On Democracy and the Economy

If I am right about the bizarre behavior of the Republican Party and many people who call themselves "conservative," I must also confront the question of why the Democratic Party and "liberals" can not carry the day more easily than they have done. What accounts for this failure to conquer the political landscape when the field seems so easy to take?

In the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs, Francis Fukuyama offers the beginning of a worthy answer. Fukuyama, who is most famous for declaring "the end of history" was upon us as a result of the triumph of liberal democracy, makes a somewhat more muted argument in "The Future of History." His previous position came from the oddly Marxist/ Hegelian center of the neoconservative movement, which adopted the deterministic view of history but chose a certain form of democracy as the history's pinnacle. Fukuyama's more recent stance is perhaps more humble and therefore more helpful. He begins with the observation that the worldwide financial crisis, which might have led to a populist or progressive upswing, has not done so. Instead, the TEA Party and other pseudo-populist groups have risen. "There are several reasons for this lack of left-wing mobilization," he says,

 but chief among them is a failure in the realm of ideas. For the past generation, the ideological high ground on economic issues has been held by a libertarian right. The left has not been able to make a plausible case for an agenda other than a return to an unaffordable form of old-fashioned social democracy. This absence of a plausible progressive counter­narrative is unhealthy, because competition is good for intellectual ­debate just as it is for economic activity. And serious intellectual debate is urgently needed, since the current form of globalized capitalism is eroding the middle-class social base on which liberal democracy rests.

 Barack Obama tapped into the fervent desire for such an ideological alternative, but has failed to provide one while he tries to juggle "nonpartisanship" in the federal government.

Fukuyama then describes what the new view would like like. First, "politically, the new ideology would need to reassert the supremacy of democratic politics over economics and legitimate anew government as an expression of the public interest." In the current climate, this basic idea may be the most difficult to sell. The loudest voices in the political arena shout about the evils of government, and reject the value of even the most fundamental government services.This position is supported by the US Supreme Court, which ought to stand for the rule of law but instead undermines it by striking down reforms to election law as in the Citizens United decision. "Democracy" in the currently vogue meaning, has most to do with leaving the wealthy alone with their riches.


Second, Fukuyama says, "the new ideology would not see markets as an end in themselves; instead, it would value global trade and investment to the extent that they contributed to a flourishing middle class, not just to greater aggregate national wealth." This is a key element to his argument, because he assumes, as many previous philosophers have, that “No bourgeois, no democracy.” Only by enhancing the size and power of the independent middle class, capable of reining in the power of the ultra-rich and providing a target for the poor can we nurture political freedom. Gross income inequality, then, is the most serious threat to democracy. Markets, in this view, allow for the innovation and freedom necessary for larger ends.


I tend to think that Fukuyama is right. He sounds, in this piece, more like Isiah Berlin than Ronald Reagan. But I wonder whether he is living in an old paradigm. Might it be that we have seen the end of the middle class as a viable source of power and prosperity? If so, then we would have to construct a whole new view of the nature of politics, as Marx himself said we must. My worry is that we have come to a place in which only disaster can forge a new, workable construct. I hope not.