In the ‘Democracies,’ Capitalism was not faced with any serious menace; hence it could afford to remain comparatively calm and tolerant. But real democracy is impossible in a society that remains divided, to use Plato’s terminology, into the ‘cities of the rich’ and ‘the cities of the poor’. “So long as the state expresses a society divided into economic classes, it is always the servant of that class which owns or dominates the ownership of the instruments of production”[28]. There can, thus, be no essential change in the character of the present society without a change in its economic postulates. Otherwise, democracy becomes the handmaid of capitalism. The moneyed class, directly or indirectly, controls the legislatures, the press and publishing houses, educational institutions, and other instruments of propaganda. It exploits democracy to its own ends and ultimately reduces it to plutocracy. As Lord Bryce observes, ‘Democracy has no more persistent or insidious foe than money power.” The enemy is formidable because “he works secretly by persuasion or by deceit, rather than by force and so takes men unawares.”[29] From the old days of ‘pocket boroughs’ to the modern times of ‘lobbying’ and ‘nursing the constituencies,’ the mischievous tale of ‘capitalist democracy’ remains very much the same.
