Immanent Politics, Participatory Democracy, and the Pursuit of Eudaimonia

Liberalism, and the market forces it has traditionally championed, helped to undermine and overthrow the old order of the status society which characterized human social existence from the dawn of history up until around the eighteenth century. The old order still continues to exist in some places in the world and is not entirely vanquished even in the West. Still, the liberal revolution that occurred around the time of the eighteenth century promised to usher in a new order, replacing the status society with the contractual society. This revolution achieved significant success that persists to this day.