Can Capitalism Survive in a Democracy?

Mr Eroshan on YouTube made an interesting comment to me that I felt might be worth exploring further and his comment was this:

"I really don't believe that a true democracy can exist under capitalism. Without greed, perhaps"

It was worth thinking about for a moment because there is a difference between capitalism and unfettered capitalism - in the USA we're seeing it, just recently, the richest man in the world claimed to have been primarily responsible for the election of what some people would argue is the most powerful politician in the world. Obviously this kind of statement, perhaps made in anger and then deleted later, is incredibly worrying - when you learn that Musk made donations totaling 290 million dollars to help Trump get elected, you can see why Trump gave him a hugely influential and powerful position in his Administration. Is this democracy? Clearly not, buying power can never be good and I don't care what people think about Musk's or even Trump's business acumen, they are both guilty of the most egregious display of personal motivation to gain power, influence and increase their wealth - when individuals can do that, then the only place the wealth can come from is not growth in the economy but losses to the majority - if this is how capitalism under democracy is supposed to work, then it's no wonder people in China don't want it. It seems, from the anti-establishment movements in the US now, neither do many Americans but the system, being controlled by powerful elites is not going to change.

There are a lot of performative issues going on here, neither of these men Trump or Musk, are dummies and it all appears far too contrived and far too juvenile to be what we're actually seeing, I personally think there's a lot more to this than meets the eye, neither of these men got to where they are by being stupid and the online, very public spat between them is totally stupid - I suspect it's a performance designed to detract from the passing of an authoritarian bill, the "Big Beautiful Bill, which, if we look closely at it, and I haven't because it's over 800 pages of gobbledegook, will cause more hardship for ordinary Americans and provide more power and wealth for an elite few. But that doesn't address the point made that true democracy can't exist under capitalism. I agree that what the USA has now, is not, and probably, if we're honest, has never been true democracy, or anything like it, but it is most certainly unfettered capitalism and, subject to getting worse - I thought the Hunger Games was a book and a movie, it appears it was a prediction. Many people think Orwell's 1984 was a warning on the dangers of Communism but the reality is, it was a prediction, made by a British author who probably had no inkling at the time that the USA would become exactly what he was writing about. An authoritarian state which stymies freedoms, represses individualism and creates mass-misinformation. Exactly what the US has become.

Let's go back to democracy when the US was founded, there were very few people allowed to vote, it was a century before people with different coloured skin were allowed to vote and another half a century, 1920, before women were allowed to vote - if that is what democracy meant then, it surely isn't what it means now. It was 1969 before most eligible coloured people in the USA were allowed to vote, many states required them to pass literacy tests but they didn't have schools to teach them to read and write, some states required them to recite the constitution in order to be allowed to vote - how is that democratic? More than 100 years after being freed, African Americans were still restricted from exercising voting rights. At the same time, the US was using African Americans to go to Asia and kill Asians who had a different, more egalitarian system than they had. The boxer, Cassius Clay, who became Muhammed Ali, had it right - he recognised the USA for what it was. The Vietnamese were not their enemies and he paid the price by going to prison for his beliefs - another example of the lack of democracy. Just think about it for a moment, people were conscripted into a military to take guns to another country that didn't want democracy, in order to bring them democracy - one thing is certain, if it's forced on a people with weapons, then it will never, ever be democratic.

I've read many definitions of what democracy is meant to be and having one person one vote, is only a small part of it - democracy needs to be about outcomes, not about processes. Outcomes need to benefit the majority, not the richest minority, so it's clear that, where there is unfettered, or uncontrolled capitalism and where political favours can be bought, it's not a democratic country.

So, to come back to the concept of capitalism, there is no doubt in my mind that capitalism can exist in a true democracy, China is a great example of this - China has both an incredibly deep democracy and well managed capitalism which prevents the ultra wealthy exploiting the poor and managing the government. Think Jack Ma, the man who attempted to take micro financing out of the hands of banking and into corporate control.

There is no shortage of elites in China, incredibly wealthy and powerful people, but their power extends no further than their area of expertise and does not transcend into politics and if they are politicians, they do not transcend into wealth - although there are some wealthy politicians, they do not get that wealth through their power - Xi is a great example of this, people complain he is wealthy and shouldn't be because he's a politician in a socialist country. However, he's married to one of China's most popular recording artists and he's also the country's best selling author.

We could argue all we like about how Xi achieved that wealth, in the same way that Mao was probably China's only millionaire back in the day but what both of them have done is created a new form of governance, written speeches and policies and they have been turned into successful books that every person in China either wants to read, as I did, or must read, in order to study governance. How can you aspire to leadership positions if you haven't got a playbook to learn from. If you did, you'd end up with politicians who have no experience of governance and can only write more and more draconian laws designed to further enrich and empower the rich and powerful, rather than people who worked their way from the fields and factories through hard work, diligence and extensive study. - every government official must read, in order to learn how to do their job properly under the leadership's guidance and ever school must study - of course books like Xi's and Mao's are destined to be best sellers, but at the same time, they are necessary forms of study for the proper governance and guidance of China.

The USA claims to have separation of power, the Administration, the judiciary and the Legislature but the truth is, they are not separate at all, there should also be a fourth pillar, the media, but again they are not separate, the Legislature comes from the party in power and is supported heavily by wealthy and corporate sponsorship, the senior members of the Judiciary are appointed by the Administration and approved by the Legislature, so we have the head of the FBI is a Trump supporter, the Attorney General is a Trump supporter, several of the members of the Supreme Court Bench are Trump supporters and much of the media is owned by Trump supporters. Everything that happens in the United States right now, is directed by Trump, through his support base to the benefit of Trump and his support base. And, as Princeton University pointed out many years ago, the people who voted within this system get very little benefit from it. Over the 11 years since that study was released, it hasn't improved, it's getting steadily worse

China has a different separation of power, political power from financial power - Western elites, who control the media and the politicians would have us believe it's a bad thing but the truth is: the gap between the poor and the rich in China is steadily decreasing, the opposite is true for the USA; in China, income has increased for the entire population ahead of expenses, while in the USA, the opposite is true; In China life expectancy and health outcomes have increased every years since 1949, while in the USA, the opposite is again true. In China education outcomes are increasing while in the USA, once again, the opposite is true, students levels of education are decreasing and their costs are increasing.

In fact, in every measurable aspect, including perception of democracy in its own country as well as the perception the rest of the world holds, China out outranks the USA.

So a separation of power is good but not the separation that the US claim is so great and is willing to spill the blood of its people for, the reality is that a good democracy exists when there is capitalism and when that capitalism is controlled by people who are not part of it.