Abstract

In Democracy against capitalism, Ellen Wood defends two important theses: capitalism inaugurates a new kind of exploitation and extortion of the working class that is not directly dependent on state extortion; this makes it possible for some political rights to be extended to a larger number of people through the establishment of “representative democracy”. On the other hand, workers' political participation is limited: by identifying democracy with political representation, the ruling classes have created an illusion of popular political participation that is, in fact, extremely limited, or almost nil. In this article, we intend to show some of the main limits of representative democracy, and how this “democracy” atomizes citizens and keeps them away from effective political participation. For this, we will use other influential theorists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Bernard Manin, Hanna Pitkin, Noam Chomsky.