The Completion of Politics and the End of Liberal Democracy

Politics is the separation of the whole from the parts, the state from civil society. The elimination of all previously privileged political relations once held by a monarchy, church, and nobility, and the establishment of one relation for all, universal suffrage, defines the completion of this separation, of politics. But this completion is only formal not actual because money/capital has always played a hidden role and secured extensive privileges for itself. Such privilege now merits the phrase, the ‘corporate capture’ of the state. Capital accumulation, however, has moved from the national to the global sphere, from where its agencies determine policies for global economic relations. The foundation of liberal democracy, a national economy, is no longer; the political form has lost its original content; its rationale has been transformed into a national political assistant for global accumulation. The completion of politics, however, is not the end of politics, a state of affairs marked by the conscious union of the whole and the parts.