John Keane, democracy Field Notes, The Conversation 16 July 2012.

 ‘No bourgeois, no democracy’ is a formula made famous during the 1960s by the American scholar Barrington Moore Jr. It’s still frequently quoted in the academic literature. When explaining the connections between modern parliamentary democracy and market capitalism, some scholars, journalists and politicians even regard it as a ‘law’ founded on solid statistical evidence.

The formula has old roots. A most interesting and still-relevant version is found in Joseph Schumpeter’s classic Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, published exactly 60 years ago this month. When re-reading it recently, I was struck by its daring rhetoric. ‘History clearly confirms’, wrote Schumpeter, ‘modern democracy is a product of the capitalist process.’ Generalising from the special case of Britain and the Low Countries, he noted how the early modern property-owning bourgeoisie, unlike previous classes, imagined their interests were ‘best served by being left alone’. The bourgeoisie was a class whose identity depended upon freeing property from controls based on tradition, church and monarchy. Contemptuous of cramps on its own power, the bourgeoisie favoured restraints upon others, especially those classes (the aristocracy) that had taken refuge in state structures. The early bourgeoisie had parliamentary democracy in its veins. Hence its attraction to civil and political freedoms, periodic elections and constitutional government.

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