The Powerful and the Powerless

Abstract

The transformations experienced by the world society since the early 1990s have produced new social and economic formations, causing cultures and economies to change drastically and irreversibly. As a consequence, many of the old political, social, and economic problems have become global and largely structural. In the process, the missions of both capitalism and democracy were vastly undermined, causing both systems to lose their abilities to function as intended and desired. The hijacking of democracy and capitalism in the 1980s and the precipitous decline of the middle class proves that the two major organizing principles of western societies are no longer able to function properly.