Monopoly capitalism replaces liberal-legal institutions with irrational totalitarian authority

Evidence

In fact, it was their belief that capitalism in its advanced, monopolistic stage actually decreased the rationality of political authority. The formal, legal rationality that Weber had described corresponded more closely to conditions during the liberal phase of bourgeois society, which were characterized by belief in the Rechissiaat (constitutional state). As capitalism had evolved in a monopolistic direction, liberal political and legal institutions were increasingly replaced by totalitarian ones. Those that remained were little more than the facade for new types of irrational authority. Rationality was itself severely threatened. “The fascist order,” Horkheimer wrote during the war, “is the reason in which reason reveals itself as irrational.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 402

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core of the Horkheimer/Adorno thesis that instrumental reason becomes mythic/irrational — connects directly to Dialectic of Enlightenment. — connects to: Monopoly capitalism destroys the very notion of property while retaining its form; Neo-liberal capitalism decentralizes authority yet intensifies domination. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 141; Totalitarian ideology transforms stabilizing law into law as motion (+14 more)
• SEED: Possible essay angle: how the Frankfurt School’s claim that advanced capitalism reduces rather than increases political rationality reads against mid-century American liberalism.

Broader Connections

• Totalitarian ideology transforms stabilizing law into law as motion #complicates (0.78)
• Neo-liberal capitalism decentralizes authority yet intensifies domination. #complicates (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 141
• State capitalism substitutes the power motive for the profit motive #corroborates (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 485
• Totalitarianism transforms classes into masses and creates entirely new political institutions #expands (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1035
• Totalitarian rule replaces external coercion with domination from within each person #expands (0.72)
• Command economy and monopoly capitalism coexisted under Nazi rule #exemplifies (0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 510
• Totalitarian theory derived authority from racial right rather than universal law #expands (0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 425
• Domination in advanced capitalism is masked as neutral administration and objectivity #complicates (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 186
• Juridico-political ideology masks the economic’s determinant role under capitalism #complicates (0.72)
• State-capitalism theory downgrades the economic base in favor of direct political domination #expands (0.70) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 600