This book addresses a central theme in social and political theory: what is the motivation behind the theory of ideology, and can such a theory be defended?

Human history is a history of the domination of some groups by others, sustained in part by the willing subordination of the members of dominated groups. How can this remarkable fact be explained? On Michael Rosen’s telling, some of the best political theorists of the early modern period, from Machiavelli through Rousseau and Hume, grappled with this question. But it was, of course, in Marx’s work that the problem of voluntary servitude received its most philosophically trenchant and historically (...) influential treatment. Rosen’s central claim is that Marx ultimately failed to explain this phenomenon satisfactorily. He does think that at least one self-described Marxist, Walter Benjamin, advanced promising suggestions, and he concludes On Voluntary Servitude with his own sketch of a solution, drawing in part on Jon Elster’s reconstructions of Marxist positions. But, as Rosen makes painfully clear, we are still some way from a full understanding of why people voluntarily accept forms of political domination opposed to their own interests. (shrink)

An elegant English version of La Boetie's _Discourse on Voluntary Servitude_, which is both a key to understanding much of Montaigne and a major piece of early modern political thought. --Timothy Hampton, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley.

Thom Brooks review of Rosen's On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology.

Existe-t-il une hypothèse de la servitude volontaire chez Spinoza? En partant des tensions qui naissent de l’apparente contradiction entre une telle hypothèse et l’anthropologie spinoziste, le présent article montre qu’il existe bien chez l’auteur du Traité théologico-politique des conditions politiques qui conduisent à l’inversion du conatus, au point de pousser les hommes à combattre « pour leur servitude comme s’il s’agissait de leur salut ». Spinoza tempère l’hypothèse laboétienne : un individu ou un peuple ne saurait de lui-même (...) désirer la servitude, mais peut y être conduit sous l’effet de l’adoption d’une certaine politique ou institution. Il ne s’agit pas seulement de la crainte favorisée par le régime monarchique. La fondation de la République des Hébreux, après la sortie d’Égypte du peuple juif, pose également la question de la servitude volontaire. La pensée spinoziste, ce faisant, témoigne d’un rationalisme politique inquiet, dont on peut s’inspirer aujourd’hui pour réfléchir sur les « causes extérieures cachées » qui peuvent fragiliser, voire contredire, le désir de liberté. (shrink)

The 16th-century French humanist writer Etienne de La Boétie has not often been considered in literature on republican political thought, despite his famous essay, Discours de la Servitude Volontaire, displaying a number of clear republican tropes and themes, being largely concerned with the problem of arbitrary power embodied in the figure of the tyrant. Yet, I argue that the real significance of La Boétie’s text is in his radical concept of voluntary servitude and the way it adds (...) a new dimension to the neo-republican theory of liberty as non-domination. The problem of self-domination or wilful obedience to authority is a form of ideological domination that Pettit’s understanding of arbitrary power relationships between agents does not adequately account for. Furthermore, La Boétie shows that freedom is an ontological condition and is realised not – or not entirely – through the rule of law as the guarantee against arbitrariness, as neo-republicans advocate, but rather through acts of self-emancipation and civil disobedience. Here I understand La Boétie’s thinking in terms of a certain anarcho-republicanism in which the promotion of freedom depends not so much on institutions, as Pettit suggests, but rather on autonomous relations of friendship, love and solidarity between individuals. (shrink)

I investigate the contemporary problem of obedience through an exploration of Michel Foucault and Étienne de La Boétie, showing how the former drew on the latter’s concept of voluntary servitude as a way of thinking through the paradoxical relationship between power, freedom and subjectivity. My argument is that Foucault’s theory of government as the ‘conduct of conduct’ may be understood as a reflection on the question of voluntary servitude. My aim here is twofold. First, it is (...) to show that obedience is an ethical and political problem just as relevant today as it was in La Boétie’s time. Secondly, it is to suggest that voluntary servitude should be interpreted in an emancipatory way, as a problematic that reveals the ontological primacy of freedom and the fragility and instability of power. ‘Voluntary inservitude’ is something that can be expressed in acts of civil disobedience, and alternate modes of ethical conduct and association. (shrink)

The attempt to recuperate the efficacy of utopia from critics of its blueprint variants has seen the emergence of critical utopias.1 According to critics, the problem with "traditional" blueprint models lay in their production of "a closed, static, authoritarian society that negates temporality and does violence to plurality and individual singularity."2 Critical utopias sought to internalize such critiques in order to rescue utopia, resulting in a heightened attention to the problems of the dialectic of emancipation, plurality, and temporality. Consequently, critical (...) utopias contain a self-reflexive approach that aims to foreclose any authoritarian regression via an internalization of the preliminary and... (shrink)

This volume contains five articles by prominent scholars of French literature and political philosophy that examine the relation between Montaigne's Essays, one ...

