Thoughts on oligarchy and conceptual confusion

Aristotle, Robert Michels, and the bipartisan rule of a few

The concept of oligarchy is not new, but stretches back thousands of years and has taken on a number of related definitions in the ideas of political theorists and philosophers over time. Recent years have seen high-profile research from, for example, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, offering empirical support for the claim that rich corporate interests today wield dramatically disproportionate influence over U.S. government policy, compared to ordinary citizens. Studies consistently show that policies favored by powerful business interests and elites are much more likely to become the law of the land, even when these preferences conflict directly and sharply with public opinion or the preferences of non-elites. Our mainstream liberals hate nothing more than talking about this because their civic religion is to see the system, with its electoral charade, as valid and signifying something important. I don’t think that way and never could. That’s partly, but not completely, owing to the fact that I have seen the bowels of the system from the inside. There is exactly zero democracy going on in Washington, even during the best of times. The idea that our politics are democratic is like the idea that our markets are free. It is a child’s nonsense only. For almost everyone we know, the child’s nonsense is the whole point, like it’s Sunday Night Football or WWE wrestling — indeed, the media and political class readily acknowledge this. Network executives today openly acknowledge that politics is like sports and entertainment. Just the other day, Paul Begala remarked that it’s all WWE, right down to performances and fake speeches and threats. I would go even further: forget ordinary citizens.

Today, the American political system is so oligarchic and insulated from the popular masses that even many we now regard as economic elites, even most people in the top 1 percent of earners, have exactly zero real political power. This is out there in plain sight for anyone paying even a little attention (but our political and literary useful idiots are already, for example, pushing Rahm Emanuel on you). Studies of corporate influence within our politics across every dimension consistently show that most of the influence is reserved for not the 1 percent, but a still smaller super elite: “they are The One Percent of the One Percent.” Very few Americans have had any interaction with this group and almost none ever will. But they are running our political-economic system, and they are top executives and major investors, lobbyists and top-gun lawyers, and others among the ultra-elite who have direct access to legislators and senior government officials. There are at least two major groups of self-described (and often well-meaning) liberals who defend this system and refuse to name it what it is, oligarchy. The first is folks who are associated, either actually or imaginarily (what I refer to here is the online incarnation of team-rooting) with the DNC and its candidates for public office. I generally don’t think we can spend much time here, as the philosophical content of the ideas is unlikely to matter to an organization whose job it is to elect candidates.