-About this the book
Two aims have directed this book, firstly to contribute to an understanding of capitalist democracy – its rise and contemporary malfunctioning – and secondly to contribute to the ‘egalitarian Enlightenment’, a multidisciplinary scholarly current spearheaded by Thomas Piketty and a phalanx of prominent economists, only now becoming fully visible as a major intellectual force.
For egalitarian democrats these are difficult but also fascinating times, full of contradictory tendencies and urgent socio-ecological issues. We seem caught in a quagmire, with no obvious way out. The dilapidated and perverted democracy we have is unlikely to be completely obliterated. Although a turn to a popular social democracy is scarcely on the horizon, it is less improbable than a collapse into Fascism.
An egalitarian world remains a long way off, but inequality between countries is falling slightly, and within a number of countries its growth has at least decelerated.
Scenes of extreme poverty amidst plenty are less common than before. We are standing at the threshold of a new anti-egalitarian onslaught from automation and machine learning, but within the academy we are also witnessing a surge of radical intellectual activity.
No occasion for despair or resignation, therefore, but rather for moral integrity and for sober long-term reflection, for remembering the history of democratic struggles, for reclaiming that popular legacy, and for looking into the future through the contradictions of the present.
This volume comprises three essays on the questions of democracy and inequality, from different periods. The earliest, ‘The Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy’, appeared in New Left Review in the summer of 1977, almost half a century ago, when the horizon looked red.
It is an empirical exploration, written in the midst of a Marxist theoretical trilogy, of how developed capitalism had come to be governed by democratic politics – a state of affairs that conservative, liberal and socialist opinion in the nineteenth century had all agreed was completely untenable.
The essay had a sequel, ‘The Travail of Latin American Democracy’, published in the same journal two years later. It is not re-printed here, because so much has happened to democracy in Latin America since that time that a quite substantial update would have been necessary.
-Contents
Preface
- Dysfunctional Democracies
The Labyrinthine History of Democracy
The Loveless Marriage of Capitalism and Democracy
Mutations and Perversions
Abandonments
Out of the Labyrinth
The World after Corona
- The Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy
The Tasks of Democratization
The Historical Establishment of Democracy
Patterns of Democratization
Capitalism and Democracy: Inherent Tendencies
Democracy and Dependent Capitalism
Nation-States, Classes and Democracy
Exclusions
The Two Paradoxes Explained
- The Right to Vote and the Four World Routes to/through Modernity
European Experiences and Achievements
Settlers’ New Worlds
The Colonial Zone and its Emancipation
Reactive Modernization
Coda 2020
-Caractéristiques
date de parution:24 November 2020
N.des pages : 208 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-1788738996
Dimensions : 5.51 x 0.53 x 8.26
Publisher : Verso
Language: : English
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