This article is an attempt at a ‘political’ reading of Kafka’s The Castle, as an ironical, radical critique - from a libertarian perspective - of the despotism of the modern bureaucratic apparatus. This reading is not self-evident. Like all Kafka’s unfinished novels, Das Schloss is a strange and fascinating literary document that creates perplexity and inspires various contradictory and/or dissonant interpretations. And like The Trial it has been the object of very many religious and theological readings. Michael Löwy concludes by (...) arguing that commentators have neglected the character of Amalia, one of the most impressive female figures in Kafka’s work, who is at the heart of the libertarian individualism of the Prague writer. (shrink)

A superb achievement, one that successfully brings together in accessible form the work of two major writers of Renaissance France. This is now the default version of Montaigne in English. --Timothy Hampton, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley.

This book addresses a central theme in social and political theory: what is the motivation behind the theory of ideology, and can such a theory be defended?

Includes bibliography: p. 7-12 and bibliographical references.

Existe-t-il une hypothèse de la servitude volontaire chez Spinoza? En partant des tensions qui naissent de l’apparente contradiction entre une telle hypothèse et l’anthropologie spinoziste, le présent article montre qu’il existe bien chez l’auteur du Traité théologico-politique des conditions politiques qui conduisent à l’inversion du conatus, au point de pousser les hommes à combattre « pour leur servitude comme s’il s’agissait de leur salut ». Spinoza tempère l’hypothèse laboétienne : un individu ou un peuple ne saurait de lui-même (...) désirer la servitude, mais peut y être conduit sous l’effet de l’adoption d’une certaine politique ou institution. Il ne s’agit pas seulement de la crainte favorisée par le régime monarchique. La fondation de la République des Hébreux, après la sortie d’Égypte du peuple juif, pose également la question de la servitude volontaire. La pensée spinoziste, ce faisant, témoigne d’un rationalisme politique inquiet, dont on peut s’inspirer aujourd’hui pour réfléchir sur les « causes extérieures cachées » qui peuvent fragiliser, voire contredire, le désir de liberté. (shrink)

Summary: This book studies the life of Étienne de La Boétie and his role in the parliament of Bordeaux in the years 1556-1563, those of his friendship with Montaigne. He has already written the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, the contents, distribution and successive editions of which until now constitute the investigation of this book.--Classiques Garnier.

My aim in this chapter is to show how Stirner’s critical post-humanist philosophy allows him to engage with a specific problem in political theory, that of voluntary servitude – in other words, the wilful acquiescence of people to the power that dominates them. Here it will be argued that Stirner’s demolition of the abstract idealism of humanism, rational truth and morality, and his alternative project of grounding reality in the singularity of the individual ego, may be understood as (...) a way of countering and avoiding this condition of self-domination. In contrast to various claims, then, that Stirner’s thought is nihilistic, one finds in Stirner a series of ethical strategies through which the self’s relation to power is interrogated and in which the possibility of alternative modes of subjectivity is opened up; where the subject can invent for himself new forms of existence and practices of freedom that release him from this condition of subjection. There emerges from Stirner’s thought a certain kind of micro-politics and ethics which has important implications for any consideration of radical politics today. (shrink)

The article takes into account the exceptionality of Étienne de La Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude sur la servitude volontaire within its historical context, when compared to other anti-tyrannical essays published in Sixteenth-Century France. The Discourse can be read as a sort of anachronistic criticism of the modern theory of sovereignty, since it connects the birth of a monar-chical power with the presence in every man of a desire to be identified with “the name of the One”. (...) However, this process of hallucinatory identification with a “master”, to whom the individual sacrifices his own singularity, can be fought by the capacity of human language to build a net of co-operation among men, which overthrows any close and static identity between individuals and power. Thus freedom appears to be not a natural and stable possess, but rather an uninterrupted and risky process of collective emancipation. (shrink)

