Capitalism And Democracy

12 Pages 2990 Words

etween the two terms. Literally, democracy is
the rule of the people. Specifically, it is the organization in place to
allow people of a specified area, through organized elections, to give
their uncoerced opinion on who they want to represent them in government,
or what they want government to do for them. The underlying
presupposition is that government will always obey the command of the
majority of voters. There are many limitations to democracy, such as the
fact that people can only vote YEA or NEA on a specific topic area, thus
producing a dichotomy of choices that may not necessarily offer a
solution to a problem. Also, people must leave most decisions to the
people they elect, since they don&rsquot have enough time to continually
vote. However, the focus of this work is not to delve into this area of
controversy, but rather to take this understanding of democracy as the
stipulated definition for this work. One critical distinction must be
made regarding Berger&rsquos understanding of the term, and that is that
the term democracy does not include all the civil and human rights
associated with liberal democracy.

Similarly, by capitalism, this work will not use any other connotation of
the term other than describing the free market economy, where there is
private ownership of property, and the economic freedom to buy, sell, or
trade with whomsoever you chose. The critical element of the term is that
there is limited government in place to enforce contracts and to provide
a safe trading environment. Another specific meaning given to capitalism
is by Friedman, who describes capitalism as economic cooperation, where
both parties are benefiting from the trade, provided that the trade is
voluntary and informed on both sides.

The next step in the investigation is to analyse some of the arguments
that capitalism is separate from democracy. Dryzek argued that an
individual&rsquos consumer preferences were

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