Democracy Considered as a Reward for Economic Growth

The session on the state and technological modernisation consisted of a round table of eighteen middle-aged to ancient men, and an 150-strong audience with a sprinkle of long-legged blonde photographers and journalists.  Spontaneous contribution is not accepted at the Forum.  The Press has a list of all speakers  (there is no published list of all participants) both formal paper-givers and those who comment afterwards (who are timed to four minute contributions.)  Looking round the spectators just on a casual know-by-sight-or-reputation basis, this is a great pity; there are some distinguished men and women here.  But  time is allocated for 'interaction and informal discusssion' only after the sessions - it seems there is a time and place for everything.  People are restive, not used to being bridled in this fashion.

The line is priority to growth and technological development, for while democracy and its institutions are a good thing, it must be acknowledged   that there is no single model or extant type of wholly satisfactory democracy, no Holy Grail yet found and, furthermore, no kind of democracy can be permitted to thwart or hinder economic advance and the achievement of fairness and rising living standards. Sigh.

There are so many questions begged here, where do we start ? (in the proper time and place for informal discussion and interaction, not in the plenary sessions, naturally.)  Of course, those who see democracy and what it confers as desirable and to be installed only when advanced economic success  is achieved under more efficient  institutional arrangements, almost as if it were a high order good to be consumed once basic  economic global goals have been delivered, can stay perpetually in charge - in purely technical roles and with authority derived from purely efficiency-driven needs, they would say.  And they can get together in Jaroslavl, and lesser (though no less costly) meetings of minds, and reinforce to one another and to the world, the rightness of their undertakings and view of how to order the planet.

Capitalism produces initiative, entrepreneurship, innovation, trust, rewards; markets clear. And all this goes hand in glove with individualism,  personal and civil freedoms, flat authority structures and high expectations of participation in the use of state power by regular, democratic consultation.  That is, with democracy; which is at the root of economic and technological success and grows and transmutes with it.  If it is suppressed, excluded, in the name of efficiency both technical and managerial, then we lose the spontaneously produced characteristics of capitalism so successful in providing the advanced world with its high living standards  and individual fulfilment.

They  never give up, do they?  You would think they would have died of shame - the older ones -  and the younger ones have  been convinced by growing up and living under the failures of realised socialism.  But no, all that's needed is to to tweak it a bit, find a means to simulate market functioning, and then democracy and capitalism can be matched, despatched, by benevolent statism and planning.