Can democracy survive capitalism?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by EarthSky, Mar 11, 2020.

  1. EarthSky

    EarthSky Well-Known Member

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    Ancient Greek philosophers long debated the best way to model a society. Plato described the flaws he saw in the rule of common people with the allegory of a ship being run by a group of unqualified sailors led by a rich benefactor who knew nothing about navigation or seamanship as they were just hired swabs who saw those who did understand the stars and navigation as pompous elites. The ship was bound to falter if ruled by an unqualified rabble all pulling in different directions.

    His mentor Socrates was put to death by democratic vote for the dubious charge of corrupting the youth of Athens.

    Both saw democracy as rule by a mob who were not qualified to make important decisions on how to rule a state as was laid down by Plato in The Republic.

    Yet, if not democratic rule then what for a modern nation state. Likely, what we understand as democracy is an illusion. The founders of the US were as hostile to actual democracy, as in the rule by the many, as Plato was. The American economy was based on Slavery and neither landless males nor women not people of colour had the vote.

    George Washington was a land speculator who maneuvered the cause if the War of Independence to speculation on Indian land in the frontiers where treaties with Britain had ensured land rights to indigenous people.

    But if we are living in an illusion of democracy, it appears it changing and declining before our very eyes under an economic system that rewards a vanishing minority of the population with extravagant wealth and a political system that empowers that wealth with disproportional influence over how the nation is run.

    https://lithub.com/can-democracy-survive-contemporary-capitalism/

    In making ourselves slaves to markets, we have largely turned our economic system over to algorithms that are making transactions faster than anyone can control or process or even understand. As such, we leave ourselves vulnerable to forces that are beyond our control or ability to mitigate when they run into danger.

    So, the question becomes, can democracy as we know it today survive neo-liberal capitalism that makes everything about creating profit at the very least expense? And can we solve the economic, environmental and political problems gathering all around us with an economic system that is geared only to profit?
     
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  2. Texas Republican

    Texas Republican Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Democracy (or a republic) and capitalism are at the pinnacle of human progress. All other systems or ideologies are inferior.
     
  3. StarFox

    StarFox Banned

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    Capitalism, the only system capable of lifting anyone out of poverty. Socialism and Communism the only system capable of plunging nearly everyone but the elite in to poverty. See the difference?
     
  4. 61falcon

    61falcon Well-Known Member

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    You are describing what we have, with a tiny minority having the vast majority of our nations wealth????
     
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  5. EarthSky

    EarthSky Well-Known Member

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    Yes, that would be the prevailing opinion capitalists have convinced themselves of that market fundamentalism is the natural order of things. And they have trying desperately to convince everyone else that is the case despite all the evidence that unfettered capitalism always leads to a concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of a vanishing minority of elites and threatens the very democracy you are rightly lauding.

    Notice that you've provided no empirical evidence to support your comment that all other ideologies are inferior. We are just supposed to take your word for it and accept that the horrific inequality we see both in America and around the world are the way things should be and not to pay attention to what capitalism is doing to the environment and the human condition.

    That being said, what would be your answer to address the obscene levels of inequality we are seeing as a result of 4 decades of neo-liberal capitalism?
     
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  6. EarthSky

    EarthSky Well-Known Member

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    No, I don't. You don't see the rising inequality all around the world as a result of unfettered capitalism as benefiting the elite? How do you square that circle?

    Even under Chavez, Venezuela's poverty levels fell by half and may have continued to fall if Saudi Arabia had not begun overproducing oil in order to economically stifle Russia back in the 2000 - much like they are doing today. And this was before America began attacking with sanctions and boycotts.

    And China, which is not really socialist but for guys like you who don't understand the difference between socialism and state capitalism it will do as socialist, managed to lift 800 million people out of abject poverty with a mixed economy.

    There are many other examples.

    If unfettered capitalism is so good, why does the US have to attack every other nation that dares to try something else? Why can't America just let it's record stand for itself?

    At any rate, what I am trying to get at is whether democracy can survive the concentration of wealth and political power we see and the all the big money we see influencing the political process today?
     
  7. RodB

    RodB Well-Known Member Donor

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    Inequality is a false metric. It says that if I make $50,000 a year and have $500,000 in assets while a "rich" guy earns $1,000,000 a year and has $100,000,000 in assets that I am worse off than if the "rich" guy earned only $100,000 and had only $1,000,000 in assets. That assertion is completely false.

