Today we are going through a new phase of alliance between the capitalist spirit and the warlike and illiberal spirit, which is leaving the democracies of the 20th century behind in favor of populist, nationalist, and protectionist leader-cracies.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on January 3, 2026
What is the relationship between the spirit of capitalism and the spirit of peace, democracy, and freedom? It is ambivalent and ambiguous. To understand this, we must bear in mind a fundamental fact: at the heart of the capitalist system there is a hard core that lives and grows guided by a single objective: the rational maximization of profits and ever-increasing returns. For the major global players, anything that does not increase profits and income is just a constraint to be circumvented or loosened, including environmental, social, and fiscal constraints. Everything else is just a means to this single end.
Among the means used by capitalism, there may also be democracy, the free market, and peace, but they are not necessary. The spirit of capitalism and capitalists is pragmatic, and so if there is democracy and peace in a region of the planet, they use peace and democracy for their business; but as soon as the political climate changes, they change their language, allies, and means, and use wars, dictatorships, tariffs, populists, and populism to continue pursuing their sole purpose. And if some great economic power sees opportunities for greater profits in war and undemocratic scenarios, it has no qualms about promoting that change, because, it bears repeating, the profound nature of this capitalism is neither peace, nor democracy, nor the free market, but only profits and income. Yesterday, and today.
Let us think, for a great historical example, of the advent of fascism in Italy. We would not have had twenty years of fascism without the decision of the Italian industrial and financial elites (from Agnelli to Pirelli) to use that group of thugs to protect themselves from the ‘red danger’ of communism. That Italian capitalism (most of it) had no qualms about abandoning democracy, freedom, and the free market and promoting the emergence of the fascist regime. In 1933, Mussolini said: “Today we bury economic liberalism.” If and when necessary, the spirit of capitalism becomes the opposite of the spirit of democracy, and ends up coinciding with the warlike spirit of conquest. Because even the market is one of the means that capitalism sometimes uses, if and when it best serves the interests of capitalists.
Today, we are going through a new phase of alliance between the capitalist spirit and the warlike and illiberal spirit, which is leaving the democracies of the 20th century behind in favor of populist, nationalist, and protectionist leadercracies. Yesterday, the fears were those of the “reds” (which still remain on the horizon in the West), today they are those of immigration, overly rapid globalization, climate change (which is responded to by denying it), and the impoverishment of the middle class. Those who love peace, democracy, and the civil market must know that very difficult years are on the horizon, and we must equip ourselves immediately for strong cultural resistance.
Photo credit: © Fabiano Fiorin / MSA Archive
