The Path of Dictatorship

Conclusion

In sum, the Colombian and Mexican cases both confirm and partially contradict the classic work of Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens. As per their model, it was landed agrarian elites and an incipient bourgeoisie that were most hostile to democracy in Colombia and Mexico. However, while they assert that capitalist development increases the opportunities for democracy, in nineteenth-century Mexico and Colombia, the desire for capitalist development (and in Mexico the reality of a quite impressive capitalist expansion) resulted in the destruction of two of the most democratic republics in the nineteenth-century world. In both countries, state makers sought to rein in vibrant mid-century popular democratic cultures in order to create the conditions necessary to foment internal investment and attract foreign capital.

These cases completely contradict Friedman's model. In Mexico and Colombia, the desire for capitalism led to a combination of economic and political power to greatly limit political freedom, instead of ensuring it, as Friedman asserted. Perhaps needless to say, a similar repression of democracy would happen a century later in Pinochet's Chile, a favorite of Friedman's economic school. Likewise, Mueller theorizes a bit about how it is possible to have democracy without capitalism (and vice-versa), and how democracy might support capitalism, but he doesn't think much about why capitalists might not want, and actively seek to undermine, democracy.

On the other end of the political spectrum from Friedman, Jodi Dean argues that democracy is perfectly compatible with, and indeed promotes, capitalism, by asking, "Why does the left continue to appeal to democracy?" "Real existing constitutional democracies privilege the wealthy. As they install, extend, and protect neoliberal capitalism, they exclude, exploit, and oppress the poor…". This assertion would have been nonsensical in the late nineteenth century, when democracy (embraced by and associated with the poor) was seen as the prime threat to capitalism.

I do not want to suggest that the Colombian and Mexican cases demonstrate an incompatibility between capitalism and democracy in some regions, such as Latin America (whether due to the type of colonialism, timing of industrialization, dependency theory), and not in others, such as Europe or the United States. For the nineteenth century, it makes little sense to argue that capitalism and democracy were compatible in the North Atlantic, since democracy remained so contested and beleaguered in Europe during this time period. For the United States, the record is also not as clear as assumed. While the U.S. did not experience the extreme reversals Mexico and Colombia endured, scholars have noted how the late nineteenth century was a period that witnessed the erosion of democracy in the United States. Of course, there had long been tension between democracy and capitalism, since the northern Republic's founding. As Bender notes, "The men who went to Philadelphia were also concerned about protecting property from a covetous democracy that seemed rampant in the state legislatures". However, the contradiction became more evident after the Civil War.

H.W. Brands convincingly argues that during the Gilded Age, "after almost a century during which the tide of democracy had risen ever higher, an ebb was setting in". This democratic retreat was marked by the end of Reconstruction (and freedpeoples' demands for land and citizenship), the innumerable scandals of the post-bellum years, the machine politics that dominated urban public life, and the generally pitiful reputation and abilities of both Presidents and Congress. As in Colombia, suffrage was restricted, only mostly based on race in the United States, instead of class, as in Colombia. Francis Parkman, in the North American Review in 1878, declared, "the failure of universal suffrage". He blamed capitalism, for creating an ignorant urban poor and nefarious ideas of equality. The tension between democracy and capitalism was felt across the Americas.

A key difference, I might hypothesize, is that the capitalist system was eroding democracy in the United States, while the desire for attracting the capital to create such a system was eroding democracy in Spanish America. One was the actions of thousands of businessmen and the politicians they bribed or with whom they shared ideological sympathies, the other was the project of a relatively few politically powerful men. Thus, while in the U.S., the attack on democracy was diffuse and sometimes behind the scenes, in Spanish America it was more open and stated. Also, the U.S. did not need to radically reform its republican government to crush industrial labor and ensure the safety of the capital; its elected representatives were more than willing to do this. In Colombia and Mexico, a much more aggressive rejection of democracy took place, perhaps because popular democracy was much more vibrant before its repression while the state was weaker. While the United States could rely on internal capital, Colombia and Mexico hoped to attract foreign capital. It was precisely in the 1870s that British capital especially began to seek more foreign concessions, "and demanded even greater guarantees" for profitable returns and risk minimization. Yet the Latin American experience cannot be reduced to dependent states dancing to the tune of foreign capitalists; the decisions were made locally, and, for the most part, the restriction of democracy took place before much foreign investment.

While foreign capital is important (and would grow increasingly so), I think the similarities in the Americas are equally germane. Foreign capital also played a role in the Panic of 1873 in the United States; the subsequent long depression created political instability that began to undermine the Reconstruction's democratic possibilities. Both the U.S. and Spanish American states would use force to secure order for capital; U.S. federal and state governments did not hesitate to violently repress striking workers, such as in the Homestead Steel and American Railway Union strikes. As Brands notes, "capital would protect its prerogatives, by force if necessary". The United States, Colombia, and Mexico were all experiencing an erosion of the power of democracy; as Rockman notes for the United States, "The logic and law of business spilled over from the realm of economic exchange to organize society and its politics…".

John Markoff and Samuel Huntington track a number of "reverse waves" or "antidemocratic waves" that undid previous waves of democratization. For Huntington, the first of these reverse waves ran from 1922-1942. Markoff is much more sophisticated, but while recognizing ebbs in democracy in the nineteenth century (mostly in Europe and the United States), his first great "antidemocratic wave" is also in the 1920s. I would like to propose that the late nineteenth century was another reverse wave of democratization, not only in Latin America, but the United States as well.

With further exploration, this late nineteenth-century "reverse wave" of democracy may help illuminate the world historic relationship between capitalism (as Latin America entered into a period of export-oriented capitalist growth) and democracy (in a nineteenth century in which most of the world's democratic republics were in Latin America). However, until the democratic cultures of nineteenth-century Spanish America are recognized by those interested in the history of capitalism, this exploration will not happen. Given that many explanations for the success or failure of democracies rely on ideas of democratic culture or legacies, ignoring Spanish America's own rich democratic tradition seems fatal to these supposed explanations. My own brief conclusion is clear: this study refutes those who insist that the relationship between democracy and capitalism is always positive and reinforces theorists who stress the contradictions between capitalism and democracy. At least in late nineteenth-century Mexico and Colombia, striving for capitalism worked to actively undermine, erode, and even erase a democratic political culture. Capitalists, politicians, and letrados thought democracy caused too much disorder and gave popular groups too much influence over the state; the needs of capital, not of voters and popular soldiers, should be paramount.