    Your posts were interesting until the question, "why does the US have to attack every other nation that dares to try something else?" when it became obvious that you do not know what you are talking about.

    America has produced by far and away the best economic system ever and is today by far the best economy in the world, and made a top tier middle class. All the result of capitalism and free private enterprise. Our record does stand for itself, leftists' apologies not withstanding.
     
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  8. fmw

    fmw Well-Known Member

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    Can democracy survive capitalism?

    Of course and it has thrived with it. It is socialism that is autocratic.
     
  9. Jkca1

    Jkca1 Active Member

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    Great question. I believe that democracy has been evolving since the founding of this country as is Capitalism. We have more freedoms today then we did in 1776. Capitalism is quite different today then it was in the 18th century. Both ideals can survive, but will have morphed over time.
     
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  10. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    @EarthSky I think that democracy is first the will of a people to gouverne as a people the national affair.
    That require two things : a relative unity of the people, and bravery, as a submissive people would let itself be governed as their leader wished for.
    Because I consider democracy first as a will, I think that democracy is constantly endangered, simply, because only one moment of loosening is enough to loose that power.
    I suppose also democracy need an iron discipline, no tolerance for corruption for instance, that's where bravery is needed, to fight the tyrannical leaders, fighting doesn't need to be physical. Just exposing them can be enough.
    Unity is also I suppose a great requirement, that's why I'm for instance rather hostile to mass migration, because it destroy a part of the social network and identity that is the basis of unity. That require also politeness and a sense of listening.

    Basically, democracy is for me more some human individual qualities that need to be largely spread into society : discipline, bravery, ability to listen and admit that some other people have oppposite ideas. Democracy as an institution is more a detail, because it can easily become an empty nutshell.

    I don't really think that capitalism is itself a problem, more the constant internal fight that there is, and probably maybe a lack of courage.
    I think a part where capitalism and democracy adequate themselves quite well is the emphasis on self responsibility.
    I'm neither a capitalist or a socialist, but socialist always worry me in their constant wish to make an all powerfull state govern their lives.

    Good question. The more I get older, the more I tend to see the state as oppressive by nature. At the opposite of anarchy, I recognize the necessity of a state and hierarchy.
    When reading about history, I noticed that people living under Monarchy had the same feeling that you had : that monarchy was the pinnacle of human achievement. That and some other passages of history made me question if democracy is really the pinnacle of human progress, or just an oppressive institution dressed as a saint.
    Obviously there is nothing better under the hand.
     
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  11. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I don't think a democracy can survive without capitalism- nor capitalism without democracy.
     
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  12. Sanskrit

    Sanskrit Well-Known Member

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    Jury is in. The Constitutional Republic, as mislabeled "capitalism" by self-enriching statists, is the proven objectively superior governing system.

    We have the results in conclusion and also the counter-results consisting of death tolls.

    The only controversy is an illusory, sham one among the many nefarious branches of the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex seeking to lie and thieve as against their betters in the legitimate private sector.
     
  13. XploreR

    XploreR Well-Known Member

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    Thoughtful, thought-provoking post. Intriguing questions too. My immediate response to the last one (in bold type), is NO. American capitalism has lost its soul. It has become a tool for the ultra-wealthy, & a bane for the rest of society. Its focus is concentrated on profits, while every other concern or issue is relegated to the trash heap to be ignored. It cannot possibly deal with the growing number of issues afflicting our populace, while pursuing profits for those who have no need of them.
     
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  14. PPark66

    PPark66 Well-Known Member

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    What are the issues specifically? What are the proposed solutions? For instance, if it’s inequality then we have examples of processes utilized to flatten the distribution in our past. Were they out dated when they were discarded? Was our horizontal construction of the market place better than the current vertical?

    The point being if we could look at something more specific (a piece of the picture) we might be able to explore a topic without it getting automatically shut down by the usual fodder.
     
  15. RodB

    RodB Well-Known Member Donor

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    It is only capitalism and free private enterprise that makes it possible for Joe Six-pack or Joe the Plumber to start up his own business and maybe get paid by making a profit. Socialism will not allow that though the idea is that socialism will make up for it by granting them a stipend as long as it can steal enough from other people.

