Public discontent targets inequality but not the threat to democracy itself.

Evidence

In the Euro-Atlantic world today, there would seem to be a fair amount of discontent, or at least unease, about the neoliberalization of everyday life. However, this quotidian unhappiness tends to focus on neoliberalism’s generation of extreme inequalities, on its invasive or crass levels of commodification, or on its dismantling of public goods and commercialization of public life and public space. There is far less worry expressed about neoliberalism’s threat to democracy, perhaps because the incursions, inversions, and transformations I have been describing are more subtle than the juxtapositions of billionaire bankers with slum dwellers, perhaps because of the shell form democracy already had prior to neoliberalization (its reduction to rights and elections), perhaps because of ubiquitous cynicism and alienation from political life. Above all, no doubt, neoliberal rationality has been extremely effective in identifying capitalism with democracy. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 411

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that neoliberal rationality effectively collapses capitalism and democracy is worth chasing — who articulates this identification, and how does it survive obvious counterexamples?
• XREF: connects to: Public shaming is usually horizontal status rivalry, not bottom-up resistance. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 103; People resent being stuck, not inequality itself; Pseudoconservatives misdirect resentment at democratic form rather than economic inequality — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1797 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Pseudoconservatives misdirect resentment at democratic form rather than economic inequality #qualifies (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1797
• People resent being stuck, not inequality itself #corroborates (0.80)
• Awareness of inequality does not automatically produce support for equality policies. #corroborates (0.80)
• Public shaming is usually horizontal status rivalry, not bottom-up resistance. #qualifies (0.75) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 103