Politics & Power Quote by Lee R. Raymond

Raymond frames capitalism not as a policy choice but as civic infrastructure: markets are cast as oxygen, democracy as lungs. It is a neat piece of rhetorical judo from a corporate titan who spent decades defending ExxonMobil against regulators, environmentalists, and the idea that some public goods outrank private profit. By pairing "free economy" with "democratic political institutions", he borrows democracy's moral prestige and transfers it to deregulation. The move is subtle: if markets are "essential", then constraints on them start to look not merely inefficient but anti-democratic.

The key phrase is "fertile ground". It turns democracy into a crop that grows best in commercially friendly soil, implying that political rights are downstream from investment flows, shareholder confidence, and the discipline of competition. That story sidelines labor protections, antitrust enforcement, and climate regulation by implying they're threats to the very freedoms they claim to protect. The subtext is reassurance to elites: protect the market, and liberties will take care of themselves.

Context matters. Raymond rose during the late Cold War and the triumphal post-1989 moment when "free markets" were sold as the winning ideological package against Soviet planning. In that era, the market became a proxy for modernity and moral seriousness. Yet the line also reveals its blind spot: market strength can coexist with weakened democratic life (captured regulators, concentrated media, money-saturated elections). Raymond's formulation works because it flatters a comforting causality: prosperity first, politics second, and the people somewhere in the background.