Why capitalists are coming out against democracy - “Does classical liberalism imply democracy?”
https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Reprint-EGP-Classical-Liberalism-Democracy.pdf
“There is a fault line running through … liberalism as to whether or not democratic self- governance is a necessary part of a liberal social order. The democratic and non-democratic strains of classical liberalism are both present today. Many … libertarians … represent the non-democratic strain in their promotion of non-democratic sovereign city-states.”
Classic liberalism never implied democracy. Classic liberals were always terrified of democracy. Classic liberalism was about giving more rights to the capitalist class. Not to the people. Classic liberalism just wanted to make the oligarchy a little bit bigger.
Sure, as a historical tradition, classical liberalism has its share of anti-democratic figures. The point of the paper is to show that classical liberalism, as a body of coherent philosophy, actually implies democracy. Most classical liberals, historically, have been defenders of capitalism. Showing the ideology that usually capitalism apologists adhere to actually implies anti-capitalism is a powerful critique
@sneerclub
Arguable whether a “capitalist class” existed in classical times.
We’re not talking about classical times at all. We’re talking about the Age of Enlightenment and a little after. But as for those classical liberals at that proper time? They’re some of the first real capitalists.
TIL “classical liberalism” has absolutely nothing to do with the “classical” part, great, who the fuck decided to name it that?
Oh no it’s just when you say classical time period that means something different than the word classical in different contexts. Classical music isn’t referring to the Greeks and Romans either.
and “classical music” was a retrospective label for reactionary purposes too
it’s almost as if we’ve culturally deluded ourselves away from seeing that nostalgia is a toxic impulse and clinging to the past is self-imprisonment*
*in particular I thought it was cool to enjoy classic rock in high school because it was non-mainstream, not seeing the irony that I was just enjoying a mainstream from decades ago, making me even more mainstream
mainedstream
Kids these days with their newfangled romanticism and their fortepianos. No respect for the sonata form.
It’s “classical” in the sense that the columns on courthouses in Confederate states are, i.e., in ennobling an arbitrarily inequitable order.
@V0ldek @sneerclub The people who decided that they liked 18th & 19th century “liberals” a whole lot more than the modern ones. Basically Libertarians.
And yet they use humanism as a slur. Interesting, that.
i.e. their nobly high-minded philosophical forebears are periwigged slaveholders.
@V0ldek @sneerclub There was definitely a proto-capitalist class in late Republican & Imperial Rome.
The pervasive existence of slavery made the economic systems very different from ours, and even different from our most recent flavors of slavery. One could argue that EVERY slaveholder was a de facto capitalist.