To Friedrich Hayek and his fellow neoliberals, the individualist and none-galitarian society that neoliberalism envisaged was not a natural condition. They did not expect it to emerge spontaneously once the powers of the state were reduced, as nineteenth-century liberals had believed. The neoliberal order was an economic and social project to be built by capturing and reorganizing political power.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1907