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Reclaiming Democracy from Capitalism: Understanding Trump's Resurgence
Making sense of Trump's enduring appeal requires examining how market forces have gradually hollowed out democratic promise, creating the conditions for authoritarian alternatives to flourish.
Nov 12, 2024
As Donald Trump has won a historic landslide to once again reclaim the U.S. presidency, the conventional narrative has focused heavily on partisan polarization, disinformation, and the strengths or weaknesses of individual candidates. There is also a seeming reckoning within the Democratic Party, where at least some are recognizing that their focusing away from working class populations and policies has catalyzed their dramatic defeat.
Yet this surface-level analysis misses the deeper crisis at play—one that stems not just from right-wing populism, but from the very structure of modern capitalism itself. Understanding Trump's enduring appeal requires examining how market forces have gradually
hollowed out democratic promise, creating the conditions for authoritarian alternatives to flourish. The traditional focus on defending democratic institutions against right-wing threats, while necessary, overlooks how thoroughly market logic has eroded faith in democratic problem-solving itself.
The Illusion of Market Democracy
For nearly five decades, Americans have been told that free markets and democracy are inseparable twins, each reinforcing and strengthening the other. The reality experienced by millions tells a different story. While formal democratic institutions remain intact, the actual power to shape daily life has shifted dramatically to unaccountable market forces and corporate boardrooms. Healthcare costs, housing affordability, wage stagnation, inflation, climate anxiety, seemingly eternal wars fueled by weapons makers—on issue after issue, voters watch their elected representatives appear powerless against market pressures and corporate interests.
The pervasive influence of market ideology extends far beyond explicit political decisions. It shapes our very conception of what changes are possible and who can effectively implement them. The elevation of business executives as society's primary problem-solvers reflects decades of cultural messaging that private sector experience trumps public service. This CEO worship has become so ingrained that even critics of Trump often focus on his personal failings as a businessman rather than questioning the assumption that business acumen translates to governance capability.
While Vice President Kamala Harris emphasized competence and normalcy, this message resonates poorly with voters who felt the previous "normal" wasn't working for them
This gap between theoretical democratic rights and practical powerlessness creates fertile ground for authoritarian appeals. When traditional democratic processes seem incapable of addressing material concerns, voters become more receptive to leaders promising to bypass or overturn the system entirely. Trump's appeal draws significantly from his image as a decisive business executive who can "get things done" outside normal political channels—a notion that reflects decades of cultural messaging elevating CEOs as society's most effective leaders and change agents. The belief that executive business experience translates to effective governance reveals how thoroughly market logic has colonized our political imagination.
The Democratic establishment's strategy of running primarily on defending the pre-Trump status quo shows the poverty and " strangely empty politics" of current mainstream liberal thinking. While Vice President Kamala Harris emphasized competence and normalcy, this message resonates poorly with voters who felt the previous "normal" wasn't working for them. The dominance of market ideology has convinced many that there are no real alternatives to current arrangements. Even as we face civilizational threats like climate change that markets demonstrably cannot solve, policy proposals remain trapped within market-based frameworks.
This ideological straitjacket constrains responses to pressing social problems. Housing affordability is addressed through tax credits and zoning tweaks rather than direct public provision. Healthcare reform centers on insurance market regulations rather than treating health as a public good. Climate change is filtered through carbon markets and tax incentives rather than democratic planning. The resulting policy menu appears technical and uninspiring to voters seeking fundamental change.
The Material Roots of Democratic Decline
The continued dominance of market fundamentalism doesn't exist in a vacuum—it's reinforced by material conditions that leave millions feeling economically insecure and politically powerless. Decades of wage stagnation, deindustrialization, and growing inequality have created a context where anti-democratic messages find ready audiences. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent greedflation intensified these dynamics. As corporations posted record profits while workers struggled with rising prices, the disconnect between democratic ideals and economic reality became increasingly stark.
The entrenchment of market power shapes every aspect of daily life. Workers face increasingly precarious employment conditions, with stable jobs replaced by gig work and contract labor. Communities watch helplessly as corporate relocations devastate local economies. Young people enter adulthood burdened by student debt and priced out of housing markets. Each of these experiences reinforces the sense that democratic citizenship offers no real power over economic conditions.
The failure of center-left parties to articulate meaningful alternatives to market dominance leaves the field open for right-wing populists to channel economic discontent.
This learned helplessness in the face of market forces creates an opportunity and desire for reclaiming control that authoritarian populists eagerly fill. When democratic processes seem incapable of addressing fundamental challenges, promises to simply override or abolish those processes gain appeal. Trump's potential return isn't simply about partisan politics or individual personality—it reflects a deeper crisis of faith in democracy's ability to solve problems under the constraints of market supremacy.