    Profit is the only thing that increases the overall wealth of an economic system. Why you think creating wealth is a bad thing is impossible to fathom.
     
  16. EarthSky

    EarthSky Well-Known Member

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    No, inequality is a real thing and it is adding orders of magnitude of instability not just in America but around the world. What your assertion is leaving out how much each of the "guys" you are talking about are putting back into the society that allows them to accumulate such wealth and live in such opulence. It is not about the poorer guy being better off by bringing down the poor misunderstood rich guy, it is about what is a fair rate of taxation in order to give back to the nation and support programs that benefit society.

    and yet, WWII was not even over yet before the US and Britain were posturing to make the Soviet Union the new enemy. And the list of countries that America has outright attacked or used CIA covert operations to undermine is a long one. Korea was the only place where force could perhaps be justified but then follow the bouncing ball from there: Greece; Cuba; Guatemala; Iran; Vietnam;Cambodia; Laos...and that is just the start of the covert and/or overt military interventions against countries that dared to try an economic/political system that was not in fealty to American corporate interests.

    You can say that I don't know what I am talking about but at the same time I can say you don't know the first thing about what people like Curtis Lemay and his pentagon cronies, the Dulles Bros and even people like Avril Herriman or Prescott Bush were really up to.....and this includes supporting the Nazi build-up because they all thought the real enemy was the Soviet Union and any country that dared to endorse socialist style reforms.

    At any rate here are a list of some of America's more notorious military and covert political operations to overthrow governments who dared to try something different that fealty to Western corporate interests This starts with a documented piece in Foreign Policy and then I've moved on to a timeline of all America's attacks against regimes it didn't like:

    [​IMG]

    Arbenz was just the start.

    https://medium.com/s/story/timeline-us-intervention-central-america-a9bea9ebc148

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/20/mapped-the-7-governments-the-u-s-has-overthrown/

    Nobody is saying that your economic system does not dominate the world for better or worse. What we are saying is that a large part of that domination has been through direct military and CIA intervention against weaker nations who dared to try and remove American domination of their resources such as Guatemala or Cuba or try such un-American policies as land reform, education and national health care for their people or nationalizing resources for the good of their own people rather than American corporations.
     
  17. EarthSky

    EarthSky Well-Known Member

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    Great post. Yes capitalism has evolved over the years. I would say that capitalism is a revolutionary force and can work for the betterment of people's lives if there are definite regulations and guiding policies in place in order to control capitalism's anti-democratic tendencies and contradictions. Unfortunately, since the end of the cold war, capitalism has abandoned all the mitigating policies that allowed it to flourish after WWII and has retreated into gilded era ignorance of it's own tendencies to concentrate wealth and political power into the hands of a vanishingly smaller and smaller group of what can only be described as oligarchs.

    There is no reason why capitalism cannot rebound and save itself from the crisis's it produces but not if capitalists continue to insist that this equality is the natural order of things and market fundamentalism the only economic force that can be allowed.

    Democratic socialism continues to evolve as well - when not under mortal attack from frightened capitalists and their apologists that is.
     
  18. EarthSky

    EarthSky Well-Known Member

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    Interesting. I don't know if I would agree completely but I think there is merit in that argument.

    What do you think of the concentration of wealth and political power we are seeing today in market capitalism? Do you think this is just the natural order of things or do you think we are becoming dangerously undemocratic tending towards oligarchy or plutocracy?

    Do you think democracy is in a healthy state right now or are you worried that what we think of as democracy is being slowly strangled as it's institutions become more and more co-opted by the power of big money and the politicians that power can buy?
     
  19. garyd

    garyd Well-Known Member

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    Define wealth. And every Person in America is in the top ten percent works wide.
     
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  20. EarthSky

    EarthSky Well-Known Member

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    Interesting. But where do we get that iron discipline? Is it a part of human nature or is it to be enforced from above. I agree that what we call democracy now is an empty nutshell as it's institutions become more and more co-opted to serve a powerful minority and leave the vast majority without real representation.

    I also agree that there is always going to be a struggle between capital and production. That is the essence of Marx's argument. The question is how far the pendulum swings to one way or another? I would argue that in the last 40 years that the pendulum has swung so far in capitals favour that democracy itself and even the overall stability of society has become seriously threatened.

