WEBVTT - What Is an Oligarchy (and Are We One)? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.080 Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey, brain Stuff, 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:11.280 Lorn bog Obama here. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:13.960 who again is running for the Democratic nomination for president, 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:17.040 proclaimed in a twenty nineteen speech to sixteen thousand supporters 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:22.360 in San Francisco, we say no to oligarchy. Sanders, who 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:25.040 warns that billionaires are buying elections and exerting too much 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:28.400 power over the government, refers to oligarchies frequently. But he's 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:30.760 not the only one around the web. But you'll see 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:34.240 places ranging from Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia to Brazil 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:39.000 and even Hong Kong described as oligarchies. Seventeen Salon article 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:41.480 even warned of the growing power of a global uber 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:46.159 oligarchy comprised of wealthy, superpowerful figures ranging from financiers to 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:49.040 rock stars. And the concept isn't just owned by the 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:52.239 left either. President Donald Trump may not have used the 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:55.320 same terminology, but the billionaire businessman rose to power in 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:57.880 part by railing against the elites that he accused of 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:02.320 disenfranchising ordinary Americans. If you're not a political science major, 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.360 you may be wondering what exactly is an oligarchy anyway, 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:07.800 and do we really have one in the United States. 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:11.520 We spoke with Braun form Sano, the William T. Bryan 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:14.240 Shair of American History and Professor Emeritus of History at 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.040 the University of Kentucky. He's written a couple of books 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:20.679 on the subject American oligarchy, The Permanent Political Class, and 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:24.959 Plutocracy in America. How increasing inequality destroys the middle class 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:29.200 and exploits the poor. Formisano explained, an oligarchy is a 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.319 combination of wealth and power and often tends to close 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:36.600 off access to its ranks, pulling up the ladder. Oligarchy, 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:39.440 from the ancient Greek word meaning few, is a concept 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.319 that goes back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who used 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.040 it to describe a society governed by select few, wealthy 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:47.960 or aristocratic people, as opposed to rule by a single 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:50.480 monarch or a democracy in which the great mass of 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:55.120 people of humble means holds control. Aristotle actually didn't favor 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:58.240 either oligarchy or democracy. He preferred a sort of half 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:00.280 decaff cup of Joe, in which a middle group of 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:04.760 moderately wealthy citizens controlled the reins. In the early nineteen hundreds. 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:08.440 Philosopher Rubert Michelle's came up the Iron Law of oligarchy. 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:11.120 It holds that any organization or society, even one that 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.840 espouses democratic ideals of popular rule, inevitably will devolve into 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:17.239 oligarchic rule, in which a few people take most of 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.000 the power, in part because rank and file members tend 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.560 to want someone to tell them what to do. In America, 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:27.520 Sanders isn't the first politician to be concerned about oligarchy. 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:30.240 Fear that an entrenched elite would seize power dates back 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:32.920 to the error when the nation was founded. John Adams, 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:35.400 who became the second U S President, in particular, saw 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:39.320 it as a potential menace. We spoke with Luke Mayville, 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:41.440 author of the book John Adams and the Fear of 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:45.520 American Oligarchy. He said, our popular history paints us as 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:49.680 a revolutionary society that overthrew monarchy, but revolution era America 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.280 was also full of animosity towards anything resembling formal nobility 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:56.840 or aristocratic privilege. This animosity made its way into the U. 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.400 S Constitution in the form of the nobility clause of 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:02.600 Article one, which prohibits the federal government from granting titles 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:06.360 of nobility. What made Adams unique was a systematic manner 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:09.240 in which he theorized about oligarchy and documented the threat 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:14.760 that oligarchy had posed throughout history. Mayville continued relatively early 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:17.560 in his adult life. Adams was struck by the disproportionate 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:20.640 influence enjoyed by men of wealth and illustrious lineage, but 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:22.880 the record shows that he became much more fearful of 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.799 oligarchy during his long sojourn as diplomat in Europe in 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:29.280 the late seventeen seventies and early seventeen eighties. In the 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:31.880 Old World, he became a careful observer of the power 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:34.760 that went hand in hand with family, lineage, physical beauty, 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:38.160 and especially wealth. When he compared these observations of the 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:40.480 Old world to conditions in the New World, he saw 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:44.720 more similarities than differences. But Adams didn't exactly see the 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:47.240 world the same way as does Sanders, for example, or 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:50.800 Senator Elizabeth Warren, another presidential candidate who was concerned about 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:53.640 the concentration of wealth and power. Because Adams worried about 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:56.520 rule by ordinary citizens as well, almost as much as 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:59.720 he worried about oligarchy. He thought that giving everyone the 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:02.560 right to vote would inevitably lead to all currently held 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:06.360 private property being divvied up and redistributed. He believed in 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:08.760 a balance between the power of the wealthy few and 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:11.960 the organized power of the lower classes, something perhaps it 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:16.599 can to Aristotle's concept of a mixed ruling class. Oligarchies 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:19.400 can develop in societies for several reasons. In a country 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:22.200 with a monarchy or dictatorship, if a leader becomes too 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:25.560 weak or incompetent rule, the strata of powerful people under 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.120 the leader may start to siphon away his authority and 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:30.720 ultimately may replace him with a puppet or else one 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.120 of their own members. It's also possible for an elite, say, 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:37.080 for example, super wealthy business moguls, to take control of 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:39.520 a society because they're good at getting things done, whether 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:41.320 or not those things are in the best interests of 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:45.480 everybody else. And there's also oligarchy by default, in which 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:48.960 a democracy essentially withers because ordinary people allow an elite 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:51.560 to take over because it's easier than staying informed and 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.760 grappling with complexities of governing. The question of whether the 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:59.080 US is turning into an oligarchy, or perhaps already is one, 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.479 has become a subjective heated debate back In an analysis 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:06.720 out of Princeton and Northwestern University, studied one thousand, seven 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.800 hundred and seventy nine different policy issues and concluded that 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:13.000 economic elites and groups representing business interests had a lot 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.240 of influence upon US government policy, while ordinary citizens and 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:20.000 interest groups representing them held a little sway. They didn't 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:23.560 actually use the term oligarchy, though news media headlines summarizing 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:28.200 their work did, but several other scholars published rebuttals arguing 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:30.839 that either the masses and the elites didn't really disagree 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:33.440 that much about policy choices, or that when they did, 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:38.520 the masses usually prevailed. Public opinion though, suggests that most 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.960 people think of the U S As oligarchic, even if 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:45.000 they don't call it that. In seen poll, sevent of 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:47.600 Americans said that people like them have too little influence 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:50.720 in Washington, and two percent believed that wealthy people had 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:54.320 too much power over the government here in the U S. 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.480 Foremisano said, it's not a matter of restrictions, but more 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:00.359 closing of opportunity and diminishing chances for the middle and 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:04.479 lower classes. Even some billionaires worried that the nation's rising 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:08.919 income inequalities unsustainable and may endangerr capitalism's future, even if 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:11.200 they're not quite ready to give up all their influence. 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:18.839 Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Tiger and produced 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:21.320 by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:23.479 Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:25.919 of other powerful topics, visit our home planet, how stuff 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.640 Works dot com, and for more podcasts for my heart radio, 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:31.479 visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:32.560 listen to your favorite shows.