What Comes After Hyperpolitics?
The arguments of Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics, which first appeared in Jacobin, sparked debate across the political spectrum. Here he responds to critics and explores how a “strategy of patience” could help the Left escape its hyperpolitical impasse.
The Left has become more politically active without becoming more powerful. Writing in Jacobin, Anton Jäger defends the arguments he advanced in Hyperpolitics and asks what today’s Left can learn from last century’s socialist and communist parties. (Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images)
Before the end of this year, the United States will have broken two political records. According to the organizers’ own estimates, No Kings Day on March 28 was the largest single-day protest in recent American history. At the same time, no US president has so successfully enriched himself in office as Donald Trump has — 2026 is set to be the most lucrative year of his career so far.
The concept of “hyperpolitics” is an attempt to explain these coincident phenomena. It describes a process of repoliticization without reinstitutionalization that has overtaken every layer of society in the wake of the 2008–9 crash. This surge in political activity has been organizationally uneven, difficult to relate to historical precedents, and, more worryingly, has no guaranteed effect on power relations between elites and masses.
In its current iteration, the idea first emerged in this outlet, where it provoked a lively debate. Published in monograph form four years later, Hyperpolitics has also met with varied engagement, both critical and laudatory, from writers across the political spectrum. Even the misreadings have been productive.
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