From France to South Korea, there are multiplying signs of democratic crisis. As Donald Trump takes office for the second time, surrounded by a clique of far-right billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, it is an apt moment to reconsider the relationship between capitalism and democracy.
There is a crude version of Marxism that presents democracy as a set of political rights that were conquered by the bourgeoisie in its struggle against the ancien régime and the divine-right prerogatives of the monarch. In this perspective, the task of socialism would be to continue this struggle on the economic level, against the undue power conferred by private ownership of the means of production.
At a time when many supposedly democratic states are generating worrying authoritarian tendencies, it is worth remembering that the bourgeoisie has always tried to make democratic freedoms conditional on the preservation of its own interests. That is why the defense and extension of those freedoms has always been the fruit of great popular and feminist struggles.
For this reason, socialism can legitimately stake a claim to this heritage of struggle for democratic rights in order to further develop it and give it real content. Indeed, the exercise of democratic freedoms is an essential condition for human self-emancipation.
Under the ancien régime, the bourgeoisie was interested in the sanctification of private property and the freedom of trade and industry. In the seventeenth century, John Locke, the English philosopher and forerunner of liberal thought, derived his…
Auteur: Jean Batou
