Wallerstein on Liberalism and Democracy

* Article: Immanuel Wallerstein, Libéralisme & démocratie: frères ennemis? AGONE, 1999, no 22, pp. 153-174.

URL = http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/WALLERSTEIN_Immanuel/liberalisme_et_democratie/liberalisme_et_democratie_texte.html

Summary

Michel Bauwens, reading notes of 2004:

The article points out the two contradictory drives of the representatives of capital

   - 1) the economic drive to accumulate capital
   - 2) the socio-psychological drive to secure inheritance by instituting 'rent'

The 19th cy was marked by 3 political forces:

   - the Conservatives, the party order, opposed to the French Revolution and Napoleon
   - the Liberals, the party of movement, sympathetic to the Girondin phase of the French Revolution
   - the 'Democrats', left liberals who would morph into the socialists after 1948

After 1848, the scared liberals would:

   - 1) turn to the right, beng more afraid of radicalism
   - 2) allow concessions to pacify popular demands
   - 3) adopt democratic discourses