Does "democracy" really ever exist?

Historically, democracy never seems to have lasted more than 500 years at the most. It always gets dominated by the economy or military. It seems more and more, as well, that power is becoming concentrated on finance as never before. It may be that in not long (it's happening already) we'll see a serious power-shift into something of a corporate kleptocracy.
But back to the point, is it ever really possible to have a lasting 'democracy' where the wishes of a majority are respected and observed?
I'm thinking, increasingly, not. To me, late 19th/20th century parliamentary democracy resulted more due to the dilution of stronger dictatorial powers into an elected 'representative' body than one that is truly representative.

As long as we have capital, it can be expected that bourgeousie democracy will collapse under its own weight, with terrible reactionary movements in its wake (e.g. 1930s/40s fascism, Brazil and other south american governments where POPULARLY ELECTED governments have been kicked out due to the financial interests of foreign powers and the [financially] ruling classes. Long live DIRECT democracy. Long live the honourable intentions and ideas of Lenin (not marx... He was tripping, he hadn't realised 19th century industrialism was a temporary phase and that things would get better first, before sliding into hell). Long live communism!

No direct democracy don't exist.
But thats the point, if everyone ruled it would be majority dictatorship, and no rigths for the minority(like killing of dissenters, minority groups, expoiting etc).
That's why we have representative democracy or a republic, i think the last is the best option with checks and balances(to bad USA let bush remove some of them).
Read Federalist Papers 10.

And yes Plato was a kind of stupid with the philosopher kings and the republic. Aristotels even said so.
He did make good science but was not a good political philosopher. But some say the republic was not a practical example, just a "perfect" example that could not be made in real life(the philosopher king would just become a dictator in real life), to judge how to make a practical system.
And it's this system that we have to have, like it or not Capitalism and Democracy is just the most practical systems we have now.
And dicatorship and communism is tyrrany and just sucks.