The phenomenon extends beyond American borders. Globally, we are increasingly entering into the " age of the strongman,"witnessing a pattern of authoritarian leaders rising to power by promising to subordinate market forces to national interests. While these promises usually prove hollow, their appeal reflects genuine frustration with democracy's apparent powerlessness against global market pressures. The failure of center-left parties to articulate meaningful alternatives to market dominance leaves the field open for right-wing populists to channel economic discontent.
This dynamic particularly affects younger generations who have grown up entirely within the neoliberal era and its " capitalist realism." Having never experienced a period when democratic governance seemed capable of directing economic outcomes, many view politics primarily as cultural performance rather than a means of affecting material conditions. The resulting cynicism further erodes democracy's legitimacy as a tool for collective problem-solving.
Reclaiming Democratic Power
The path forward requires going beyond simply defending existing democratic institutions to advancing a vision of democratic economic control. This means building power in workplaces, communities, and political spaces to subject market forces to democratic oversight and direction. The key to defeating authoritarian populism lies not in simply defending the status quo, but in demonstrating that democratic action can meaningfully improve people's lives.
This expanded conception of democracy must reach beyond formal political rights to encompass economic decision-making. Public banking initiatives seeking democratic control over financial flows, workplace democracy expanding worker voice in corporate governance, and community control over local development and services all point toward possible futures where market forces serve democratic will rather than override it.
Real democratic renewal requires challenging both right-wing authoritarianism and the market fundamentalism that fuels it.
Success requires transcending the false choice between unaccountable market forces and authoritarian state power. Democratic economic control doesn't mean centralized bureaucracy—it means building institutions and movements that allow communities to shape investment priorities, work conditions, and development patterns. To imagine and create a different type of economy and society where profit is not prioritised overall other aspects of our existence.
The stakes of this choice become increasingly clear as Trump's return to power looms. Simply denouncing his anti-democratic tendencies while accepting the market's anti-democratic dominance is a recipe for failure. Real democratic renewal requires challenging both right-wing authoritarianism and the market fundamentalism that fuels it. The moment calls for fundamental reimagining of the relationship between democracy and economic power—moving from a system where democracy stops at the market's edge to one where democratic principles shape economic life itself.
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It Isn’t ‘The System’ That’s Holding Visionary Activists Back From the World We Want
A new book by Mark Satin—Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics—makes a powerful case that the real answer lies within.
Nov 10, 2024
As administrator of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, I have spent decades trying to usher visionary, regenerative, and decentralist ideas into the American body politic. So have many of my counterparts in organizations across the country. But sometimes I think we’re no closer to making a difference on a national scale now than we were in the 1970s. What is holding us back?
The usual answers are “capitalism” and the two-party system. But the more experience I’ve gained, the more I’ve come to believe that those are just excuses, and the real answer lies elsewhere.
Mark Satin’s new book—Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics—makes a powerful case that the real answer lies within: We visionary activists have been so internally divided, and so driven by ego and unexamined personal pain, that we’ve never been able to harness the life-giving ideas of people like Jane Jacobs, Ivan Illich, Hazel Henderson, David Korten, Kate Raworth, and E.F. Schumacher himself (all of whom turn up in Satin’s book) to a viable national political organization.
The last page reveals the “moral” of the book: “Only by becoming kind people can we create a kind world.”
Satin’s book reads like a novel, and it is admirably, some may say shockingly, specific. It spends a lot of time on activists’ parental, collegial, and love relationships, not just on their political organizing. And Satin finds all of it wanting. (He is as tough on himself as he is on anyone, which gives the book a feeling of heartache rather than blame. And there is redemption at the end!)
To stick to the political organizing—the first part of the book tries to demonstrate that the New Left of the 60s was an inadequate vehicle for us. Satin shows in devastating detail that the leading members of his Mississippi Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee group were more interested in Black nationalism than in integrating the local schools. He shows that the older student leaders of his campus Students for a Democratic Society group were more interested in promoting socialism than in listening to the emerging ecological, decentralist, and humanistic-psychology ideas of younger students. And he shows that the leaders of the Toronto Anti-Draft Program (North America’s largest draft-resister assistance organization) were more interested in fomenting a Marxist revolution than in providing practical help to the resisters.
According to Satin, these and similar experiences led to the collapse of the New Left—and to the rise of thousands of independent feminist, ecological, spiritual, appropriate-technology, etc. organizations. In addition, two visionary organizations arose that aimed to synthesize such ideas and bring them into national politics.
The first of these, the New World Alliance, drew its Governing Council from a wide range of professionals, educators, businesspeople, and activists. It included three future Schumacher Society participants, Alanna Hartzok, John McClaughry, and Kirkpatrick Sale. But it fell apart after four years of constant bickering over policies, processes, and fundraising, often caused (Satin seeks to show) largely by personal jealousies and rivalries. At one point, spiritually oriented Planetary Citizens president Donald Keys accused McClaughry of being in league with the Devil! Some of the scenes in this chapter are so tragicomic that they’d work as skits on Saturday Night Live.
