"Most people have come to associate capitalism with the advent of
modern political democracy, on the theory that the growth of the market
freed feudal minds and bodies. But while it’s true that capitalism’s
productive power — new wealth from trade and investment, urbanization,
advances in communications — made this democracy possible, the actual
implementation of democratic reforms happened in spite of, not because
of, capitalists themselves. As many modern scholars
have argued, the roots of democratization were in the organized working
class. Though workers needed the assistance of a host of allies from
throughout society to triumph, these popular coalitions fought against
yesterday’s oligarchs to secure suffrage and push for the social
protections we take for granted today. Democratic reforms were foisted
on resistant elites, from the English and French revolutions of the 17th
and 18th centuries on to the struggles of the last."
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