Postdemokratie, Humankapital und politische Handlungsfähigkeit

Reconstructing the transformation of manpower into human capital this article shows the effects on individual and collective political agency. In booming societies of the 1960s and early 1970s which were based on mass consumption, the utopia of a revolutionary proletarian subject vanished. It was superseded by the idea of a dualistic society providing a growing sphere of autonomy from economic dependancy. The neoliberal transformation of society destroyed this belief. If there is a strong convergence between labor and human capital, labor tends to interfuse the whole life. Complex governmental and economic regulation restricts democracy and effects individualization. The critical examination of processes of individualization shows the mechanisms that produce social antagonism.