Democracy Against Capitalism?!

Since the inception of the bourgeois-capitalist society there is a broad socio-theoretical debate about the relationship between capitalism and democracy. In the centre of this debate have been questions of the social form of individual and social existences of the individual (possissive individualism), the relationship between politics and economy, the tension between a "civilising influence of capital" (Marx) on the one side and the destuction of the social on the other side.

Nowadays there is a renewed debate on the end of capitalism (Wallerstein et al.).

The paper reconstructs relevant leitmotifs and figures of argumentation of this rich debate. Secondly, it tries to analyse the consequences of the formdetermination (Formbestimmtheit) of capital (Marx) for possibilities of democracy in everyday life and different societal institutions connecting this with questions of participation.