In short, the essential conditions of democratic existence remain these: limited extremes of concentrated wealth and poverty, orientation toward citizenship as a practice of considering the public good, and citizens modestly discerning about the ways of power, history, representation, and justice. Each of these conditions is severely challenged by neoliberal rationality and policy. Indeed, limits on wealth and poverty and educated citizens oriented toward problems of public life are left in the dust by neoliberal values, governance, and the dismantled social state.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 365