The chapter on the U.S. Green Party movement, though, is pure tragedy. By the mid-1980s, America was yearning for a major third party. Amazingly well-connected people were waiting in the wings to help the Greens get off the ground. But, instead, the principal organizers of the Greens—a spiritual feminist, an anarchist, a socialist, and two bioregionalists—created an organization in their own narrow image. As Satin sees it, this was a classic case of the organizers and their cohorts preferring to be big fish in a small pond. The resulting Green “movement” then engaged in phenomenally ugly infighting over the next decade—what happened to three Green women is truly sickening to read—and the Greens emerged in the end not as a major beyond-left-and-right political party capable of spearheading a regenerative economy and culture, but as a minor far-left protest party.
In more recent years, Satin found hope in what he calls the “radical centrist” or “trasnspartisan” movement—people and groups that are more interested in fostering cross-partisan political dialogue than in providing Correct Answers. He felt this would be an excellent way to insert the views of visionary thinkers into the national dialogue—and to win support for all kinds of local and regional experimentation. But he notes that the track record of radical-centrist groups like New America and No Labels has so far been disappointing. They’re as internally divided as the Greens and a lot snootier. What Satin really wants, he confides to us, is a new political movement of committed listeners, bold beyond-left-and-right synthesizers, and savvy organizers.
A powerful conclusion urges visionary activists to live more like ordinary Americans, in order to decrease arrogance and deepen understanding. The last page reveals the “moral” of the book: “Only by becoming kind people can we create a kind world.”
When E.F. Schumacher wrote his famous book Small Is Beautiful, he entitled his chapter about political economy “Buddhist Economics.” Later he must have had second thoughts about characterizing his ideas in such an oppositional way, for his later book, A Guide for the Perplexed, makes it clear that his ideas are consistent with the beliefs of all the great religions, including of course Christianity. When Satin argues that we visionary activists cannot move forward unless we (a). learn to be kind to self and others, and (b). listen to and learn from all engaged Americans, he is following in Schumacher’s footsteps. We should listen to him.
Mark Satin, Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics (New York: Bombardier Books, distributed by Simon & Schuster, 2023), 380 pages, $21.95 pbk, $12.95 eBook.
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US Politics Has Become the Fiefdom of Billionaires
At its core, the promise of democracy is “one man one vote”; but the attraction of capitalism is “one man many votes,” meaning the rich guys get the best things and lots of them, while the poor guy loses out.
Nov 08, 2024
Not that many people know that The Wizard of Oz, one of America’s most-loved films, is based on the arcane economic world of monetary policy. L Frank Baum’s novel is a disguised critique of the folly of the Gold Standard written in the wake of the 1896 election, at a time when America was deeply divided socially and geographically, when enormous power was wielded by a billionaire class, the so-called Robber Barons.
The election centred on whether America should swap the straitjacket of a gold-backed dollar for the looser cardigan of a silver-backed dollar. As gold is less plentiful and more expensive than silver, opting for a silver-backed currency would cause a devaluation that would inject more dollars into the economy, helping the poor.
The yellow bricks of the Yellow Brick Road, represent the gold bars which paved the way to the Emerald City, the city of green – or greenback, the colloquial term for the dollar. Dorothy represents the wholesome daughter of middle America, literally Kansas. The Scarecrow is the put-upon Midwestern farmer American and the Tin Man is the industrial worker.
Politically, the Democrats, in an alliance with a new party called the Popular Party, representing workers, farmers and the lower middle class, wanted a dollar backed by silver, meaning there would be more dollars around. In contrast, the Republicans represented industrialists, Wall Street and the wealthy, the kind of people who wanted to preserve their dollar wealth and maintain the Gold Standard.
With so much at stake and the country so explicitly divided along class lines, the rich opened their wallets and, for the first time, America’s election was truly swung by money. The Republicans won because they raised more cash.
William McKinley, the victorious Republican candidate, received contributions worth more than $16 million (about $600 million in today’s money). McKinley’s chief fundraiser, Mark Hanna, raised more than $6 million by courting corporations with the promise of a big-business-friendly agenda. Hanna is famously quoted as saying: “There are two things that are important in politics: the first is money and I can’t remember the second one”.
And who do you think the Wizard of Oz represented? Why, Mark Hanna the financier, hiding behind the slogans and conspiring against the ordinary American, embodied by the innocent Dorothy.
Whoever pays the money expects favors. Money buys policy. That is and always has been the deal.
