The Democracy That Never Was: A Critique of Liberal Democracy by Gary Teeple ISBN 9783031680199, 9783031680229, 9783031680205, 3031680197, 3031680227, 3031680200 instant download

The Democracy That Never Was: A Critique of Liberal Democracy by Gary Teeple ISBN 9783031680199, 9783031680229, 9783031680205, 3031680197, 3031680227, 3031680200 instant download

The absolutes of liberal democracy, the author contends, have never been anything but the abstracted principles of the marketplace. Their nature has now become especially visible for what they have been because the premise as national capital development has changed, leaving liberal democracy as a form without its original content, and its present content out of keeping with a national jurisdiction. As a political form, it persists, but its role has been transformed from the regulation of national capital accumulation to the enforcer of the demands of global configurations of capital.

It is a role that its citizens implicitly understand, as revealed in widespread political cynicism, decreasing electoral participation, and declining legitimacy that require ever greater measures of deceit from political leaders and increased means of coercive social control, including militarized police forces and pervasive electronic surveillance. There can be no going back to the stage of national politics because the neoliberal content of liberal democratic policies represents the necessities of global capital. And it is the contradictions of global capital that define the character of early 21st century political conflict.