Real democracy and the capitalist system are in fact incompatible PDF

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Real democracy and the capitalist system are in fact incompatible. DISAGREE. Democracy - Power of the people (voting). Representatives Democracy implies freedom of the people. Capitalism also implies freedom of the people. Democracy is political freedom. Capitalism is economic freedom. Capitalism is market based, people decide things - if there is a gap in the market, people fill it. (Week 2 Lecture)

· One of the most familiar perceptions of capitalism is as an economic system in which the economy is described in terms of markets. The government leaves the economy alone and free market forces operate along the lines of the laissez-faire model as expounded by Adam Smith · Democracy is founded on the ideals of liberty, equality and popular sovereignty, whereby individuals have the freedom to act without social impediment and power is both equal and accountable to those affected by its exercise.

In a democratic society the people all have an equal say in how the country they live in is governed as everyone has one vote. They may make rules that govern how people live and what laws are made. In a capitalist society, the amount of say people have in how the economy is run is dependent on how much money they have and how it is spent. The poorer they are the less money they have to spend and the less economic influence they have. In a democracy, anyone may run for office and the people/policies who get the most votes win. In a capitalist society, anyone may create a product or service and the people (by deciding whether or not to purchase the product) vote on whether it succeeds or fails.

Historical examples have shown capitalism has aided democracy, serving as a vehicle for a revolutionary transformation of society and politics. It has helped bring about changes ‘from landlords and peasants to employers, employees and workers; from uneducated rural masses barely capable of surviving… to a country of literate, moderately secure, urbanised inhabitants; from the monopolisation of almost all resources by a small elite… to a much wider dispersion of resources’ ; Yet if democracy and capitalism are incompatible, how have the two existed side by side for so long? Nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars forecasted the demise of capitalism yet they disregarded the elasticity and expansive capacity of capitalism. Productivity growth makes possible a simultaneous increase of both exploitation and real incomes of the exploited masses. This of course is not conducive to democracy.

Democracy is not inherently incompatible with Capitalism. The first requirement is that the Democracy (i.e. the majority) would have to vote or decide that their nation’s form of economic market of Capitalism (versus Communism, Socialism, Mixed, etc.) be instated. Theoretically, once instated and maintained, it *can* remain and thus be compatible.

It’s not a question as to if Democracy and Capitalism are compatible, it’s a question of how long will it take for the will of the people to decide they no longer want Capitalism, or to raid the public treasury for their own benefit, etc. The Free Market can do better than the government at providing Consumer Electronics (automobile, cell phones, TVs, etc) or Entertainment (Films, Music, Shows, Etc.) and so on.

The most capitalist (free market) societies today are those run by stable dictatorships (or semi-dictatorships) such as those in the Arabian Peninsula, Singapore, etc. These societies also tend to be some of the most prosperous societies in the world, with some of the highest levels of human development (low crime, low pollution, etc). In such dictatorships, there is no incentive for their politicians to plunder as much as they can every few years before they are replaced by other hungry politicians, nor do they have to put barriers to their people’s creativity in return for votes. No. In fact I would argue that democracy and capitalism are complimentary rather than contradictory. The most effective/prosperous capitalist societies are those which are most fully democratic. When political scientists talk about how democratic a nation is, they aren't simply referring to the voting process and elections, which is known as a minimalist conception of democracy. More often than not, political science views democracy in maximalist terms, which includes not only free and fair elections, but also active citizen engagement, public participation in legislative proceedings, and attentiveness of the government to the people's opinions and needs (among other things). By most measures of maximal democracy, a country like the United States actually does quite poorly. So poorly in fact that a study from Princeton a couple of years ago concluded that the USA actually more resembles an oligarchy than a true democracy. This helps to explain why so many are not satisfied with the state of capitalism in America. The government, largely driven by the move of the republican party to the right over the last 3 decades, has failed to take the steps necessary of a democratic government to properly correct market failures and rectify rent seeking (a phenomenon where large corporations essentially take value from the marketplace by a variety of tricks, like lobbying to defeat laws which promote market competition or acquiring rights to a natural resource at far below market value). It’s not that democracy and capitalism are incompatible, it’s that oligarchy masquerading as minimalist democracy with a veneer of maximalism is....