Has Democracy Exhausted Its Potential?

That uncomfortable question haunts political thinkers across the world today. What was once celebrated as the triumph of people’s power now appears to be little more than a cover for the consolidation of monopoly capitalism. The result is stark: resources and power are being hoarded by a few, while the vast majority is left with little more than an illusion of choice.

Lenin’s century-old warning that democracy under capitalism would serve as a mask for the interests of the powerful has never felt more prescient. On paper, democracy still thrives. One can see citizens vote, parties campaign, parliaments debate. Yet beneath these rituals, democracy has been hollowed out.

As political theorist Sheldon Wolin observed, we are drifting toward inverted totalitarianism, where corporations and governments merge into a seamless machine that neutralizes dissent while pretending to uphold democratic ideals. The façade remains; the substance has vanished. It is merely an instrument to legitimize capitalist greed of very few avaricious souls.

Take the United States, where the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders—arguably the only mainstream candidate in decades who openly challenged corporate power—were effectively neutralized by his own party establishment. The message was clear: challenges to entrenched wealth and monopoly are not permissible within the bounds of acceptable democracy.

Or look to India, where the rise of corporate titans like Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani has been accompanied by political consolidation. The lines between business and governance blur to the point where policies are tailored not for citizens but for conglomerates. The largest democracy and the oldest democracy stand as case studies in how wealth increasingly dictates political destiny.

It is telling that names like Elon Musk or Ambani are spoken of with the kind of reverence once reserved for heads of state. They command not only industries but also governments, with their decisions rippling across borders.

Economist Thomas Piketty has shown that wealth concentration today rivals that of the 19th-century Gilded Age. Yet the power of today’s billionaires is far more entrenched. Unlike the tycoons of a century ago, today’s moguls do not merely purchase influence; they write the rules, set global norms, and, in some cases, substitute themselves for public institutions.

When governments race to accommodate the interests of billionaires in fields like space exploration, artificial intelligence, and digital communications, it is hard to argue that sovereignty resides with the people. Accumulation of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands is no longer an exception—it is the defining political reality of our time.

The contradictions of democracy are even sharper when viewed internationally. Prominent democracies—especially the U.S.—have often been quick to side with dictatorships in the developing world whenever it suited their strategic or economic interests. This double standard exposes democracy as more of a geopolitical tool than a universal value.

Pakistan is perhaps the clearest example. Military rulers—from Ayub Khan to Pervez Musharraf—found their regimes legitimized and supported not by the will of the people but by Western powers that claimed to champion democracy. The Cold War, the War on Terror, and regional rivalries all provided convenient justifications for democratic states to back authoritarian regimes abroad.

Thus, people’s will and its expression through democratic systems is a farce. Nor do the double standards stop there. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, widely seen as one of the most ruthless leaders in modern politics, is so to say democratically elected. He continues to enjoy the overt backing of major democracies despite presiding over catastrophic assaults on Gaza and the daily suffering of Palestinians.

Israeli forces strike where they choose, jeopardizing international peace, while much of the democratic world offers cover rather than accountability. The irony is glaring: a state acting with impunity abroad, while being shielded under the language of democracy.

This is not the first time the contradiction has played out. For decades, Western democracies lent tacit and material support to apartheid South Africa, justifying ties with a brutally exclusionary regime in the name of strategic interests. Governments were reluctant to act, but global grassroots solidarity—the boycotts, divestment campaigns, cultural sanctions, and the moral pressure exerted by millions of ordinary citizens worldwide—eventually forced a shift in policy.

The lesson is unmistakable: when democratic governments fail to uphold their professed values, it is often people’s movements that bend the arc of history toward justice.

Today, as Gaza burns under bombardment and Palestinians endure dispossession, the question is whether the world will again allow geopolitical expediency to eclipse moral clarity—or whether civil societies across the globe will summon the determination that helped end apartheid.

The malaise is global. In Sri Lanka, citizens poured into the streets in 2022 against leaders perceived to have mismanaged the economy while shielding elites from accountability. Bangladesh has seen multiple cycles of elections overshadowed by accusations of authoritarianism and corruption. Nepal’s fragile democratic experiment is marred by instability and elite capture. Indonesia, often hailed as a democratic success story in Southeast Asia, faces deepening concerns about oligarchic politics.

Meanwhile, in the developed world, the crisis wears a different mask. Populist leaders in Europe and the United States channel public frustration not against monopoly power, but against immigrants and minorities. Fear replaces solidarity; scapegoating substitutes for justice.

On September 13, Tommy Robinson, a known right-wing activist, gathered more than 100,000 people in London to protest against immigrants and called for them to be sent back to the countries of their origin. That has become a new normal in the developed world.

Hannah Arendt’s warning in *The Origins of Totalitarianism* echoes loud: when democratic institutions fail to deliver dignity and equality, resentment becomes fertile ground for exclusion and authoritarian tendencies.

This is a moment of reckoning. If democracy is no more than a platform for monopolies to perform their power, then it has already failed. But history offers another path.

Democracy has survived crises before—from the robber barons of the Gilded Age to the authoritarian temptations of the 20th century. It was rescued every time by popular mobilization: labor unions, civil rights movements, anti-colonial struggles.

As political theorist Chantal Mouffe has argued, democracy can be reinvented—reborn as a politics of the people, not corporations. That requires moving beyond the myth that elections alone equal democracy. Democracy must be participatory, not performative; redistributive, not extractive. It must empower citizens to shape decisions, hold elites accountable, and resist the monopolization of resources and institutions.

The challenge is formidable, but the alternatives are grimmer still. If citizens resign themselves to democracy’s decline, monopoly power will harden into a new aristocracy.

To resist this, three steps are vital:

**First, grassroots organizing:** Social movements, unions, community groups, and citizen coalitions must rebuild the culture of democratic participation from below. Change has rarely come from elites; it is won by ordinary people demanding dignity.

**Second, global regulation of monopolies:** Unchecked wealth accumulation is not just a national issue. In a world of borderless finance and technology, international cooperation is essential to tax the ultra-rich, regulate corporations, and prevent the capture of public goods by private hands.

**Third, strengthening democratic institutions:** Parliaments, courts, and media must be shielded from corporate capture and political manipulation. Independent oversight and citizen-led accountability mechanisms can help restore credibility to institutions that have lost public trust.

The choice is clear. Either democracy remains a hollow ritual serving monopoly interests, or it is reclaimed as the true expression of people’s will. The hour is late, but not beyond redemption.

As the struggle against apartheid once proved, when people organize across borders and demand accountability, even the most entrenched systems of injustice can be forced to change.

Democracy will either be reclaimed by the people—or it will cease to be democracy.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/1345117-democracy-at-crossroadsfrom-peoples-power-to-monopolys-plaything