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2. The Paradox of Democratic Capitalism: An Historical View Rebecca Fisher
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis1
Capitalism and democracy have been locked in a contradictory yet interdependent relationship throughout their history. Despite popular conceptions, liberal democracy has emerged as a mechanism which has in effect limited popular participation, and operated as a legitimating device to protect capitalism from more direct forms of democracy. This article will examine some of the ways in which ideals of democracy centred on wide public participation have been suppressed, and limited liberal democracy promoted, in order to mask the anti-democratic and oppressive nature of capitalism, and organise general consent. It will trace the historical evolution of this contradictory, yet mutually reinforcing relationship, suggesting that both capitalist and liberal democratic processes arose as defensive responses to subvert popular democracy and contain real and potential social rebellions. It will also show that this subversion is at times unstable, faced with inherent social and ecological limits to capital accumulation and continual opposition from advocates of a more genuine, popular democracy. The organisation of consent is necessarily a fraught, fluid and flexible process, and capitalist regimes are compelled to use increasingly overt anti-