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In this paper I argue that central aspects of Georg Lukács' concept of reification can be used to address historically specific problems in political theory related to the changing relationship between politics and the economy in contemporary capitalism. In particular, I argue that reification-critique can be a useful tool in contemporary democratic theory provided its terms are reconstructed to account for certain crucial problems inherent to Lukács' framework. My reorientation and reconstruction of the terms of Lukács's reification-critique clarifies Lukács' theory by going back to Marx's critique of political economy on several crucial points. In this paper, I focus in particular on two fundamental issues that a suitably reconstructed critique of reification should address. 1) the issue of the standpoint of a critique of reification and its relationship to the concept of social totality, 2) the issue of whether reification critique is inherently economistic. When reoriented to address these two crucial issues, I argue that reification-critique can be useful for addressing a third issue that is of crucial importance to contemporary democratic theory, 3) the imagination of postcapitalist democratic forms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the role of acceleration in capitalist production as well as on political economy. He reflects on the relationship between speed and capitalism as described by German philosopher Karl Marx. He highlights several manifestations of acceleration in technological and organizational innovations that increase the velocity of central processes including transportation and communications. He cites some economic problems attributed to oligopoly and monopoly.