THE TRUTH ABOUT CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY
ATILIO A. BORON
Not long ago the celebration of capitalist democracies, as if they constituted the crowning achievement of every democratic aspiration, found legions of adepts in Latin America, where the phrase was pronounced with a solemnity usually reserved for the greater achievements of mankind. But now that more than a quarter of a century has elapsed since the beginnings of the process of re-democratization in Latin America, the time seems appropriate to look at its shortcomings and unfulfilled promises. Do capitalist democracies deserve the respect so widely accorded them? In the following pages we intend to explore what democracy means, and then, on the basis of some reflections on the limits of democratization in a capitalist society, go on to examine the performance of ‘actually existing’ democracies in Latin America, looking behind external appearances to see their narrow scope and limits.
DEMOCRACY
Let us begin by remembering Lincoln’s formula: democracy as the govern¬ment of the people, by the people and for the people. Today this looks like the expression of an unreconstructed radical, especially in light of the politi¬cal and ideological involution brought about by the rise of neoliberalism as the official ideology of globalized capitalism. Well before this, democracy had already become completely detached from the very idea, not to mention the agency, of the people. Lincoln’s formula had long since been filed away as a dangerous nostalgia for a state of things irreversibly lost in the past. What replaced it was the Schumpeterian formula, whose deplorable consequences are still strongly felt in mainstream social sciences: democracy as a set of rules and procedures devoid of specific content related to distributive justice or fairness in society, ignoring the ethical and normative content of the idea of democracy and disregarding the idea that democracy should be a crucial component of any proposal for the organization of a ‘good society’, rather than a mere administrative or decisional device. Thus for Schumpeter it was possible to ‘democratically’ decide if, to take his own example, Christians should be persecuted, witches sent to the stake or the Jews exterminated. Democracy becomes simply a method and, like any other method, ‘cannot be an end in itself’.1 At the extreme, this approach turns democracy into a set of procedures independent of ends and values and becomes a pure decision-making model, like those which Peter Drucker proposes for the management of successful capitalist enterprises. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that democracy is much more than that.
Are humans naturally inclined to democratic processes? Is capitalism also as native to our DNA as our central nervous systems? I don't know any more...
