By the late nineteenth century, many thoughtful political commentators in Britain were viewing the prospect of mass democracy with alarm. Nineteenth-century capitalism was based upon a social organisation in which the bulk of private property and wealth ownership was concentrated in the hands of a tiny social élite, with the vast majority of the population dependent, either directly or indirectly, upon precarious waged labour. According to a political logic held by many across the political spectrum, the full enfranchisement of the working class would inevitably result in the capitalist class being quickly stripped of its wealth and power by entirely constitutional, parliamentary means. In short, capitalism and mass democracy seemed logically irreconcilable.

Yet the political cataclysm did not happen. By stages, democratic voting rights were extended until universal adult male suffrage and partial adult female suffrage were achieved in 1918, the process being completed in 1928. To be sure, there were several nervous moments along this route – notably, in the period 1918–22 and when the first minority Labour government was formed in January 1924. But capitalism survived, and the unequal ownership of private property emerged unscathed. Even in the ‘devil's decade’ of the 1930s, when several European nations had become fascist dictatorships, the stability of its democratic institutions allowed Britain to weather the economic recession with its political order largely intact. By the post-1945 period in world history capitalism and mass democracy had become synonymous.