Democracy Kills: What's So Good About Having The Vote?

Yet the BBC correspondent's latest book certainly has the potential to be something comparable to The Condition Of The Working Class in England in 1844, albeit different in the scope and scale of its subject matter.

Democracy Kills: What's So Good About Having The Vote? offers an impressive collection of evidence, including interviews with people at the bottom of the capitalist pile across five continents, to show that the last 20 years of imposed liberal democratic values - usually narrowly defined as the opportunity to periodically participate in elections - has led to the deaths of millions and the impoverishment of many more.

Hawksley is especially robust in his coverage of those countries with which he has had an enduring association, most notably India, Taiwan, Argentina, Ivory Coast, Bosnia, Serbia and Sri Lanka. He also offers a sympathetic although somewhat superficial portrayal of the successes of the Cuban revolution.

Yet Hawksley is certainly no Karl Marx - the fundamental flaw in this book is its almost total decoupling of the rapacious nature of Western capitalism from the export drive behind selling its own very narrow definition of democracy, which locks in the power of supine and capitalism-friendly local elites.

He fails to fully acknowledge that the imposition of casino capitalism via the World Bank and the IMF, far from being an aid to reforming societies as he suggests, actually exacerbates existing social and economic inequalities.

The book has two further blind spots, the result of Hawksley's understandable self-denying ordnance to only comment on those countries he has actually visited.

First, no consideration is given to how capitalism is undermining liberal democracy in its own heartlands through eroding trade union rights and other aspects of civil society - let alone the relentless decline in election turnout, the elite's preferred measure of democracy.

Second, aside from Cuba, the recent successes of socialist movements in south America in offering an alternative model that offers stability and greater democratic involvement are virtually ignored.

There are merely passing references to Venezuela and Bolivia and nothing on Ecuador.

It is hard not to like a book that asks whether we'd rather live in Cuba or Haiti and clearly wants us to answer the former. But getting the correct answer to such a no-brainer question is in itself not enough.

Perhaps with the aid of other contributors the material presented by Hawksley may yet provide a comprehensive account of both the ongoing failures of global capitalism and that of its flawed export product - liberal democracy - over the last two decades.

Nonetheless this is an important book by a good journalist - perhaps it is one that Morning Star readers should give to sympathetic, but non-socialist friends as belated Christmas presents.