Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Alex Tabarrok
“Many people argue that democracy is incompatible with capitalism but they differ on whether democracy will kill capitalism or whether capitalism will kill democracy. … The classical economists from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill all worried that democracy would kill capitalism. Even Marx and Engels agreed …. On the other side of the aisle we have the moderns such as Robert Reich and Joseph Stiglitz who argue in Reich’s words that Capitalism is Killing Democracy …. A third argument, consistent with the views of Hayek, Mises, Friedman and others, is that capitalism and democracy are compatible and even mutually reinforcing. Ludwig von Mises, for example, argued that ‘Liberalism must necessarily demand democracy as its political corollary.'” (10/21/25)
https://fee.org/articles/democracy-and-capitalism-are-mutually-reinforcing/