Why capitalists are coming out against democracy - “Does classical liberalism imply democracy?”

https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Reprint-EGP-Classical-Liberalism-Democracy.pdf

“There is a fault line running through … liberalism as to whether or not democratic self- governance is a necessary part of a liberal social order. The democratic and non-democratic strains of classical liberalism are both present today. Many … libertarians … represent the non-democratic strain in their promotion of non-democratic sovereign city-states.”

@sneerclub

  • @swlabr
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    154 months ago

    As a non-denominational leftist, liberalism is poison and leads to fascism without intervention. So yeah this tracks

    • J LouOP
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      204 months ago

      I’m a leftist as well. The paper argues that the non-democratic liberals are wrong about the implications of liberal principles. It even goes further and makes an argument that coherent liberalism must also oppose capitalism, and capitalism is inherently non-democratic. By the end, the paper argues that a democratic economy controlled by workers is the only kind of economic organization compatible with liberalism. Capitalist liberalism is poison because it is incoherent

      @sneerclub

      • @V0ldek
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        4 months ago

        coherent liberalism must also oppose capitalism, and capitalism is inherently non-democratic

        Yup, and I hate that “liberal” for most people means something completely different. I self-identify as a liberal, in the sense that, for example, a rentier class of landlords existing or that any human’s existence being completely dependent on their job and income is inherently counter to liberal ideals.

        I don’t know when someone decided we’ll mean something anti-liberal by the word “liberal” but they can go fuck themselves.

        I don’t think democracy is inherently liberal or not, and I don’t think it really matters? This is a question of outcomes. No other political system has a history of consistently producing relatively free states (as in freedom for the people within the state). All other systems, be it oligarchies or dictatorships, even if they result in a short period of stability and freedom, almost universally deteriorate into authoritarian hellscapes over time. If we can come up with a system that is better at preventing oppressive regimes then we should rally behind it, but currently only democracy has a positive track record there.

        • @froztbyte
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          64 months ago

          (at a guess) that reversal in terms is probably thanks to the USA, where “Conservative” also doesn’t mean conservative, and “libertarian” has little to do with liberty

        • 🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦
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          44 months ago

          @V0ldek @sneerclub It happened when rich people realized that their individual liberty in a world of mostly poor people would intrinsically be constrained by proper democracy.

          A government dedicated to maximizing the broadest possible freedom will, if allowed, redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, to provide the poor more opportunities & limit the dangerous “freedoms” of the ultra-wealthy to impose their own control over others.

        • J LouOP
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          34 months ago

          Did you read the article? It argues that democracy is necessary to meet the requirements of liberal procedural justice, so it isn’t just a matter of outcomes

          @sneerclub

      • @swlabr
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        84 months ago

        Thanks, I have now skimmed the paper. It reads like someone trying to convert a libertarian to communism via facts and logic, which is good, though that would specifically target libertarians with strong academic foundations to their thinking. I doubt enough capitalists/libertarians are willing to reach that conclusion, even if a path is laid out in detail as it is in the paper. Why tear down a perfectly good (at least in the near term) power structure that benefits them in the name of facts and logic, when they could just continue to benefit?

        All that aside, I gotta admit I was initially a little skeptical of the paper’s direct relevance to sneerclub. It’s worth mentioning that this paper talks a lot about perverse libertarian case studies like charter cities and voluntary slavery, which are definitely in our sneer purview. Thanks for sharing!