Finally, there is Marcuse’s account of the role of the market in intensifying the nihilism theorized by Nietzsche. Writing well before the neoliberal revolution, Marcuse argues that the market has become both reality principle and moral truth: “The people are led to find in the productive apparatus”—the market—“the effective agent of thought and action to which their personal thought and action can and must be surrendered,” and “in this transfer, the apparatus also assumes the role of a moral agent. Conscience is absolved by reification, by the general necessity of things. In this general necessity, guilt has no place.”20 Already depleted by desublimation yielding a happy consciousness, the weak remains of conscience are taken over by market reason and market requirements. The real is both the rational and the moral. At once reality principle, imperative, and moral order, capitalism becomes necessity, authority, and truth rolled into one; suffusing every sphere and immune from criticism, despite its manifest devastations, incoherencies, and instabilities. There is no alternative.