Capitalism has no necessary correspondence with parliamentary democracy

Evidence

Other approaches recognize that there may well be “tendential combinations”: combinations which, while not prescribed in the fully determinist sense, are the “preferred” combinations, sedimented and solidified by real historical development over time. Thus, as is clear from, say, the Latin American case, there is no “necessary correspondence” between the development of a form of capitalism and the political forms of parliamentary democracy. Capitalism can arise on very different political foundations. Engels himself showed how capitalism can also harness and adapt very different legal systems to its functions. This does not prevent us from arguing that the advent of capitalism has frequently (tendentially) been accompanied by the formation of bourgeois parliamentary democratic regimes: or even from accepting Lenin’s percipient observation that parliamentary democracy provides “the ‘best possible’ political shell for capitalism.” We must, however, see these “combinations” as historically specific, rather than specified a priori: as “laws of tendency”—which can be countermanded by “counteracting tendencies.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 624 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

These “distant and separate class[es] of capitalists” were less the representatives of an immanent, rational, commercial order than extensions of particular historical dynamics and cultures. They were not the “germ” of a new order dialectically posited in an increasingly confining host—feudalism—but an opportunistic strata, willfully adaptive to the new conditions and possibilities offered by the times. Not only did different western European bourgeoisies appear in the sixteenth century, but these new bourgeoisie were implicated in structures, institutions, and organizations that were substantively undeveloped in the Middle Ages. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 174 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

Related

• Capitalism correlates only tendentially with parliamentary democracy, never necessarily. (similarity 0.95)
• Capitalism has no necessary correspondence with any particular political or legal form (similarity 0.93)
• Capitalism can arise on very different political foundations without a necessary correspondence (similarity 0.92)
• Capitalism has no necessary political form but tends toward parliamentary democracy (similarity 0.90)
• Capitalists are opportunistic adapters, not the germ of a new rational order (similarity 0.83)
• Capitalism never achieved the coherence promised by an objective system (similarity 0.79)
• Commercial capital accumulation does not imply a capitalist mode of production (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Capitalism has no necessary correspondence with any particular political or legal form #corroborates (0.95) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 624
• Capitalism correlates only tendentially with parliamentary democracy, never necessarily. #corroborates (0.90)
• Capitalists are opportunistic adapters, not the germ of a new rational order #expands (0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 174