Democracy Incorporated by Wolin Sheldon S

Author:Wolin, Sheldon S. [Wolin, Sheldon S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2010-02-20T15:00:00+00:00

In the end Zakaria has no solution; he wearily concedes that democracy remains “the last, best hope.” That he offers no clues as to how democracy can be expected to cure itself of itself leaves one with the suspicion that either he has misdiagnosed the problem—if it is one—of why there are no “true” elites, or else he is reluctant to pursue his own suspicions. Following his ritualistic indictments of porous democractization he concedes that the corruption of the political process and the abysmal quality of popular culture are, at bottom, due to the influence of money and to those (elites?) who have lots of it. Zakaria’s ideal of “constitutional liberalism” is inspired by nineteenth-century liberalism, with its priorities of “individual economic, political, and religious liberty” and its rejection of all forms of “coercion.” Far from recognizing the power of capital, Zakaria defends nineteenth-century laissez-faire and argues for freeing economic activity from government regulations—as though by reducing governmental power one reduced the political power of capital. At the same time he fails to recognize that what he chooses to label as “democratization” has in reality been a feature of capitalism since long before modern political democracy and its electoral systems even existed. A French historian of an earlier generation pointed out that what was unique about the early bourgeois capitalist was that in his transactions he was indifferent to a buyer’s political affiliation, religious beliefs, or skin color.59 Historically, however, it did not follow that the bourgeois was similarly indifferent about removing property or racial qualifications for office or for voting, or that he believed that workers had the right to form trade unions, or that black Americans had the same rights as other citizens. Rather he understood that wealth was power and that a society which recognized that equation would allow the wealthy to use their power to further whatever political, social, or cultural goals they favored. They could be public benefactors (Carnegie) or private mischief-makers (robber barons). But to attribute that situation to “democratization” is to invite Anatole France’s gibe about the majesty of the law in that it equally allows the rich and the poor to sleep under the bridges at night.

In the end Zakaria can offer no solution to the problem he has identified as democratization operating in collusion with nontraditional elites, presumably including the kind represented by Zakaria himself—immigrant background, graduate of Yale and Harvard, editor at the mass-circulation magazine Newsweek .60 Democratization anyone?61

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