Bartolomeo Sala interviews Quinn Slobodian for Jacobin in anticipation of the release of Hayek’s Bastards. Read the full interview here. Purchase Hayek’s Bastards here. An excerpt appears below:

“BS: Why, then, the title Hayek’s Bastards?

QS: It’s an indication of the fact that some of the primary intellectuals I profile in the book were members of the organized neoliberal intellectual movement. They were part of a relatively small group of people that met regularly in the Mont Pelerin Society to debate the different ways capitalism should be defended against its challengers, including democracy.

Friedrich Hayek himself had an evolving understanding of human nature and the nature of markets. Many of the people I write about in the book simply took his ideas to the next step. Cultural evolution turned into biological evolution. Market traits inside of populations turned into ideas of hardwired intelligence, deficiency, and race science.

So they’re “bastards” in the sense that they are the offspring intellectually of Hayek, but I think they are misreading him and taking his work in directions that he himself would not have taken it.”