Politics loses its freedom once Capital becomes a new transcendent master.

Evidence

Emancipation from a transcendent order – that is, an order grounded in religious premises – is the hallmark of modern politics. Only under modern conditions – when transcendental means of justification no longer possess any validity – is a genuine politics, the politicization of society as a whole, held to be possible. Now, norms of action are supposed to be subject to negotiation at every level: transcendence will yield to discourse immanent to society itself. Society, the reasoning goes, can construct itself anew, purely from within, on the basis of immanent properties. However, such freedom vanishes just as soon as Capital achieves the status of being a new transcendency – a new master. When this occurs, politics lapses into servitude again. It becomes the handmaiden of Capital. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 29

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Frankfurt School critique of instrumental reason and commodification found in Wiggershaus and Adorno’s essays. — connects to: Escapes from politics invariably end in rule and obedience. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 194; The neoliberal state hollowed out parties to escape mass democracy’s brake on capital; Capital is a transcendent force that estranges life from itself — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 193 (+5 more)

Related

• Neoliberalism gutted mass parties to free capital from democratic constraint (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Capital is a transcendent force that estranges life from itself #corroborates (0.85) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 193
• Escapes from politics invariably end in rule and obedience. #expands (0.82) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 194
• Neoliberalism’s defeat of its own aims produced states yanked by capital and popular zeal #exemplifies (0.80) — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, 139
• Neoliberalism gutted mass parties to free capital from democratic constraint #exemplifies (0.80) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 230
• Economic dependence on wage labor hollows out political citizenship. #exemplifies (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 406
• The neoliberal state hollowed out parties to escape mass democracy’s brake on capital #exemplifies (0.78)
• Politics must escape the motivation-despair binary capitalism prescribes. #responds-to (0.78) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 68
• Liberation fails when the new regime hardens into a dominating bureaucracy #qualifies (0.72) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 138