In a recent interview on the BBC, former British prime minister Tony Blair raised an interesting question. What is the relationship between economic growth and democracy, he asked.
Blair sees the dearth of economic growth as evidence that something is wrong with 21st century democracies. But democracy isn’t an economic system; it is simply a system of self-governance. And it has been infiltrated and taken over by capitalism. In the world’s capitalistic democracy, some votes are worth more than others... with no questions asked.
If politicians want democracy to survive and to be relevant, they must strive for a more perfect union of people acting together for common causes, not a union of corporate interests and endless economic growth at the expense of the people.
For the last couple of years, politicians acted as if growth was a kind of heaven on earth that they must always pursue without question. They should at least have the courage to speak to the people about what kinds of growth they want.
At the moment, what little economic growth we are getting is creating a vastly more unequal world, as finance and banking grow large and fat in relation to the rest of the economy. In Europe, democracy is getting eroded and directly threatened by this increasing inequality, as billionaires in finance and oil exert disproportionate influence on governments and even on the judiciary.
There are many causes for democracy’s problems but we can forgive Blair for overlooking the most glaring one of all: inequality is the greatest present threat to democracy. It is the cause of the increasing polarisation and it is destroying people’s trust in democratic (?) institutions.