I have been arguing for some time on this blog that contemporary capitalism faces a profound legitimacy crisis. It has failed to deliver on its promises, and therefore is being calling into question.
As it turns out, Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, has also sounded a warning about the ongoing legitimacy crisis. But for him it’s a bit different. The problem, as he sees it, is the tension between democracy and capitalism.…
Or as I have put it, economic liberalism under capitalism and political liberalism understood as some form of democracy are incompatible — although some forms are more compatible than others. The more reliance on the assumption that market forces lead to social optimization through spontaneous natural order, the less compatible economic liberalism is with democracy as government of, by and for the people.
Neoliberalism is rule by a social, political and economic elite through state capture under representative democracy. There is an illusion of political liberalism even though the political reality is a struggle among several factions of the elite without meaningful representation of the public at large.
Occasional Links & Commentary
Capitalism vs. democracy
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame
Capitalism vs. democracy
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame
1 comment:
I thought the end was rather good.
'The alternative, of course, is to safeguard and strengthen the future of democracy—in which, in Wolf’s words, economic policy can be “orientated towards promoting the interests of the many not the few”—by doing away with capitalism itself.'
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