Capitalism and democracy are not compatible; they are inversely correlated.

Firstly, the combination of capitalism and democracy was supposed to bring prosperity and progress to all nations that adopted them. For a brief time after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when globalisation went into overdrive, this seemed a believable story.

The financial crisis brought this collective delusion to an end in the global North. The generation that came of age during the crisis of 2008 has had to adjust to the reality that they are unlikely to be better off than their parents.

But even before the financial crisis, the Asian crisis of the late 1990s showed many in the developing world that opening up one’s markets to international capital could be a recipe for disaster. Some combination of authoritarianism and market controls seemed like the natural response.

Secondly, the progress brought by democracy and capitalism was supposed to give rise to yet more democracy. Checks and balances would put an end to corruption. An educated population would choose the ‘right’ leaders. And rather than campaigning based on outdated ideologies, those leaders would compete for votes by appealing to the ‘median voter’, bringing moderation to previously divided societies.

Instead, corruption is on the rise, ideology is back, and people keep picking the ‘wrong’ leaders. Perhaps the creation of societies so stratified that the ruling class can barely comprehend the concerns of ordinary voters was not such a foolproof recipe for democracy after all.

Some slightly more thoughtful commentators accept that this astonishingly simplistic reading might not capture the whole story. In a new podcast series for the Financial Times, Martin Wolf seems genuinely concerned about the future of democracy—and accepts a small part of the blame for himself and his colleagues.

The problem, Wolf seems to believe, is that neoliberals, in all their zeal for the end of history, spread free markets too far and too fast. The shock therapy of the 1990s was not coupled with measures to alleviate the social and economic tensions that came with it.

The argument is reminiscent of that put forward by progressive political theorist Karl Polanyi, who believed that capitalist free markets spread too quickly for societies to adapt. Those whose lives and ideals were threatened by the emergence of this brave new world would push back against the encroachment of the ‘market society’—often supporting authoritarian strongmen to do so.

Progressive liberals like Wolf tend to believe that the solution to the problem will come in some form of regulated capitalism. Often, these commentators are Keynesians who advocate a return to the social democratic consensus of the post-war period.

But this kind of nostalgia is no healthier than that evinced by Trump fans longing for a return to a world before the spread of ‘gender ideology’. There is, after all, a reason why the Keynesian consensus broke down.

As soon as economic growth slowed, the latent battle between workers and bosses that had been bubbling away below the surface suddenly exploded into the political mainstream. Without excess profits extracted from the rest of the world to keep this conflict under wraps, there was only one choice for the ruling class: all-out war on workers.

For this reason, despite the fact that it is blindingly obvious that capitalist democracies require some measures to reduce inequality while tackling climate breakdown, the progressive capitalist vision for the future stands no chance of being implemented.

There’s only one conclusion left to draw—that capitalism and democracy were never really all that compatible to begin with.