Wednesday, August 17, 2016

John Keane — Capitalism and Democracy [part 4]

Earlier parts of this series on capitalism and democracy raised questions about the tense and often contradictory relationship between capitalist markets and the egalitarian spirit and power-humbling institutions of democracy. Each contribution has pointed out that we shouldn’t be surprised that monitory democracies* otherwise as different as South Africa, Argentina, France and the United States are all feeling the pinch of plutocracy. For if capitalism is defined as a restless system of commodity production, exchange and consumption based on risk taking, competition and profiteering, then it follows that market winners will grow wealthy while others fall behind. From the point of view of democracy, the trouble with capitalist competition, as George Orwell pointed out, is that somebody has to win, while others lose. Part four of this series probes this point. It complicates things by asking: what exactly do we mean by equality?
John Keane's Blog
Capitalism and Democracy [part 4]
John Keane | Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), and a co-founder and director of the Sydney Democracy Network (SDN)

John Keane, "Monitory Democracies?" Paper prepared for the ESRC Seminar Series, ‘Emergent Publics’, The Open University, Milton Keynes, 13th-14th March 2008 

No comments: