Neoliberalism extinguishes the political subject that critiques of capitalism presupposed

Evidence

Put slightly differently, Weber and Marx assume a political exterior and subjective interior that is disharmonious with capitalism — political life featuring at least the promise of freedom, equality and popular sovereignty and a figure of subjective personhood bound to ideals of worth, dignity, self-direction, even soulfulness. It is precisely such an exterior and interior that neoliberal reason’s configuration of states, citizens and souls in the image of homo oeconomicus, and elimination of homo politicus, threaten to extinguish. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 218

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Distills Brown’s core thesis: the precondition of democratic critique is being erased from within, so critique loses its ground.
• ADDENDUM: Relates to the ongoing theoretical thread about institutional capture and erosion of democratic grounding.
• XREF: connects to: Capitalism absorbed its critics’ language to legitimize neoliberal privatization — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 439; Neoliberalism weaponizes its own rebellious aesthetic to absorb anti-system dissent. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 257; Neoliberals weaponized the household critique to discredit all politics — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 158 (+8 more)