En este trabajo se relacionan los conceptos de servidumbre voluntaria y evaluación, considerando que el punto de encuentro entre ellos es la idea del necesario consentimiento del sujeto. La servidumbre voluntaria, así formulada por Étienne de La Boétie a mediados del siglo XVI, planteaba la primera paradoja: el poder que ejerce el amo no reside en su fuerza, sino en la legitimidad que le otorga el consentimiento del siervo. Durante el siglo XVII, en lo que respecta al pensamiento, fue el (...) Santo Oficio quien ocupó el lugar del amo, y su arma fue la censura, estableciendo ya un procedimiento que había que admitir si se quería publicar. Un siglo más tarde, la idea de emancipación se convirtió en un ideal de la época, actualizando la proposición de La Boétie, ya que la emancipación ilustrada fue una llamada, un imperativo que no consideraba una realidad exterior en tanto que causa, sino que ponía el acento en el consentimiento del sujeto y en su voluntad de no ser libre. Para concluir, en el artículo se aborda la cuestión de la evaluación en tanto que una modalidad actual de la servidumbre voluntaria: la búsqueda metódica, incesante, del consentimiento del otro. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es el análisis crítico del concepto de “servidumbre voluntaria” y sus implicaciones para la libertad que plantea Étienne de la Boétie y su relación con el deseo natural de libertad. En particular se analizan algunas ideas de la obra Discours de la servitude volontaire (1576) comenzando por una introducción general y las implicaciones de la obra en la historia de las ideas políticas. La parte central radica en el problema que plantea para la sociedad (...) el deseo de servir de los hombres o, en otras palabras: el deseo de esclavitud y rechazo de la libertad. Todo ello va contra la naturaleza humana según La Boétie. Estos problemas son los que se discuten a partir de un planteamiento de teoría política que va contra el “pensamiento único” y que destaca algunos de los errores conceptuales del autor desde la óptica de la “realidad política” y la poca relevancia que tienen los estándares de perfección para una organización político-social factible. (shrink)

The paper argues that a specific "concept of the political" can be reconstructed in Arendt by bringing together elements coming from Origins of Totalitarianism, Part II , from The Human Condition and On Revolution , and from On Disobedience . These propositions produce a singular variety of "institutionalism", which involves a "groundless" politics of Human Rights , and also helps clarifying the thesis on the "banality of evil" in Eichmann in Jerusalem: the sovereign tautology "law is law" is the root (...) of voluntary servitude. To say that we have a choice between becoming Eichmanns or taking the risk of civil disobedience is too quick; and to suppose that a state where civil disobedience becomes recognized would be immune of the danger of totalitarian transformation is an illusion, but as an ideal type, these formulations may encapsulate what Arendt's "concept of the political" hints at. (shrink)

The paper argues that a specific "concept of the political" can be reconstructed in Arendt by bringing together elements coming from Origins of Totalitarianism, Part II, from The Human Condition and On Revolution, and from On Disobedience. These propositions produce a singular variety of "institutionalism", which involves a "groundless" politics of Human Rights, and also helps clarifying the thesis on the "banality of evil" in Eichmann in Jerusalem: the sovereign tautology "law is law" is the root of voluntary (...) class='Hi'>servitude. To say that we have a choice between becoming Eichmanns or taking the risk of civil disobedience is too quick; and to suppose that a state where civil disobedience becomes recognized would be immune of the danger of totalitarian transformation is an illusion, but as an ideal type, these formulations may encapsulate what Arendt's "concept of the political" hints at. (shrink)

I treat despotism as a virtual concept. Thus it is necessary to expose its actualizations even when it appears as its opposite, refusing to recognize itself as despotism. I define despotism initially as arbitrary rule, in terms of a monstrous transgression of the law. But since the monster is grounded in its very formlessness, it cannot be demonstrated. However, one can always try to de-monstrate it through disagreements. In doing this, I deal with despotism not as a solipsistic undertaking but (...) as part of a constellation that always already contains two other elements: economy and voluntary servitude. I give three different – ancient, early modern and late modern – accounts of this nexus, demonstrating how despotism continuously takes on new appearances. I conclude, in a counter-classical prism, how the classical nexus has evolved in modernity while the focus gradually shifted towards another triangulation: neo-despotism, use and dissent. (shrink)

