| | The artificial division of the world into 'capitalist' and 'socialist' does not correspond to the reality of contemporary world development; the real struggle is between the US, the EC and Japan, as the world is becoming increasingly divided into three or more blocs. But nothing can ensure independence from the process of world economic development and history: neither 'policy' nor 'ideology' . For all regimes, democratic and non-democratic alike, it is dependence within the global system which establishes the framework for policy and political practice. Even the 'choice of the people' is determined by economics. The development of political social democracy in the West has been much less the cause than the consequence of success within the capitalist world-economy. As long as the debt burden continues and mounts, the debt-ridden economies of the South will suffer and their democratic development be prevented or threatened. The same is valid for Eastern Europe's new or aspiring democracies. But freedom of the market does not equal democratic freedom: on the contrary, in the market it is 'one dollar, one vote' , so that 'many dollars means many votes and no dollar - no vote' . In the absence of economic power or electoral political democracy, the people of Eastern Europe were obliged to organise themselves in grassroots social movements of participant democracy. In the South also, the economic crisis and lack of electoral political democracy obliges the people to organise and mobilise among themselves to create a civil democracy. Discusses: Free Market Capitalism vs Socialism; Electoral Political Democracy for All?; Freedom of the Market - Democratic Freedom? LDP (Liberal Democratic Party), ELG (Export-led Growth), ISI (Import substitution), ILG (Import-led Growth) |
