Capitalism governs through a technological rationality so pervasive that it no longer needs ideology
Evidence
Marcuse argues that instrumental reason in the twentieth century had become suffused with the norms and imperatives of capitalism to generate a rationality that saturated society and secured capitalism in ways Marx and Marxism could not fathom or explain. Thus, in place of a Marxist notion of bourgeois ideology in workplaces, schools, and the state, Marcuse traces the specific rationalities with which modern capitalism saturates and governs the world and the human. “Technological rationality has become political rationality” and produces “a comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom … in advanced industrial civilization.” — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 228
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Weber’s rationalization and the broader critique of instrumental reason that the reader is tracking across Frankfurt School sources. — connects to: Silicon Valley’s ideology fuses technological determinism with libertarian individualism. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 118; Governments conflate capitalist economic rationality with rationality itself. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 369; Autonomy is threatened by capitalism’s mutual implication of life and technology — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 566 (+8 more)
- SEED: The idea of ‘democratic unfreedom’ as a product of rational comfort could anchor a piece on how convenience-based governance replaces overt coercion.
Broader Connections
- Technological progress legitimates capitalism as the best possible system
#expands(0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 122 - Technological rationality has grown stronger while society grows more irrational
#corroborates(0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 47 - Technology’s cultural effects are mediated by late capitalism not deterministically
#qualifies(0.80) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 410 - Socializing production without breaking technological domination yields authoritarianism
#expands(0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 493