In this article, I present a critical exposition of and engagement with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s schizoanalysis, and its therapeutic and revolutionary powers. Firstly, I discuss how the aftermath of the May 1968 phenomenon shapes the formulation of schizoanalysis, specifically, in relation to the French people’s desire for voluntary servitude to what they call as ‘State philosophy.’ More importantly, I discuss desire’s social investment, syntheses, and parallogisms. Secondly, I elucidate schizoanalysis’ goal of achieving freedom from all kinds (...) of Oedipalizations and capitalist exploitations from the family to the society writ large. In this regard, it is schizophrenia which is capable of subverting all forms of oppressions or totalizations fabricated by Oedipus and capitalism. Lastly, I explicate schizoanalysis’ aim, which is to reinstate desire’s revolutionary potentialities toward a revolution fueled by “schizophrenia as a process,” which Deleuze and Guattari call as ‘permanent revolution.’. (shrink)

Étienne de La Boétie (1530–63) is a central, if enigmatic, figure in modern French political philosophy. While his name is most famous for his friendship with Montaigne, his Discours de la servitude volontaire (Discourse of Voluntary Servitude) is a tour-de-force of humanist political writing, a youthful paean to liberty arguing that subjection to tyrants is the result of popular corruption. This article argues that the text can be read as a reflection on the perils and promise of (...) transparency. Reading La Boétie helps us see two radically different ways in which members of a polity can be known to one another – two models of transparency – and it offers an important, but ultimately unsettling, political ideal based on a classical conception of civic friendship. The article draws out the importance of this ideal for modern anti-corruption efforts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plato’s Second Republic: An Essay on the Laws by André LaksSusan Sauvé MeyerLAKS, André. Plato’s Second Republic: An Essay on the Laws. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2022. x + 278 pp. Cloth, $35.00When the unnamed Athenian of Plato’s Laws specifies the constitution and law code for the (fictional) city of Magnesia, he retreats from some of the more notorious principles that structure the ideal city in the (...) Republic, most notably the prohibition against private property and private families for the city’s rulers and the explicit mandate that the rulers be philosophers. Magnesia will be governed by its property-owning citizens in a constitutional regime where law is the supreme political authority. Both [End Page 355] retreats are marked by the Athenian as making Magnesia “second best” in relation to the ideal.One of Laks’s striking theses is that the ideal from which the Laws’s second-best city falls short is not simply that of the Republic. Within the Laws itself, he argues, the Athenian articulates a “legislative utopia” and a constitutional ideal that are only imperfectly realized in the city identified as “second.” The constitutional ideal is articulated in book 3 in the mandate that a constitution achieve a mean (meson) between democracy and monarchy, while the legislative ideal underwrites the mandate in book 4 that laws should have persuasive preludes.While the constitutional “mean” mandated in book 3 is often characterized as “the mixed constitution,” Laks argues that what is mandated is not a mixture of monarchical and democratic institutions, but rather a synthesis of democracy and monarchy, with each institution implementing both democratic and monarchical principles. Laks calls such a mean a “middle.” If the mandated constitutional “middle” were fully achieved, he claims, democratic equality would be synthesized with the inequality of monarchy and thereby transformed from arithmetical into proportional equality. Similarly, democratic freedom would be synthesized with submission to authority, and transformed from negative freedom from authority into the positive freedom of rationality. Laks proposes that the freedom to emerge from this “metamorphosis” is the “voluntary servitude to the laws” lauded in book 3. While he acknowledges that Plato nowhere identifies such servitude to law as freedom, Laks locates that conception on the horizon of the conceptual metamorphosis of freedom that he finds in the Laws.Neither synthesis—of equality or of freedom—is perfectly achieved in the city whose constitution and law code are specified in the Laws, according to Laks; this is the burden of his remark that the constitution of Magnesia is “a mixture (sit venia verbo) of a mix and a middle.” A residue of unmitigated arithmetical equality remains in the constitution specified in book 6 to the extent that it includes a paradigmatically democratic procedure, the lottery, among the otherwise meritocratic procedures for appointing citizens to public office. A residue of despotism remains in the law code of Magnesia to the extent that the persuasive preludes to its statutes employ the manipulative rhetoric of praise and blame rather than philosophical arguments that display the rational grounding of the law in divine reason.Both retreats from the ideal are necessitated, on Laks’s interpretation, by the imperfect rationality of human beings. Not every person can learn to appreciate the superiority of proportional to arithmetical equality, or the perfect rationality of the laws’ prescriptions. In a “legislative utopia” citizens will obey the law because they appreciate its rational grounding, but that ideal is not fully achievable in a community of human beings. However rational the laws’ prescriptions may be, citizens’ obedience must be secured by nonrational means as well—hence the Athenian’s characterization of the politeia of the Laws as a “tragedy” (817b). [End Page 356]Laks’s exposition of these (and other) themes over the course of the volume is cumulative rather than sequential, diffuse rather than regimented, and deliberately sensitive to the literary features of Plato’s text and the ways in which its message may be allusive, indirect, or equivocal. What emerges from Laks’s learned engagement with the text is an interpretation that is “suggested” (an oft used phrase in the volume) rather than mandated by... (shrink)

