According to investigative journalist Bruce Livesey, authoritarian capitalism is more than just wealthy people throwing their weight around — it's systemic and threatening democracy itself. cbc 
The belief capitalism and democracy always go hand-in-hand is historically inaccurate. "Capitalism is basically an economic system that can function, and has historically functioned, within the context of a number of different political systems, ranging from democratic to extremely authoritarian," explains Jacques Pauwels, a Canadian historian and political scientist.
During the Second World War, German corporations profited from the use of slave labour provided by concentration camps.
By the early 1930s, German industry and banks were pouring their money and support into the Nazi party, companies like: Siemens, Krupp, IG Farben Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank. Steel magnate Fritz Thyssen was an early supporter of the Nazi party. American corporations and banks followed suit, with Henry Ford being an open admirer of Hitler's.
Yet after the war, Western governments, with rare exception, refused to prosecute German industrialists and bankers for their financing and collusion with the Nazis.
The U.S. has always preferred authoritarian governments to ones that are democratic and open. In fact, when you look at the governments we've overthrown, in many cases they're more democratic than the governments we support. And we often replace them with governments that are harsher and more authoritarian. So if there's an image out there that we overthrow bad regimes and help democracies, history actually shows that the opposite is usually true.
Under President Yeltsin in the 90s, Russia was a much freer country. There was much greater freedom of press. And there were rival clans of oligarchs. What Mr. Putin has done is assert himself as the oligarch-in-chief and use the organs of the state to crowd out all the oligarchs who didn't come to an acceptable deal with him.
After Citizens United it became possible for money to just flood into the system. Indeed, President Barack Obama commented on the dangers of the ruling: "There aren't a lot of functioning democracies around the world that work this way. Where you basically have millionaires and billionaires bankrolling whomever they want and however they want and in some cases undisclosed. And what it means is ordinary Americans are shut out of the process."