Since the 1920s, he wrote, “the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women” had rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” an oxymoron. Thiel calls himself, as many such do, a “classical liberal”, but Daron Acemoglu argues that his ilk still has much in common with left-liberals. On his telling, by the mid-20th century democracy with liberal characteristics had amply proved its worth: blue-collar labour was generously rewarded, and there was a sense of “shared prosperity”. But now, he argues, liberal democracy is in a crisis, largely owing to the abandonment of the working class by liberalism’s “progressive” wing. In post-industrial Europe and the US, the left ceased to speak of economic class and spoke instead of identity.