RESUMO:O objeto de estudo deste artigo é a condição humana. Qual a possibilidade de existência da condição humana fundamentada na liberdade? O objetivo é relacionar esfera pública, política, liberdade e condição humana. A elaboração teórica considerou obras de Etienne de La Boétie, Hannah Arendt, Cornelius Castoriadis, entre outros. Na atualidade, ocorre a supressão da condição humana, pois a esfera pública tem a ingerência da esfera privada, predominando a razão instrumental e a lógica do mercado, e o homem é afastado da (...) vida política. Por isso, a nossa ação política pela liberdade é fundamental para a problematização do processo de banalização do mal e da servidão voluntária. A coragem é uma virtude indispensável à ação política, é necessária para nos libertarmos da dominação e do servilismo da vida privada e conquistarmos a vida política. A centralidade da ação política do homem é a sua condição de ser atuante para a reafirmação da esfera pública, do mundo da pluralidade, humano e comum. Todavia, a condição humana fundamentada na liberdade implica a superação da atividade e do pensamento pragmáticos e fragmentários da vida cotidiana e a constituição da praxis na dimensão humano-genérica consciente. ABSTRACT:The subject of this article is the human condition. What is the possibility of the existence of the human condition founded on freedom? The aim is to connect the public sphere, politics, freedom, and the human condition. The works of Etienne de La Boétie, Hannah Arendt, Cornelius Castoriadis, and others, are considered. At the present time there is occurring a suppression of the human condition, because the public sphere exists under the interference of a private sphere in which instrumental reason and market logic prevail. People are divorced from political life. For this reason, political action seeking freedom is essential for addressing the problems of the banalization of evil and voluntary servitude. Courage is an indispensable virtue to political action; it is necessary for liberating us from the domination and servitude of private life, as well as for attaining political life. The centrality of human beings’ political action is the condition for acting to reaffirm the public sphere and the world of plurality, both human and common. However, the human condition founded on freedom supposes the overcoming of the pragmatic and fragmented activity and thinking of daily life, and requires the constitution of praxis in the conscious human-generic dimension. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the famous The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie. The author considers the theoretical premises underlying the concept of “voluntary servitude”, juxtaposing them with two modern concepts of will developed by Descartes and Pascal. An important feature of La Boétie’s project is the political and therefore intersubjective – as opposed to the individualistic perspective of Descartes and Pascal – starting point. It is therefore situated against the background of, (...) on the one hand, the historical evolution of early modern states and, on the other hand – of the political philosophy of Machiavelli and Hobbes. (shrink)

In the last decade, we have witnessed the return of one of the most controversial terms in the political lexicon: totalitarianism. What are we talking about when we define a totalitarian political and social situation? When did we start using the word as both adjective and noun? And, what totalitarian ghosts haunt the present? Philosopher Simona Forti seeks to answer these questions by reconstructing not only the genealogy of the concept, but also by clarifying its motives, misunderstandings, and the controversies (...) that have animated its current resurgence. Taking into account political theories and historical discussions, Totalitarianism especially focuses on philosophical reflections, from the question of totalitarian biopolitics to the alleged totalitarian drifts of neoliberalism. The work invites the relentless formulation of a radical question about democratic age: the possibilities it has opened up, the voids it leaves behind, the mechanisms it activates, and the "voluntary servitude" it produces. Forti argues that totalitarianism cannot be considered an external threat to democracy, but rather, one of the possible answers to those questions posed by modernity which democracies have not been able to solve. Her investigation of the uses and abuses of totalitarianism as one of the fundamental categories of 20th and 21st centuries promises to provoke much-needed discussion and debate among those in philosophy, politics, ethics, and beyond. (shrink)

