Formal political equality masks deep economic servitude that hollows out democracy

Evidence

A few months after the end of World War I, moral philosopher Zino Zini gave a lecture titled “From Citizen to Producer.” He argued that the citizen as commonly viewed in a capitalist democracy is a passive individual, “theoretically sovereign, but in fact, only so on election day; the rest of the time, he is nothing but a subject subordinated to laws and regulations, drafted and promulgated without his actual participation.” The citizen lives a political servitude founded on economic servitude: How much do our votes really count when our options are circumscribed by market dependence and wage labor? The inequality of classes within the matrix of production effectively prevents any genuinely democratic relationship between free human beings. Instead, Zini argues, we must become active producers: participating on equal terrain in the construction and change of our social reality. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 406

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends Mattei’s ‘invisible order’ thesis — citizens accept their political subordination as natural because it is grounded in economic necessity. Also contrasts with Hayek’s formalist freedom that this book likely critiques. — connects to: Neoliberal deregulation erodes democracy as politics abdicates to market pressure — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 81; Growing inequality undermines the public sphere until the political system crumbles from within. — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 104; Real political participation requires eliminating economic inequality as a cause of unequal political access. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2342 (+17 more)
• SEED: Article angle: the genealogy of ‘economic freedom’ as a contested concept — Mattei reclaiming it against the Chicago-school definition.