The Ruling Ideas

Bourgeois Political Concepts

The concepts that organize our thinking wield, by virtue of this fact, a great deal of political power. This book looks at five concepts whose dominion has increased, steadily, during the bourgeois period of modernity: Labor, Time, Property, Value, and Crisis. These ruling ideas are central not only to many academic disciplines— from philosophy and law to the political, social, and economic sciences— but also to everyday life.

These ruling ideas explain the cultural attitudes of boredom and multitasking, revealing the inescapable internalized consciousness of time that has become a mode of political domination. They also explain the terrifying environmental problem of privatized property in water and the terrifying humanitarian problem of privatized property in human bodies and body parts. Finally, they explain the affective dimensions of the housing crisis, and especially why capitalism cultivates the desire to own a home that is beyond one’s means.