Date of Award
12-1991
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Political Science
First Advisor
Dr. William A. Ritchie
Second Advisor
Dr. Alan Isaak
Third Advisor
Dr. Robert Kaufman
Access Setting
Masters Thesis-Open Access
Abstract
This study utilizes contemporary and classical literature to illuminate the complexities of Western democracy. Of specific focus is American democracy and the effects that capitalism has had upon democracy in America. The achievement of democracy on the scale of the modern nation-state appears problematic even without the adversarial burdens posed by a capitalist economic consort. It emerges that American democracy is particularly compromised by its roots in liberal tradition. Forced by nature to depend upon the allocative abilities of its economic consort, democracy must endure a relationship that dramatically undermines its ideological orientation. Although American democracy is not yet in crisis, there is little doubt about the inevitability of crisis as democratic practice is increasingly sabotaged by capitalism. For democracy to prosper, capitalism must be the servant and not the master of democratic society.
Recommended Citation
Bischoff, Christopher E., "Democracy and Capitalism: The Issue Joined from Within" (1991). Masters Theses. 942.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/942