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Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft

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01.06.2015 | Kommentar

Comment on Wolfgang Merkel, “Is capitalism compatible with democracy?”

verfasst von: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Wolfgang Streeck

Erschienen in: Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft | Ausgabe 1-2/2015

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There is good news and bad news—and as sometimes, good news inside the bad. The bad news is that the crisis of Western-liberal democracy has apparently grown to a point where it can no longer be ignored by mainstream political science—while the good news is that it is now actually being noticed there. What is more, it is beginning to make its leading representatives to leave behind institutionalism pure and simple and move forward (or in fact back?) to a political economy perspective on democracy that deserves its name. Democracy and capitalism is now the subject, if not of choice then of necessity. Gone are the good times, or so it seems, when Glasperlen issues as harmless and comfortable as first-past-the-post vs. proportional representation, Westminster vs. veto point, consociational vs. majoritarian democracy, parliamentary vs. presidential rule, unitary vs. federal government, monocameralism vs. bicameralism etc. could rule supreme in the discipline’s official journals. Back to the basics!—so I read the message of Merkel’s remarkable essay (Merkel 2014) in which he challenges nothing less than the foundational assumption of postwar political science that capitalism and democracy are birds of a feather: that just as capitalism needs as well as supports democracy, democracy needs as well as supports capitalism, the two flocking together in ever-lasting pre-established harmony. …

Vorheriger Artikel Entwicklungen politisch motivierter Gewalt im Vergleich der Bundesländer, 1996–2013

Nächster Artikel Comment on Wolfgang Merkel, “Is capitalism compatible with democracy?”

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Typically it is political leaders or organizations that promise voters that they will resist the demands of international financial and other investors that are most likely to be branded “populist”—“left” or “right”, often interchangeably—by the TINA parties of the center, who define themselves as “responsible” on account of their willingness faithfully to comply with the rules of the market.

“Das kapitalistische Wirtschaftssystem ist den staatlichen und sozialen Lebensinteressen des deutschen Volkes nicht gerecht geworden. Nach dem furchtbaren politischen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Zusammenbruch kann nur eine Neuordnung von Grund auf erfolgen. Inhalt und Ziel dieser sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Neuordnung kann nicht mehr das kapitalistische Gewinn- und Machtstreben, sondern nur das Wohlergehen unseres Volkes sein.”

Ironically, it was in the aftermath of the two great wars of the twentieth century, in 1918 and 1945, respectively, that the working classes under capitalism made their most effective advances in the capitalist political economy (Piketty 2014).

I have sketched out this dynamic in Streeck (2014).

See “Jürgen Habermas im Gespräch: Europa wird direkt ins Herz getroffen”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29. Mai 2014. One interesting irony is that Juncker ascended to the presidency shortly after the publication of Thomas Piketty’s now famous book in which he demands a general wealth tax to correct the long-term and inherent increase in inequality under capitalism (Piketty 2014). On the farce of last year’s “European election” see Susan Watkins (2014).

The project to give the European Union a constitution began in 2001 with a resolution to this effect by the then member states of the EU. Two years later a Convention appointed by the national governments went to work, and in 2004 the member states signed the document it had produced. What was billed as a “European Constitution” was essentially a compilation of the existing Treaties and consisted of a book of 160,000 words. It was to take effect in 2006, 5 years after its inception—and this in a period when the famous “permissive consensus” on European integration was still around. When it failed to be approved in two national referenda it was replaced by the Treaty of Lisbon (effective 2010).

Improbably, because the culture wars tend to be incited precisely in order to divert attention from the political economy—fanning the passions of popular majorities kept in the dark on the real issues to make them forget their interests.

Which was why they were eager to join the European Union and NATO, on the premise and indeed the condition that neither of them will contest their claim to democratic legitimacy and national sovereignty. As to the European Union in particular, the Baltic States, like most other small member states, from Malta to Luxemburg to Ireland, consider it the most effective guarantee available of their continued sovereign independence. This is the exact opposite of the way the European Union is sometimes seen by German Europhiles: as a vehicle for trading in national identity for a “European” one. Economically, sovereignty is regarded especially by small nations as an indispensable capacity for them to carve out a niche for themselves in the global economy—or, alternatively, like in EMU, as a power tool for extracting “solidarity” from larger countries.

Work that Europe’s “responsible” intellectuals have today delegated to the likes of Occupy!, ATTAC, or SYRIZA.

As Fritz Scharpf has recently pointed out in a reply to Habermas’ Sorbonne lecture (Habermas 2014; Scharpf forthcoming), what I would suggest to call the acquises démocratiques of the national demoi in Europe include much more than liberal guarantees of freedom and equal treatment before the law (roughly what Merkel calls the minimalist version of democracy). It also and importantly comprises a wide range of political-economic institutions that provide for democratic correction of market outcomes – for democracy as social democracy. We should have learned, at the latest after the neoliberal turn of European integration in the 1980s, that these cannot instantly be absorbed into a pan-European acquis communautaire—and that, if this is tried against the interests and, sometimes at least, the resistance of those who depend on them, they are at an overwhelming risk of being watered down into a neoliberal one-size-fits-all market regime.

Habermas, Jürgen. 2014. Warum der Ausbau der Europäischen Union zu einer supranationalen Demokratie nötig und wie er möglich ist. Leviathan 42 (4): 524–538.CrossRef

Mair, Peter. 2009. Representative versus responsible government. MPIfG Working Paper 09/8. Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

Mair, Peter. 2013. Ruling the void: The hollowing of western democracy. London: Verso.

Merkel, Wolfgang. 2014. Is capitalism compatible with democracy? Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 8 (2): 109–128.CrossRef

Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Scharpf, Fritz W. Forthcoming. Das Dilemma der supranationalen Demokratie in Europa. Leviathan 43.

Streeck, Wolfgang. 2014. Buying time: The delayed crisis of democratic capitalism. London: Verso.

Streeck, Wolfgang. Forthcoming. The rise of the European Consolidation State. In The reconfiguration of the state in Europe, eds. Desmond King and Patrick Le Galés. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Watkins, Susan. 2014. The political state of the Union. New Left Review 90:5–25s.

Titel: Comment on Wolfgang Merkel, “Is capitalism compatible with democracy?”
verfasst von: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Wolfgang Streeck
Publikationsdatum: 01.06.2015
Verlag: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
Erschienen in: Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft / Ausgabe 1-2/2015
Print ISSN: 1865-2646
Elektronische ISSN: 1865-2654
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-015-0232-2

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