But is the recognition available to citizens of contemporary liberal democracies "completely satisfying?" The long-term future of liberal democracy, and the alternatives to it that may one day arise, depend above all on the answer to this question. In Part V we sketch two broad responses, from the Left and the Right, respectively. The Left would say that universal recognition in liberal democracy is necessarily incomplete because capitalism creates economic inequality and requires a division of labor that ipsofacto implies unequal recognition. In this respect, a nation's abso lute level of prosperity provides no solution, because there will continue to be those who are relatively poor and therefore invis ible as human beings to their fellow citizens. Liberal democracy, in other words, continues to recognize equal people unequally.