How far-right ideologies are gaining ground by distorting economics, genetics, and democracy—contrasting Hayek and Stiglitz’s visions
Satya Narayan Misra
In the 1940s, two seminal books, Hayek’s ‘Road to Serfdom’ (1944) and Mises’s ‘Human Action’ (1949), profoundly impacted the economic policy architecture in the USA and UK in the 1980s. Hayek was particularly critical of the abandonment of economic freedom when countries like the USSR embraced centralized planning. He considered it inherently undemocratic as it imposes the will of a minuscule minority on the majority. Mises argued that the free market not only outdistances any government-planned system but ultimately serves as a foundation of civilization itself. Limited government, free market, and soft taxation on the superrich became the leitmotif of the doctrine of ‘neoliberalism’ practiced by Ronald Reagan in the USA and his acolyte Margaret Thatcher in the UK, who was an unabashed admirer of Hayek.
The disintegration of the USSR by 1991, the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, and the end of Cold War spurred Fukuyama to predict the ‘end of history‘ of ideological debate, and with each country sipping a cocktail of liberal democracy and free market. Williamson set out the ‘Washington Consensus‘, which was essentially a road map of a free market in different sectors of the economy. Globalization became the toast of the world when there would be an ‘end of geography‘ as Milton Friedman, a protégé of Hayek, predicted. But Quinn Slobodian, an economic historian at Boston University, in his bracingly original new book ‘Hayek’s Bastards’ brings out how in the eyes of his supporters, the victory has not been total enough. It has engineered the sinister rise of the Far Right, both in the academic circle and in the political firmament.
In the eyes of the Far Right, leftism still enjoys cultural purchase, and there are persistent demands for the redress of inequality at the expense of efficiency. Big states & humungous public spending on welfare persist. According to them, the social movement of the 60s & 70s injected the poison of civil rights, feminism, and affirmative action into the veins of the body politic. The cast of right thinkers includes economist Murray Rothbard, the financial writer Peter Brimelow (founder of the anti-immigration website VDARE), the political scientist Charles Murray & psychologist Richard Hernstein, who wrote the notorious treatise on race and IQ *The Bell Curve* in 1994. Rothbard is an anarcho-capitalist who opposes egalitarianism & civil rights and blames women’s voting and activism for the growth of the welfare state. He asserts biology stands like a rock in the face of egalitarian fantasies—hierarchy and inequality are natural. They argue the disintegration of Yugoslavia proves that national heterogeneity does not work. Murray & Hernstein consider affirmative action as ‘leaking poison into the American soul’.
Noam Chomsky, in a stinging riposte, observes that there is almost no evidence of a genetic link and more evidence that environmental issues determine IQ differences.
As against the soft-focus visions of incremental reforms and expanding the growth pie of neoliberals, these thinkers of the Far Right turn towards three ‘hards’: hard borders, hard-wired human difference, and hard money. Donald Trump’s antagonistic trade war, hard borders, disaffection towards market forces & nation-state replacing globalization encapsulate this brutal worldview. The neoliberal project of Hayek was considerably anti-statist. What is most disturbing about the Far Right viewpoint is the ugly combination of mainstream neoliberal reverence for markets and arguments borrowed from cognitive psychology and genetics. The end game of such noxious politics was to enshrine racial and gendered inequalities as inevitable. It seeks to replace public disagreement with the fatalism of genetics.
Hayek never supported hard borders nor did he endorse genetic determinism—but cultural differences, which his radical followers stretched and distorted. He was the most influential libertarian economist of the 20th century and in a 1976 lecture stated socialism is the state to which humans are most naturally inclined, and must be shaped by cultural intervention.
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate, in his 2024 book ‘The Road to Freedom’, offers a contrarian view to Hayek’s ‘Road to Serfdom’. He argues Hayek misunderstood freedom by equating it with unregulated markets. This perspective ignores the value of equity, justice, and shared prosperity. Citing Isaiah Berlin, he notes: “Freedom for the wolves means death to the lambs.” Stiglitz champions progressive capitalism—active government intervention to address market failure, promote equity, and ensure justice.
Slobodian critiques Argentinian President Javier Millei, who theatrically brandishes a chainsaw to symbolize his assault on government spending. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, he gifted one to Elon Musk, Trump’s austerity enforcer. Addressing Davos elites, he glorified entrepreneurs as heroes and derided Pope Francis as a “filthy leftist”, praising Al Capone as a role model. Such a mix of platitudes, shock economics, and authoritarianism marks Millei as a toxic avatar of Far Right ideology.
‘Hayek’s Bastards’ sheds light on today’s troubling moment—when the Right allies with oligarchs to dismantle the foundations of public life. They have Trump as a ringleader. Yet, amidst this storm, Mark Carney’s liberal win in Canada offers hope against the Trumpian wave of annexation and hostility. Biology is not destiny. Humans are not “capitalists in the cradle”. Hayek did not embrace such racist views. A balance between efficiency and equity is the path to justice and inclusive welfare. Toxic genetics must have no place in that discourse.
(The writer is a Professor Emeritus, KiiT University, Bhubaneswar. Views expressed are personal.)
