Originally Posted by
57vintage
“ For enthusiasts of capitalism, democracy and the market are said to be handmaidens. Both depend on the rule of law. Both express aspects of liberty, prizing opportunity and mobility. During the era of classical liberalism, which began in the late eigh****th century, free commerce and political freedom advanced in tandem. Monarchies gave way to republican rule; open markets replaced royal monopolies and inherited privileges. For about a century the franchise gradually expanded, and the markets became the primary mode of commerce. The brand of democratic capitalusm that emerged in the west after WWII included not just those earlier hallmarks but such liberal values as tolerance, compromise, and enlarged civic participation, as well as regulatory and social welfare policies to buffer the less-savory (sic) tendencies of markets. Modern capitalusm reflected a grand social bargain.
When communism collapsed in 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall was heralded as ushering in a golden age in which liberal capitalism would be triumphant. Needless to say, things haven’t worked out quite as expected. The social compromises of the post-war welfare state have given way to more primitive forms of capitalism that in turn invite angry reactions by the citizenry. Demagogues have channeled this anger. Today, some form of capitalism is ascendent nearly everywhere. But liberal democracy is in big trouble.
Instead of creating a new golden age, corrupted capitalism has produced alliances between autocrats and oligarchs, epitomised by the régimes of Putin and Trump, who both reinforce societies that were becoming less liberal and more unequal. This is the pattern not just in countries with weak or non-existent democratic traditions, notably Russia and China, but in the very heartland of liberal democracy, the USA. Contrary to standard assumptions about liberalism, autocratic capitalism also co-exists and interacts with enlarged global trade, making it harder to defend living standards in democratic nations that once protected their workers and citizens by regulating markets.
In a cycle of reactivity, ordinary people turn not to social democracy - now at its weakest point since WWII - but to the vicarious and counterfeit satisfactions of extreme nationalism. That in turn permits autocrats to pose as populist champions of a mystical People, diverting attention from the economy’s concentrated wealth and rigged rules. This unexpected twist in the fraught relationship between democracy and capitalism is the signal event in the political economy of our age.”
(Robert Kuttner, reviewing Branko Milanovic’s ‘Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World’
New York Review of Books issue September 24, 2020 (?))”
What a **** that was to copy type from the NYRB. I spoil you lot.
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