During a period when transatlantic slavery was still being racialized, Hobbes and Leibniz represent stark alternatives on the nature and justification of slavery. This article investigates Leibniz’s encounter with the Hobbesian position on slavery (servitus), drawing out the racial implications. Throughout his political works, Hobbes defended voluntary servitude by transforming a legacy of Roman jurisprudence that had come to be encapsulated in the law of nations (jus gentium). Hobbes defended the justification that a master could possess slaves as (...) de jure property with the rights to buy or sell them. In Sur la notion commune de la justice, Leibniz argued against Hobbes that slave-owners’ rights should be limited. He also defended his own paternalistic justification of slavery, reinterpreting Aristotelian natural slavery. Leibniz claimed that some persons merit guidance as slaves by nature, yet legitimate possession of persons can only go as far as a usufruct. In contrast, Hobbes had rejected the normative logic that any person could rationally merit enslavement but maintained that masters could totally possess the body of captive slaves for as far as their power extends. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns justifications for how economic activity is organized. The dissertation considers the role of economic theory in the process of justification and assesses justifications for specific capitalist institutions. The three essays that comprise this dissertation pursue this inquiry by addressing questions respectively in the history of thought, distributive justice, and the ethics of work. ;To advance our general understanding about the development of nineteenth-century Irish political economy in the wake of the Great Irish Famine , the first essay (...) analyzes the Famine's impact on a previously unstudied, yet uniquely authoritative, element of the discipline: the questions given to candidates for the Whately Professorship of Political Economy at Trinity College, Dublin. The essay concludes, contrary to previous arguments, that the Famine did not fundamentally influence the discipline's development. Examining justifications for government responses to the Famine in light of this conclusion, the essay considers the role of economic theory in justifying how economic activity is organized. ;Challenging the position that people morally deserve their market earnings often relies on showing that there is little that people can be said to deserve or that market imperfections undermine desert claims. The second essay argues that even if people can generally be deserving and absent market imperfections, people cannot claim to deserve their earnings with respect to four common desert bases: social contribution, effort, compensation and promise of payment. A principle of fairness that requires fulfilling legitimate expectations might ground a moral claim to market earnings, but it is much weaker than moral desert in limiting income redistribution or in justifying use of the market. ;Given the nineteenth-century American labor movement's objection to the employment relationship on grounds that it was a form of servitude, the third essay assesses the extent to which a similar objection applies in contemporary society. The essay argues that despite changes in employment practices, from the standpoint of legitimate authority the employment relationship represents a form of servitude. Given ethical objections to voluntary servitude more generally, this analysis suggests the need for alternatives to the employment relationship, such as worker-owned cooperatives, in a just economy. (shrink)

The article elaborates on Arendt’s take on the religious and the political and on how they interact and merge in modernity, especially in totalitarianism. We start with framing the three different understandings of religion in Arendt: first, a classic understanding of religion, which is foreign to the logic of the political; second, a secularized political religion; and third, a weak messianism. Both the classic understanding of religion and the political religion deny human freedom in Arendt’s sense. Her transcendent alternative to (...) them both is the notion of the democratic political community: the Republic. Then we turn to Arendt’s political theology, illuminating why interrogating Nazism is central to examine the relationship between politics and religion in modernity. This is followed by a discussion of Nazism as a type of political religion. We focus here on totalitarianism, both as an idea and actual institution. We conclude with an assessment of the role of profanation in Arendt’s work and its significance vis-à-vis the contemporary ‘return of religion’ as well as totalitarian tendencies which call for new forms of voluntary servitude. (shrink)

With in-depth empirical analysis of a range of case studies, this book offers a comprehensive genealogy of the concepts of economy, despotism and voluntary servitude and provides a thorough and coherent reflection on the wider socio-political agenda of contemporary societies.