Soro's Critique on Capitalism and Democracy
B. Diamond (mailto:bdiamond@MIND.NET)
Sat, 18 Jan 1997 10:06:11 +0000
Message-ID: <32E0A093.518E@mind.net>
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 10:06:11 +0000
From: "B. Diamond" <mailto:bdiamond@MIND.NET>
Subject: Soro's Critique on Capitalism and Democracy
To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
> Some may be interested in the following forwarded article.
>
> ==========================
> The following, which summarizes Soros's comments in a
> recent issue of the Swedish newspaper, DAGENS NYHETER ("Daily News", I
> think). It was included in a conglomeration of Eastern European news
> put together by a guy at the Center for
> Defense Information (a reliable, critical, "think tank"); the article by
> Paul Goble was distributed by the successor organization to Radio Free
> Europe. Goble is an ex-CIA senior analyst, and for a while was part of
> an effort by ex-CIA Russian institutes to put out a private-issue
> newsletter. They found that it was very popular as long as it was
> freely available on the Net, but has pretty well collapsed once they
> started to charge for it.
>
> ======================================================================
> Eastern Europe: Analysis From Washington--Capitalism Versus Democracy
> By Paul Goble
>
> Washington, 16 January 1997 (RFE/RL) - Challenging one of the most
> widely-held beliefs of the post-Cold War world, billionaire financier
> George Soros argued on Wednesday that capitalism may in fact subvert
> democracy rather than support it.
>
> For the last decade at least, conventional wisdom in the West has been
> just
> the opposite. Western writers have regularly insisted that free market
> capitalism is a necessary -- if not always sufficient -- condition for
> the
> creation and maintenance of a democratic society.
>
> They have based their argument on the fact that capitalism tends to
> decentralize power and thus create the possibility for the establishment
> of
> a civil society out of which a democracy can arise.
>
> Such a perspective, of course, is of more than academic interest. It has
> led many Western countries to conclude that if they succeed in promoting
> free markets in post-communist countries, these states would almost
> magically become democratic without the need for specific intervention
> directed to that end.
>
> But developments in many of these countries have called that happy
> assumption into question. In some of these states, moves toward free
> market
> capitalism have not led to democracy but rather toward greater
> authoritariansim. And in others, moves toward democracy appear unrelated
> to
> the pace of economic reform.
>
> This lack of correspondence between expectations and reality has already
> led a number of people to question the assumptions underlying the
> prevailing view. But because of his prominence and special role in the
> region, Soros seems likely to set off a much broader debate on these
> issues.
>
> As that discussion begins, it is important to keep in mind both what
> Soros
> has said and what he has not.
>
> On the one hand, Soros has advanced an argument far broader than a
> simple
> rejection of the conventional view aboout the prospects for
> post-communist
> countries.
>
> Writing in the Stockholm newspaper :Dagens Nyheter," Soros has called
> into
> question not only the role of free market capitalism in promoting
> democracy
> in formerly communist countries but also the role of capitalism in
> existing
> democratic societies.
>
> He suggested that "the unrestrained intensification of laissez-faire
> capitalism and market values spreading through life is threatening the
> future of our open and democratic societies."
>
> Among the threats now emanating from the free market capitalism, he
> said,
> were "exaggerated individualism, too much competition, and too little
> cooperation."
>
> As a result, Soros said, ever more people have taken the view that
> everyone
> "should be left to look after themselves," an idea that subverted
> community
> both within countries and among them.
>
> But on the other hand, Soros has in fact made a claim less broad than
> the
> one he appears to be making.
>
> He argues against the "unrestrained" intensification of market forces,
> not
> market forces as such. And thus his attack on capitalism is less a call
> to
> arms against it as a system than an appeal for seeing democracy as an
> independent value and for using democratic procedures to limit the
> otherwise untrammeled forces of the market itself.
>
> Soros' suggestion that the West must adopt programs designed to promote
> democratic institutions directly rather than rely on the forces of the
> market to do so for them is likely to prove to be his most influential
> argument.
>
> But it too needs to be put in context. Twenty years ago, most Western
> policy analysts argued that democratic societies were likely to continue
> to
> move in the direction of a combination of free markets and an ever
> larger
> state sector.
>
> That assumption was challenged by a number of Western and especially
> American theorists, and their intellectual victory coincided with the
> collapse of communism in Europe. And as a result, the new anti-statist
> perspective has guided much thinking and policy toward the former
> communist
> states.
>
> In his article, Soros is thus not saying something quite as new and
> radical
> as he or some may believe.
>
> Instead, he is suggesting that Western countries should return to an
> earlier perspective which he and others may see as offering a way out of
> the current political and economic difficulties of the countries in the
> former Soviet bloc.
>
> =====================