Slobodian’s ‘Hayek’s Bastards’ Receives NBCC Award for Criticism
Congratulations to Professor Quinn Slobodian, whose book, Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right, has been awarded the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism! The NBCC Awards are among the most distinguished literary honors in the United States, recognizing outstanding writing and critical achievement across genres.
Published by Zone Books, Hayek’s Bastards examines the intellectual foundations of contemporary far‑right political movements, challenging the assumption that they represent a rejection of capitalism. Instead, Slobodian traces how proponents of these movements advance a renewed capitalist project, one that draws on ideas from economics, psychology, and biology to naturalize inequality and constrain democratic governance. The book situates themes such as race, IQ, the gold standard, and cryptocurrency within a longer intellectual history stretching from the 1990s to the present.
As committee co-chair Jonathan Leal stated, Slobodian’s work “offers an incisive critique of the encroachment, by neoliberals and the American right, of the social sciences from their purported End of History to the present.”
The award recognizes Hayek’s Bastards as a significant contribution to intellectual history and contemporary political analysis. Slobodian’s forthcoming book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, co‑authored with Ben Tarnoff, is scheduled for publication in April 2026.
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To learn more about Professor Quinn Slobodian’s work and achievements, visit his faculty profile.