    There is nothing inherent in socialism that necessarily leads to an all powerful state government to run people's lives. That is state capitalism. The central thesis is about production and who controls the results of that production. That some nations that profess to be socialist or communist are so centrally organized is largely a product of the nature of revolutionaries such as Lenin or Mao and the powerful forces in the west that opposed the very idea and tried desperately to throttle a new economic idea in the cradle before it could threaten their economic interests.

    Don't forget that while Lenin was a professional revolutionary and as anti-democratic as they came, British, US and even Canadian forces spent vast amounts and even made military landings in Russia in order to crush the revolution and keep Russia in a war that was destroying it - which played right into the Bolsheviks hands that only a strong dictatorial central government could win the Russian civil war.

    And they turned out to be correct once the red army had driven all the interventionist foreign counter-revolutionaries from Russia by the mid-20's
     
    Last edited: Mar 13, 2020
  21. EarthSky

    EarthSky Well-Known Member

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    You've hit the nail on the head. Capitalism has had a very good run while it was moderated by social forces that could mitigate it's contradictions and worst impulses but has now lost the ability to be flexible and resilient in the face of all the crisis's we are facing both economic, environmental and population wise especially as the nature of work changes due to automation and robotics.

    The trouble with unfettered capitalism is it has one or two tools to fix it's problems, let markets decide (which is ridiculous in reality as there are no such things as purely free markets) and lower taxes while cutting services to try and stimulate supply-side forces. Neither of these have proven effective in the case of real, earthshaking economic crisis and both tend to concentrate wealth and political power in the hands of a few oligarchs who can then use the mechanism of power for their own enrichment - which is what we are seeing.

    Profit motive simply cannot act to efficiently solve the gathering clouds and challenges we are seeing arise all around us.

    There needs to be some way of taking collective action.
     
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  22. scarlet witch

    scarlet witch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes of course it can... what it won't survive is corruption. People need to stop mistaking corruption for Capitalism, corruption is worse in communist countries and of course the new Soros created democracies...wonder why :rolleyes:
     
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  23. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I think that we should be grateful we have the caliber of people who build companies like Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, Berkshire (Buffet) and all the companies the generate both the growth in our technology and the improvement of our standard of living. These are the people that energize our economy. Every one of them has made their money by giving us what we wanted at a price we were willing to pay- and any company that failed to do that couldn't survive. They have no unemployment or government protections or profit guarantees; they only make it by performing.

    They are examples of what can be done. They haven't stolen any ones money, as many would like to think.

    We do have a problem with money affecting politics. Money shouldn't buy influence in Washington, but it does. The question is WHY does that happen? The answer is- that influence is for sale in politics. IF it were not for sale, nobody would be able to buy it. But because it IS for sale, companies can see that if they do not buy it, their competitors will and by that gain advantage over them. Our best option would be to devise a way where that wasn't necessary- and that starts with politicians, not their "customers". There are 535 congressmen in Washington- and 20,000 paid lobbyists whose job it to influence them, to a great degree with contributions to insure their re-election. Who is to blame- those who must buy because influence is for sale, or those who sell influence when their prime obligation is to act in the best interests of the American people?

    Nothing wrong with capitalism or democracy that better character and honor wouldn't correct. That is in the people- not in the concepts. It is not only in who we elect, but what we will tolerate and allow them to do.... and still re-elect them.
     
  24. garyd

    garyd Well-Known Member

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    Please note neither Guatamala or Cuba, have much in the way of resources, have never had them and as long as their governments are dominated socialist or drug thugs or both they aren't likely to have them either. Prosperity happens when you are free to try to succeed. Trying to succeed always carries with it the possibility of failure.
    What do those rich guys return to society? Thousands of jobs millions of tax dollars and charities in a bewildering array.
     
  25. XploreR

    XploreR Well-Known Member

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    I know that socialism was theoretically supposed to control the means of production in the earliest editions of that system, but in practice today, it doesn't. Instead, it works with capitalism--promotes capitalism--for the production of wealth. The place it differs from capitalism alone is simply in the way it distributes that wealth that is produced. Socialism rewards everyone involved in the process--including the workers, rather than rewarding only those wealthy enough to be owners or big investors. I don't know what is so hard about this for conservatives to understand. I seems simple to me.
     

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