In the process that Weber calls "rationalization," rational action comes to displace all other forms, those springing from faith, tradition, affect, fealty to a leader, or any other prerational or nonrational source. But this displacement is only the beginning of rationalization, which does not really get underway until instrumental rationality takes over everything, displacing even value-rational action. Initially only a means, instrumental reason becomes a force of its own in the world and dissolves other values with that force. For Weber, capitalism and bureaucracy are each examples of this. Each system begins as a means—for wealth generation and for administration—but both break out of harness to become unprecedented systems of domination and automatic reproduction, placing humanity in "an iron cage." Both become formations of power and rationality that cease to be instruments of our existence and instead become forces of history unto themselves — governing, dominating, fashioning human beings and worlds in every way.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 227