Capitalism And Democracy

12 Pages 2990 Words

From the very dawn of intelligent human interaction to the present day,
the concept of capitalism has dominated the way we trade goods and
acquire wealth. Except for the necessity of a simple communist society in
pre-modern times, or the noble humanistic notion of a socialist society,
the free market has always been the most efficient way to run the economy
once the most basic needs of life have been satisfied. Only during the
last several hundred years has the idea of a modern democracy been
developed and applied through the modern state. These two concepts are
thought by some to be interrelated, but contemporary critics of the
liberal form of democracy seek to separate the two notions of capitalism
and democracy. However, when examining the evidence of the relation of
the two, let us not use the altered conceptions or versions of these
terms, but rather analyse them by their base meanings as we have come to
understand them. After this analysis of the terms and a resulting
stipulation of what their base meanings are, critics may say that any
further analysis of the relationship between the two terms would be
tainted by their supposed definitions. The problem with this is that
without a common frame of reference between the two, no comparison would
be logically possible without considering an infinite range of possible
meanings. With this technical matter aside, the analysis will continue
with an investigation into arguments both for and against the separation
of the two terms, and then an evaluation of the true nature of
capitalism&rsquos relationship with democracy. Specifically the free
market economy dictating the actions of any democratic regime. After this
task of evaluation is complete, the argument will conclude with
illustrating how capitalism will actually lead to a more liberal form of
democracy.

The first step of this investigation is to make some attempt to achieve a
common frame of reference b...