of the people at the helm of the world's greatest power. This is why we found it so important to interview Quinn Slobodian at this juncture, to help us shed light on the intellectual genealogy of Trumpism.
The interview took place in Place in Paris, on February first, 2025.
Biography of Quinn Slobodian
Quinn Slobodian is professor of international history at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University.
His books, which have been translated into ten languages, include, most recently, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy. Forthcoming is Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right.
He has been an associate fellow at Chatham House and held residential fellowships at Harvard and FU Berlin. He co-directs the History and Political Economy Project and is on the board of editors of the American Historical Review.
In 2024, Prospect UK named him one of the World’s 25 Top Thinkers.
Select Bibliography
Books
Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right (New York: Zone Books, 2025).
Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (New York: Metropolitan, 2023).
Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012).
Edited Volumes
Market Civilizations: Neoliberals East and South. eds. Quinn Slobodian and Dieter Plehwe (New York: Zone Books, 2022).
Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, eds. Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian, and Philip Mirowski (New York: Verso, 2020).
Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World, ed. Quinn Slobodian (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015).
Journal Articles
“The Ethno-Economy: Peter Brimelow and the Capitalism of the Far Right,” Journal of American Studies. Published online 2024: 1-24. doi:10.1017/S002187582400015X.
“The Unequal Mind: How Charles Murray and the Free Market Think Tanks Revived IQ,” Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 4, no. 1 (Winter 2023), 73-108.
“Anti-68ers and the Racist-Libertarian Alliance: How a Schism among Austrian School Neoliberals Helped Spawn the Alt Right,” Cultural Politics 15, no. 3 (2019), 372-386.
“Perfect Capitalism, Imperfect Humans: Race, Migration, and the Limits of Ludwig von Mises’s Globalism,” Contemporary European History 28, no. 2 (2019): 143-155.
Popular Articles and Commentary
“Elon Musk Wants Us to Have More Children,” New Statesman, July 29, 2024.
“How Techno-Libertarians Fell in Love with Big Government,” Project Syndicate, 13 Jun 2024.
“Nixon and the Art of Trade War,” New Statesman, 17 May 2024.
“The Rise of the New Tech Right,” New Statesman, 13 Sep 2023.
“Cryptocurrency’s Dream of Escaping the Global Financial System is Crumbling,” The Guardian, 5 Jul 2021.
“Trump, Populists and the Rise of Right-Wing Globalization,” New York Times, October 22, 2018
“You live in Robert Lighthizer’s World Now,” Foreign Policy, August 6, 2018
Biography of Quinn Slobodian
Quinn Slobodian is professor of international history at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University.
His books, which have been translated into ten languages, include, most recently, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy. Forthcoming is Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right.
He has been an associate fellow at Chatham House and held residential fellowships at Harvard and FU Berlin. He co-directs the History and Political Economy Project and is on the board of editors of the American Historical Review.
In 2024, Prospect UK named him one of the World’s 25 Top Thinkers.
Select Bibliography
Books
Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right (New York: Zone Books, 2025).
Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (New York: Metropolitan, 2023).
Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018).
Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012).
Edited Volumes
Market Civilizations: Neoliberals East and South. eds. Quinn Slobodian and Dieter Plehwe (New York: Zone Books, 2022).
Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, eds. Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian, and Philip Mirowski (New York: Verso, 2020).
Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World, ed. Quinn Slobodian (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015).
Journal Articles
“The Ethno-Economy: Peter Brimelow and the Capitalism of the Far Right,” Journal of American Studies. Published online 2024: 1-24. doi:10.1017/S002187582400015X.
“The Unequal Mind: How Charles Murray and the Free Market Think Tanks Revived IQ,” Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 4, no. 1 (Winter 2023), 73-108.
“Anti-68ers and the Racist-Libertarian Alliance: How a Schism among Austrian School Neoliberals Helped Spawn the Alt Right,” Cultural Politics 15, no. 3 (2019), 372-386.
“Perfect Capitalism, Imperfect Humans: Race, Migration, and the Limits of Ludwig von Mises’s Globalism,” Contemporary European History 28, no. 2 (2019): 143-155.
Popular Articles and Commentary
“Elon Musk Wants Us to Have More Children,” New Statesman, July 29, 2024.
“How Techno-Libertarians Fell in Love with Big Government,” Project Syndicate, 13 Jun 2024.
“Nixon and the Art of Trade War,” New Statesman, 17 May 2024.
“The Rise of the New Tech Right,” New Statesman, 13 Sep 2023.
“Cryptocurrency’s Dream of Escaping the Global Financial System is Crumbling,” The Guardian, 5 Jul 2021.
“Trump, Populists and the Rise of Right-Wing Globalization,” New York Times, October 22, 2018
“You live in Robert Lighthizer’s World Now,” Foreign Policy, August 6, 2018