Generalized competition makes failure and death matters of social principle.

Evidence

Although Foucault himself does not explore the point, this is a knife cut across the body of liberal democracy, where the enshrinement of equality in the rule and application of law is the promise of the social contract. Competition as the central principle of market rationality also means political subjects lose guarantees of protection by the liberal state. Competition yields winners and losers; capital succeeds by destroying or cannibalizing other capitals. Hence, when market competition becomes generalized as a social and political principle, some will triumph and some will die … as a matter of social and political principle. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 115

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Brown’s own extension beyond Foucault — competition as generalized social principle converts the social contract’s equality guarantee into a warrant for some to die. This is the book’s central anti-democratic thesis in compressed form.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘when losing becomes a death sentence’ — how competition-as-social-principle erodes the egalitarian guarantees of the social contract.
• XREF: Directly pairs with Brown’s forthcoming argument about the demos and sovereignty; ties to Hobbesian war-of-all versus the liberal social contract. — connects to: Competition’s logic makes inequality normative wherever it spreads. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 114; Competition has migrated from market structure into the very character of individuals — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 22; Neoliberalism makes competition rather than exchange the essence of the market — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 59

Broader Connections

• Competition has migrated from market structure into the very character of individuals #expands (0.82) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 22
• Neoliberalism makes competition rather than exchange the essence of the market #expands (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 59