Why Capitalism Must Always Fail Democracy

                The typical way of thinking about economic systems is that they exist within and along side political systems.  Thus, we think of our culture as being both capitalistic and democratic.  We think of capitalism, socialism, or communism as merely ways of distributing wealth, as a means to match production with distribution.  In a fundamental way, capitalism is more about what has to happen to the world and the people in it for it to become ‘wealth.’  The means of this transformation is shared by both socialism and communism, even if they represent different ways to distribute that wealth.  At its core, capitalism has to destroy what is appropriated in order to make it transactional and void of any value except a monetary value.  Because it operates this way, capitalism and democracy will always and inevitably be at odds. 

                In his book, In the World Interior of Capital, Peter Sloterdijk develops a critique of the evolution of capitalism grounded in maritime expansion.  In order for trade to move beyond the family and tradition bound systems before capitalism, the things that were to be traded had to be extricated from their specific context of existence.  Therefore, every place was just another place instead of someplace specific and sacred to the people living there.  Once that move is complete, Sloterdijk goes into great detail about the way Henry the Navigator destroyed the ‘cosmic’ dimension of reality with latitude and longitude, everything everywhere is open to exploitation.  As Sloterdijk tells it, those ancient mariners got on those leaky ships because they wanted to make money.  They made money by uprooting people and products from their place in a cosmos and reduced them to ‘things.’ 

                At first glance this might seem more than obvious, but we’ve lived in a world without a cosmos for so long that we only have vague remnants of what it means.  All of us ‘own’ things that have more than a mere monetary value.  Maybe it’s something that was given to you by a parent or a loved one.  The extra value comes from its specific context in your life, the way you find meaning in the world.  One of the most famous examples of capitalism destroying the cosmos is the letter from Chief Seattle telling the president that he couldn’t understand how the government could separate the land from the people, the animals, the air and water, and the spirits.  In his Essay on Human Understanding, Locke says that land belongs to people who work it and develop it, not to those who merely appreciate or revere it. The contrast is obvious.  Capitalism only responds its own monetary values; it has no capacity to do otherwise.

                Democracy is supposedly based on another set of values.  Democracy is supposed to express the will of a people, and that will may or may not coincide with the monetary value of capitalism.  We can see this in our current situation where the government makes budgets reflecting only the monetary value (and really the monetary values of a very few) of a ‘need’ over any other way of calculating value.  How else do we understand our current national health care debate.  We have essentially decided to kill people to save money, even though the people at risk are supposed to be represented in the decision.  When GM decided to continue to produce ignitions that were faulty, knowing they were putting people’s lives at risk, they did so by calculating the cost of the lawsuits against the cost of fixing the ignition.

                At some inevitable juncture, the values of capitalism and the values of democracy are going to be incompatible.  Occasionally the social wins, but usually only in the most dire emergencies or in war.  The rest of the time, we live in a capitalistic society with democratic style markers.  Real democracy is possible only with a different idea and calculation of wealth.  Environmentalism is only possible in another economic model.  The challenges we face in this moment of profound social and political danger are being fueled by capitalism.  If we want a democratic future, we have to rethink what it means to be human and be wealthy.  We currently are trapped in a system that is killing us and the planet.  It will not self -correct.  The technology we have only makes it move much faster.  Old Chief Seattle knew something we have forgotten, money can’t buy you a clear conscience or a glass of clean water.