The global economic crisis has reportedly prompted renewed interest in Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism. Even the pro-market Center for International Private Enterprise appears to have pulled Das Kapital from the bookshelves, albeit to deliver a trenchant analysis of the new authoritarianism.
Marx claimed to have identified capitalism’s inherent contradiction – between its productive forces and its social relations. The awesome wealth the system generated was at odds with the growing concentration of resources in the hands of a privileged minority at the expense of the impoverished working class.
But, as CIPE’s John Sullivan and Aleksandr Shkolnikov point out, it didn’t quite work out like that. Institutions of a market economy, such as property rights, helped to generate inclusive, sustainable economic growth and, instead of immiserating the proletariat, helped lift people out of poverty.
Just as Marx turned Hegel on his head, they apply his method to capitalist authoritarian regimes, including Russia and communist China, to suggest that the global economic crisis is exposing their internal contradictions:
On the one hand, authoritarian countries can (although not always do) turn out impressive economic growth figures, on the other — their growth strategies are not as sustainable over time and their legitimacy is significantly shaken when they exhaust their short-lived economic potential.
Performance-based legitimacy is inherently fragile and vulnerable to economic downswings, suggesting that democratic states may be better placed to withstand the current crisis, at least if appropriate policy measures are taken:
In democratic countries, leaders worry whether they will win the next elections. In authoritarian countries, leaders worry that if they don’t provide enough economic benefits to the people and retain enough political capital, they might not be able to keep power by whatever means they have. The focus of international democratization efforts must therefore turn to improving the underlying ability of countries to generate sound economic growth for their populations, and not merely to a select few.
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