Private Power and Democracy's Decline: How to Make Capitalism Support Democracy

In his book Private Power and the Decline of Democracy, Mordechai Kurtz explores the relationship between free market capitalism and democracy. He shows that technology has changed the perception of capitalism from what was imagined in the Enlightenment. Technology creates centers of market power and monopoly concentration, leading to a society in which some are super-rich while destroying the livelihoods of many workers. Contrary to popular belief, technological competition does not remove market power, which becomes a permanent feature of free market capitalism.This special power leads to political inequality, and generates forces that cause the decline and possible demise of democracy. Applying these ideas to the United States, Kurtz explains that today's problems began in the 1980s with the policy of unregulated free-market capitalism. This, in conjunction with the IT revolution, has created a technology-dominated economy, ushering in a second golden age of unsustainable inequality and sharp political polarization. For the last 50 years,The economy boomed for some groups, while the majority of American workers were left in a difficult situation. Only organized capitalism can support democracy, Kurtz concludes, so that the benefits of technology are distributed more equitably, and no one's livelihoods are destroyed to enable others to get rich. To save democracy, he proposes a “livelihood restoration” policy, which gives companies managerial flexibility to maintain increased productivity, while ensuring that technology does not destroy the livelihoods of others.