Capitalism is not a political ideology

When people talk about political ideologies they often make the mistake of lumping capitalism in with them, but capitalism is NOT a political ideology. It is an economic system which is comfortable in all political strategies - although that doesn't mean that all political strategies are comfortable with capitalism.

The opposite of a capitalism is not communism - as many people seem to think - but is, in fact, corporatism. Of course, communism is corporatism in it's ultimate statewide incarnation - where the state is the ultimate corporation - but the essential reason corporatism exists is because of the economic system of planning where the laws of supply and demand (and, therefore, the market) are altered by over burdening businesses with regulation, inspection and interference.

Planned economies are always socialist and undemocratic so corporatism exists because of an absence of democracy and the presence of socialism - not because of capitalism. Planned economies are always authoritarian and undemocratic because the system is proven to fail - so allowing the people to have their say would result in the ejection of a government that believed in planned economy. Because of this the state must adopt an authoritarian and undemocratic approach.

But that does not mean that an authoritarian state can not have a capitalist economy. China proves that. After 50 odd years of the failure of a planned economy CHina adopted the capitalist system and the result was a booming Chinese economy, but - and this is a big but - because of the authoritarian nature of China - the nation has moved quickly from capitalist to corporatist.

In China's case this was all deliberate, but often in recent times the move to corporatism is not intentional. Globalisation is not the result of capitalism - why do people think that when capitalism existed for centuries with no prospect of globalisation which is an entirely recent phenomenon? - globalisation is the result of undemocratic institutions introducing rules, regulations and "plans" which, although usually introduced with good intentions, have the effect of stifling true market forces and opening up the way for corporatism on a global scale - and hence globalisation.

These undemocratic institutions are many fold and at all levels - from the UN and EU down through global NGO's and on to local quangos and "authorities". They interfere in the market at every level and all have one thing in common - nobody votes for them.