Democracy and Capitalism

This debate ran from 1 December 2006 and has now finished

There are many different, and often conflicting, viewpoints on the relationship between democracy and capitalism, and we hope that you will join the debate on this subject.

Download and read the Democracy and Capitalism booklet available from Friday 1 December.

Some of the main issues include:

  • What are the connections and conflicts between democracy and capitalism?
  • What are the linkages given that they frequently appear together?
  • Are authoritarian capitalist regimes, like that in China, proof that as Lord Daherndorf points out, ‘a capitalist world would not necessarily be a free world’ ?
  • How should we regard the relationship between capitalism and democracy in an age of globalisation?
  • Are the necessary conditions for capitalism more likely to be present in democratic societies than non-democratic ones?
  • Is the most important aspect of this debate the effects of global capitalism, most particularly the sustainability of the world’s resources, the challenges arising from climate change and whether current institutions are up to the task of dealing with these challenges?
  • How can national and international institutions bring some accountability – and where needed, some control – to the effects of global capitalism?

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In response to the 'Capitalism and' booklet

Posted by Phil P on 29/12/2006 - 09:58

One of Rea's requirements for successful Capitalism is the requirement of 'respect for property rights'. Yet she fails to acknowledge that it is fear of reprisal that maintains this and not a matter of a mutual or social consent. I get the feeling that Rea has never read Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" and if she has, then she has failed to understand it.

The authors discuss wealth distribution without mentioning the fact that much of that wealth distribution is a hangover from previous episodes of colonialism. Capitalism itself is contructed on poorly made and shifting foundations.

Cable uses poor analogy in his "failed marriage" discussion in that he does not extend it to the point whereby one of the couple has to leave. Begging the following questions...

Which parent do we, as children, choose to live with?
Who will be that parent's new partner?

As Dahrendorf suggests, and is support by the others, if we chose Capitalism then we are left with little choice but Authoritianism (prone to become despotic?). Yet if we choose Democracy? Is this not really the point we should be debating now?

It's my opinion that we're further down the "failed marriage" path than any of them realise, Capitalism being the chosen custodian. A decision seemingly being made for us (by parliamentary autocrats? industrial plutocrats? a heady mix of both?) whilst, as observers, we direct most of our political criticism toward a delusional US.

Dharendorf notes that Democracy does not make people rich and Wallis notes that Capitalism does not make many people rich. Further Wallis points out a very simple concept which seems to have escaped some of the others. "Money does not guarantee happiness".

In this and much else I'm in agreement with Wallis. Certainly in that there seems to be a fundamental confusion of means and ends. This, I think is what Prof. Stoker's essay is, in essence, a symptom of. (Post-industrial alienation perhaps?)

After consideration, I reject Dharendorf and Cable's intimations that Democracy and Capitalism share defining properties. I think they are very much at odds. Whilst they can both make similar use of certain means to further them toward their goals, they have no relationship in their ends and it is the ends which define them.

I offer a simple, probably weak, analogy. Capitalism and Democracy may both play a game of cricket. For Democracy, it would be nice to win, but you play by the rules, it's the participation that counts and at
the end of the day, everyone should have had a fair and fun game. Capitalism wants to win at any cost, the rules should play in its favour, but if not it can circumvent them without any scruples, even if this means beating up the opposition batsman to steal his best bat.

They share some means but their motivations, the ends to which they aspire, are grossly different.

Democracy is a best compromise option with aspirations of mutuality.
Capitalism is a no compromise option with aspirations of monopoly.

Where Dharendorf observes Anarcho-tyranny as past fact in the Maoist regime, I see it now as the developing trend in the UK. One being supported by means of governmental policy and legislation, particularly in the areas of energy and arms.

On the matter of being a raging Marxist (or not, in my case), a reference from Murray Bookchin:

"Writing in the middle years of the nineteenth century, Marx could not be expected to grasp the full consequences of his insights into the centralization of capital and the development of technology. He could not be expected to foresee that capitalism would develop not only from mercantilism into the dominant industrial form of his day--from state-aided trading monopolies into highly competitive industrial units--but further, that with the centralization of capital, capitalism returns to its mercantilist origins on a higher level of development and reassumes the state-aided monopolistic form. The economy tends to merge with the state and capitalism begins to "plan" its development instead of leaving it exclusively to the interplay of competition an market forces."

{Listen, Marxist!, Bookchin, M. 1971)

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