Post-capitalist Free Market Economy, How Can US Be Rescued (PartIV) – Democracy As a System
Democracy as a System
During the last two centuries, political democracy has been the center of attraction by its practitioners for the main purpose of establishing a legitimate system to maintain property rights and capitalism. The U.S. Constitution was framed with this main purpose in mind. Big government began with the ” Founding Fathers, who deliberately set up a strong central government to protect the interests of the bondholders, the slave owners, the land speculators, the manufacturers. For the next two hundred years, the American government continued to serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful, offering millions of acres of free land to the railroads, setting high tariffs to protect manufacturers, giving tax breaks to oil corporations, and using its armed forces to suppress strikes and rebellions.” [1]
It was not until after the Second World War that attention was given to the reality of the situation. Since then monopoly capitalism, having its roots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has established its firm grip on the American economy and through that, on the economy of many developing countries. Similar developments, though in a less dramatic manner, were followed by other industrialized countries of Western Europe and Japan.