Severed from Reality: The Irrationality of Rationality in Advanced-Stage Capitalism

In Severance, the modern office is transformed into a forced labor camp where workers are dominated by their managers and forced into being as close to a purely rational actor as possible. Viewers can relate to innies grieving their loss of agency, their futile search for meaning within alienation, and their desperate need to make sense of their place within a world that operates outside their view. The plight of the innie is the plight of all workers in advanced-stage capitalist societies. Like the Innies of Severance, workers today are forced to live through the consequences of decisions made by distant, nameless bureaucrats. A goal of this piece is to provide additional context to the show’s critique of capitalism by reviewing the works of social theorists like Marx and Weber. In addition to expounding on the contradictions inherent to capitalism, we consider possible avenues for liberation and change.