Rueschemeyer et al. - Capitalist Development and Democracy PDF

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Capitalist Development and Democracy Rueschemeyer et al. (1992) The history of thought about democracy underlines the critical relation between social class and democracy. The tension between democracy and class inequality came to a head in the thought of John Stuart Mill, who saw democracy as inevitable. Growing prosperity, spreading literacy and the ever more widely ranging means of transportation and communication were increasing people’s mobility and their chances to organize. As a result, the future system of governance would be democratic. But it would not necessarily be a good system of governance, because the society was class-divided. Mill indeed feared class rule by the working masses, and his conception of true or rational democracy combined active participation of the many with the leadership of an intellectual elite that was not bound by class (45). It is thus central to the authors’ framework that democratisation was both resisted and pushed forward by class interest. It was the subordinate classes that fought for democracy, whereas the classes that benefitted from the status quo nearly without exceptions resisted democracy. […] Capitalist development affects the chances of democracy primarily because it transforms the class structure and changes the balance of power between classes (46-47). Social class has been an extremely powerful explanatory tool in the classic analyses of social science during the last two hundred years. In its broadest sense, class refers to the structured and cumulatively unequal distribution of the objects of near-universal desire: of the material necessities of life and other economic resources, of respect and honour, and of power and influence (47). Yet the Marxian concept of class does not focus on distribution, rather it searches for collective actors that make a decisive difference in history. Thus, any study of social change gains much if it can identify collective actors of historical significance. And these are usefully considered in relation to the major factors otherwise seen as decisive for the persistence and change of social structures (48). If we see capitalist development and democracy primarily related through changes in the class structure, modernisation theorists and pluralists typically build on an alternate conception that became prominent in diagnoses of the origins of totalitarianism, grounded in de Tocqueville’s analyses of democracy in America and post-revolutionary France. In this view, democracy is facilitated primarily by social mobilisation and by the development of relatively autonomous groups that are arising in an ever more differentiated social structure. What is typically missed in these theories is the shift in the power of conflicting class interests that is the correlate of social mobilisation and pluralisation. The Tocquevellian ideas are closely paralleled in the Marxist literature by Gramsci’s contention that rule through consensus is made possible by the development of a ‘dense civil society’. A denser and stronger civil society is a by-product of capitalist development. Civil society, in this conception, is the totality of social institutions and associations, both formal and informal, that are not strictly production-related not governmental or familial in character (49). A dense civil society, one rich in institutions, associations, and social interactions, should facilitate the development of democracy first because it creates favourable conditions for the classes previously excluded from the political arena to organize collective action and to overcome the perennial ‘free rider’ problem obstructing effective political organisation on a large scale (49-50). It is the growth of a counter-hegemony of subordinate classes and especially the working class – developed and sustained by the organisation and growth of trade unions, working-class parties and similar groups – that is critical for the promotion of democracy. Even without a relatively strong labour movement, a dense civil society facilitates the political inclusion of the middle classes, especially of small independent farmers and the urban petty bourgeoisie, and in some cases this may be the decisive democratic breakthrough (50). Capitalist development is associated with the rise of democracy primarily because of two structural effects: it strengthens the working class as well as other subordinate classes, and it weakens large landowners. The first of these must be further specified: capitalist development enlarges the urban working class at the expense of agricultural labourers and small farmers; it thus shifts members of the subordinate classes from an environment extremely unfavourable for collective action to one much more favourable, from geographical isolation and immobility to high concentrations of people with similar class interests and far-flung communications (58).

It is especially the working class that has often played a decisively pro-democratic role. Labour’s role was concealed to the superficial eye precisely because in many countries workers were long excluded from the political process and thus from visible participation in democratic politics this role becomes clear, however, if one looks at the struggles that led to an extension of political participation beyond the social circles surrounding the dominant classes. […] In the relative class power model of democratisation that stands at the centre of [the author’s] analytic framework, it is a crucial hypothesis that the relative size and the density of organisation of the working class – of employed manual labour outside of agriculture – are of critical importance for the advance of democracy (59). The particular pro-democratic character of working-class interests shows itself not only in labour’s role in the original process of democratisation; we would also expect it to express itself in the defence of democratic institutions when these come under attack, as they did in Europe in the 1930s or in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s (60). The state Attentions should also be devoted to the role played by the state itself, which has many ways of shaping the development of civil society. It can ease or obstruct the organisation of different class interests, it can empower or marginalise existing organisations, it may succeed in co-optation and, in the extreme, use whole organisational networks as conduits of hegemonic influence. The complex interdependence of state and civil society creates a wide variety of possible relations between the state and different social classes and, consequently, of conditions conducive or hostile to democracy (67). State structures and the unanticipated consequences of state action are also closely interrelated with developments in the class structure. Not only are state structures imprinted with the interests and view of dominant classes, but these classes in turn are shaped in their organisation and outlook by their relations with the state in the context of the wider system of domination. Yet the same holds true for the subordinate classes. For instance, it could be argued that the German working class was more united and broadly organised in part because of unintended consequences of state action. Government supervision and repression did not focus on specific occupations but on journeymen and workers in general, thus helping them to identify as workers instead of as members of particular crafts or special skill groups (68). Moreover, democratisation itself had effects on the patterns of class formation. Working classes that had to fight for democratic participation tend to be more cohesive and more politically radical than working classes that faced less struggle or, as in North America, that constituted themselves structurally after the struggle for more or less inclusive democracy was won (69). Transnational structures of power Transnational relations affect the development of national economies, and the position of a country in the international division of labour is a major determinant of the relative size and power of its dominant and subordinate classes (69). In the case of interstate war, modern mass-mobilisation warfare involves the willing participation of the many, both in the field and at home. It has therefore typically led states to make major concessions to the subordinate classes. Working-class organisations often had to be included in the ruling coalition, and the pressure to extend the vote to women and excluded racial groups mounted (70). Similarly, although it is commonly believed that as wars ended the subsequent constitutional changes were attributable to imposition by the victorious powers (e.g. democratisation of Germany and Japan after WWII), in the long run the outcome is rather shaped by the internal structure of power, by the relations of power among the classes, and by the articulation of state structure with the patterns of economic and social power in society (70-71). This could explain why foreign imposition has not achieved the same results in the Middle East. A further feature of transnationalism is related to dependency. Dependent capitalist development (core-periphery relations) weakens the expansion and strengthening of the working class and the reduction of the large landowning class. It also tends to conserve labour repressive agriculture and to weaken the autonomy of subordinate classes such as the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie from the landlords’ anti-democratic hegemonic influence. More generally, dependent development has been shown to increase consistently the degree of socioeconomic inequality, and that can inhibit democratisation. At the same time, the strengthening of civil society that may counterbalance such state

strength in internal state-society relations is likely to be retarded by structural effects of dependence, for instance by the divisive effects of greater income inequality and uneven development. This would be another reason to expect negative effects of dependence on democracy (72). This could explain why less developed states (thus the ‘dependent’ ones) are those who have failed to survive democracy....