Power, Control, Inequality, and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century

Jayati Ghosh

It is a signal honour—indeed, something so precious as to be almost terrifying—to be asked to deliver a lecture in memory of Robert Heilbroner. Like so many of my generation, his book The Worldly Philosophers served as one of my first introductions to the ideas of economics and, since then, my reading of his many (always pithy and elegant but also profound and incisive) works has remained essential to my own education and understanding. I cannot claim to approach anything like the long historical sweep, wide breadth, and great depth of his analysis. But his example has inspired me to be ambitious, if only in terms of the questions to ask, and I can only hope that my attempt at the answers provides some marginal insights.

My questions are: What is the nature of the capitalism we are experiencing today, and how does it relate to democracy? How much of this can be traced to purely market forces, and how do these interact with power?

It is not generally considered effective to provide the punchline first, but even so, let me outline my basic answer in broad strokes. I believe that capitalism has always been dependent on the state, it is fundamentally antithetical to democracy, it [undermines] the ability of the people to express themselves freely and to have a say in all decisions that affect them. It is an evolutionary process in which the very logic of capitalism undermines democracy.

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