The American political scene was set over a century ago. Money matters in American politics, and that adage of the Republicans being for sale while the Democrats are only for rent is no longer strictly accurate.
Today’s Democrats aren’t above a mutually beneficial deal and are in the pockets of big business as much as their opponents. The problem with big money and unrestrained capitalism in politics is so obvious that it doesn’t need to be pointed out, but suffice to say that it is inimical with a properly functioning democracy.
At its core, the promise of democracy is “one man one vote”; but the attraction of capitalism is “one man many votes,” meaning the rich guys get the best things and lots of them, while the poor guy loses out.
Capitalism and democracy are in a constant state of friction. The excesses of capitalism need to be tempered by the equalising nature of democracy; however, too much democracy and redistribution limit the “animal spirits” of capitalism upon which prosperity rests.
Modern western societies are a tug of war between these two alternating ideas where a balance is sought between both; sometimes it’s called social democracy, Christian democracy or centrism but it amounts to the same, a truce.
Unfortunately, the conditions of the truce are influenced by money, which is why big money in elections is problematic. As is the case in any indecent proposal, whoever pays the money expects favors. Money buys policy. That is and always has been the deal. American politics has become the fiefdom of billionaires, the effect of which can only be imagined.
We’ve all seen Elon Musk jumping around Trump’s rally with the physical co-ordination of a homeschooled kid who’s never seen a PE class, but Musk isn’t the only billionaire with a stake in the game. The two US presidential candidates had raised more than $3.8 billion by mid-October. A Financial Times analysis of campaign finance filings found that billionaires have donated at least $695 million, or about 18 per cent of the total. Trump is particularly dependent on US elites, with about a third of his money coming from billionaires compared with about 6 per cent of the funds raised by Harris.
Trump’s finance base is rich but narrow while Harris’s is more broadly based. From January 2023 to mid-October 2024, Joe Biden and Harris outraised Trump ($2.2 billion to Trump’s $1.7 billion). But the rich guys have placed their bets; at least 144 people on the list of 800 US billionaires compiled by Forbes have donated to either candidate.
Billionaires leaning toward Harris may seem incongruous as she often criticizes Trump for being too close to the plutocrats, but there are practical reasons why the ultra-wealthy may favor Harris.
As was the case in 1896, if you are rich you want stability – after all, you are doing well from the status quo. A letter signed by more than a dozen billionaires last month endorsing Harris explained their belief that she will “continue to advance fair and predictable policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment”. In contrast, although he might cut their tax bills, Trump represents chaos and commotion, which is never good for business.
No matter whether the money comes from the liberal center or the tear-it-all-down libertarian right, it comes with a price, a sort of pay-to-play cover charge. If you want influence in America you pay for it.
In Europe, strict limits on campaign contributions help curb plutocratic influence. For example, the $1.6 billion Joe Biden spent to win the 2020 presidential election is 70 times more than the sum Emmanuel Macron spent on his 2022 win – despite the fact that the US population is just five times larger than that of France. The total spend across all 12 candidates in the French presidential race was just over €83 million. Germany – a country with more billionaires per head than America – enforces strict donation limits and transparency rules, with caps of €50,000 per donor, reducing the risk of policies favoring an elite few.
No matter whether the money comes from the liberal center or the tear-it-all-down libertarian right, it comes with a price, a sort of pay-to-play cover charge. If you want influence in America you pay for it.
Irish elections are subject to strict spending limits. Candidates running for the Dáil can only spend up to a maximum of €38,900 in a three-seat constituency, €48,600 in a four-seater and €58,350 in a five-seater. These numbers are paltry in the context of US elections, where there are no spending limits. In Ireland, donations from individuals or companies to a party are capped at €2,500 per year, while donations to individual candidates are limited to €1,000 per year.
After the alfresco political bribery of the Charlie Haughey and tribunal years, things are more above board and the days of rich guys buying elections in return for explicit special treatment are long gone. By way of contrast, the clear conflict between capitalism and democracy in America is there for all to see. As they say, the US is “the best democracy money can buy”, and the die was cast in 1896 with the election of William McKinley.
In those final days of the 19th century, with their man in the White House and tariffs erected to protect their businesses, America’s billionaire plutocrats must have felt unassailable. But following McKinley’s assassination by an anarchist in 1901, power moved to his vice-president, Teddy Roosevelt, who would turn on the very plutocrats who had financed his campaigns. Sensing that America yearned for equality after years of division and a decade of rich men lording it over the working man, Roosevelt brought the billionaires to heel, regulating them, taxing them and breaking up their monopolies.
A decade after buying the election, the billionaire class was on the skids, accused by Republican president Roosevelt of “predatory capitalism.” Fortunes turned dramatically. Political power slipped away from the plutocrats just when they thought victory was theirs.
Can history repeat itself? I wouldn’t bet against it.
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