The bourgeoisie’s competitive ethos made civic duties feel like a drain on time

Evidence

The long period of false modesty, when the bourgeoisie was content with being the dominating class in society without aspiring to political rule, which it gladly left to the aristocracy, was followed by the imperialist era, during which the bourgeoisie grew increasingly hostile to existing national institutions and began to claim and to organize itself for the exercise of political power. Both the early apathy and the later demand for monopolistic dictatorial direction of the nation’s foreign affairs had their roots in a way and philosophy of life so insistently and exclusively centered on the individual’s success or failure in ruthless competition that a citizen’s duties and responsibilities could only be felt to be a needless drain on his limited time and energy. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 750

Categorization

• XREF: Provides the causal mechanism — competitive individualism eroding civic participation — that scaffolded later field arguments about how depoliticization precedes authoritarian capture.