SEDUCTION, ALIENATION, RACKETEERING

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explicate concepts of politics that were introduced—if somewhat implicitly—by different Frankfurt School theorists. Authors writing within this influential tradition have identified a number of structural threats to the very possibility of genuine, transformative political action in modern capitalist society. The article discusses these threats under three headings: seduction by media and consumerism, the draining away of political power from the state in favor of rackets, and political alienation afflicting individuals and communities excluded from circles of power. These three concepts can be read as transmutations of classical political ideas. Seduction subverts liberal ideas of ‘freedom’, racketeering is a degenerate way of forming ‘associations’, and political alienation is a caricature of die contractualist notion of surrendering power to the sovereign state. In conclusion, an attempt is made to evaluate the extent to which those concepts may or may not help us to better understand the place and function of the political in modern societies.