关键词: 积累的社会结构, 民主政治, 新自由主义, 民粹主义

Abstract: The recent years have witnessed in the Western capitalist countries the repeated “failures” of democratic politics which is regarded as institutionally superior. Therefore, we need to reexamine the nature, functions and limits of the capitalist democratic politics. The capitalist democratic politics, despite its historical progressiveness, is fundamentally the best political shell that maintains the capitalist exploitation system. From the perspective of the social structure of accumulation theory, democratic politics is nothing but one of the institutions in a specific social structure serving capital accumulation. Since the implementation of the neoliberal accumulation mode, capital, in an effort to recover its profits, has controlled national policies by means of democratic politics, resulting in its continuously weakened functions. This explains the various types of political chaos in the Western countries in recent years. Such chaos shows the predicament of the neoliberal accumulation mode in the political domain following its failure in the economic field. The future evolution of the capitalist democratic politics depends on the specific form of a new social structure of accumulation.

Key words: social structure of accumulation, democratic politics, neoliberalism, populism