Aristotle's view only gets
mentioned in passing here, so I wanted to elaborate a bit on it along the way to illuminating the rest of the argument.
Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith and Karl Marx grounded their philosophies in the understanding that there is a natural antagonism between the rich and the rest of us. The interests of the rich are not our interests. The truths of the rich are not our truths. The lives of the rich are not our lives. Great wealth not only breeds contempt for those who do not have it but it empowers oligarchs to pay armies of lawyers, publicists, politicians, judges, academics and journalists to censure and control public debate and stifle dissent.
Aristotle worries that the rich will hire actual armies, as a matter of fact. But he also thinks that both democracy and oligarchy are based on errors. From
Politics 5:
Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal. Oligarchy is based on the notion that those who are unequal in one respect are in all respects unequal; being unequal, that is, in property, they suppose themselves to be unequal absolutely. The democrats think that as they are equal they ought to be equal in all things; while the oligarchs, under the idea that they are unequal, claim too much, which is one form of inequality. All these forms of government have a kind of justice, but, tried by an absolute standard, they are faulty; and, therefore, both parties, whenever their share in the government does not accord with their preconceived ideas, stir up revolution.
So what Aristotle is calling (small-d) democrats are right about one thing, but wrong about something else; and being wrong, they try to overthrow the government in order to establish an equality of property to go with the equality of rights. This is the kind of movement that Bernie Sanders is leading; we currently are calling this "democratic socialism."
But what Aristotle is calling oligarchs are also both right and wrong. They are right that they ought to be secure in their property, and not just have the mob empowered to vote themselves the right to take it away. They are wrong, though, in thinking that their superior wealth entails also a superior fitness to lead. Mike Bloomberg is the clearest exemplar of this mistake, and though defeated himself, he is employing his wealth to try to buy armies (of political activists, lawyers, etc) to ensure that his vision is secured by the powers of government. They also buy private security armies, even as they move to disarm the people; in Aristotle's day, sometimes those mercenary forces actually took over the state. For now, the movement simply creates a private right of self defense available only to the rich, while leaving the people disarmed and defenseless against both the power of the state and the criminals (from whom the state offers protection, perhaps, in return for deepened submission). Joe Biden is at this point merely a figurehead for the oligarchs.
Once you understand the sides, we can proceed to the causes of revolution:
Revolutions in democracies are generally caused by the intemperance of demagogues, who either in their private capacity lay information against rich men until they compel them to combine (for a common danger unites even the bitterest enemies), or coming forward in public stir up the people against them....
There are two patent causes of revolutions in oligarchies: (1) First, when the oligarchs oppress the people, for then anybody is good enough to be their champion, especially if he be himself a member of the oligarchy...
(2) Of internal causes of revolutions in oligarchies one is the personal rivalry of the oligarchs, which leads them to play the demagogue. Now, the oligarchical demagogue is of two sorts: either (a) he practices upon the oligarchs themselves (for, although the oligarchy are quite a small number, there may be a demagogue among them, as at Athens Charicles' party won power by courting the Thirty, that of Phrynichus by courting the Four Hundred); or (b) the oligarchs may play the demagogue with the people.
We can consider whether Sanders is a demagogue of the democratic type, of a demagogue who is a member of the oligarchy of the 2(b) type. In either case, as Aristotle warned, the rest of the oligarchy has firmly united against him. It was clear since before Super Tuesday that defeating Sanders was at least as important to the oligarchy as defeating Trump; probably much more important, since they know they can survive Trump but may not survive Sanders.
Aristotle ponders a third type of government, which he calls aristocracy -- government by the virtuous, he means, rather than by the well-born -- but we are so far away from that form that we need not consider it here.
So let us return to the article about the war between the democrats and the oligarchs, as it is playing out today.
The oligarchs are happy to talk about race. They are happy to talk about sexual identity and gender. They are happy to talk about patriotism. They are happy to talk about religion. They are happy to talk about immigration. They are happy to talk about abortion. They are happy to talk about gun control. They are happy to talk about cultural degeneracy or cultural freedom. They are not happy to talk about class. Race, gender, religion, abortion, immigration, gun control, culture and patriotism are issues used to divide the public, to turn neighbor against neighbor, to fuel virulent hatreds and antagonisms. The culture wars give the oligarchs, both Democrats and Republicans, the cover to continue the pillage. There are few substantial differences between the two ruling political parties in the United States. This is why oligarchs like Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg can switch effortlessly from one party to the other.
It isn't clear to me that Trump qualifies as a member of the oligarchy in good standing. He is perhaps a 2a type: a demagogue who is practicing on the other oligarchs. But he is so firmly opposed by the members of the so-called Deep State, as well as the rich, that I wonder if he isn't a kind of democrat himself. The objections to his crassness, vulgarity, ugliness of the design of his buildings and his products, these sound like class-based objections: the wealthy and established class sneering at the '
Nouveau riche,' whose manners are unrefined and whose wealth was too recently earned to be respectable. Certainly he is a demagogue, but like Sanders it is debatable which sort he is. In any case, he is an enemy of the established oligarchy, which draws its wealth especially from selling America's advantages for their personal profit. They seek cheap labor through globalization, or through heavy immigration, and through trade deals that benefit their corporations at the expense of the American people. Trump is preying on them, though whether as a democrat or as a 2(a) oligarch is debatable.
Nevertheless they and their fortunes will survive him, even if he succeeds in rebuilding American advantages.
Donald Trump may be a narcissist and a con artist, but he savages the oligarchic elite in his long-winded speeches to the delight of his crowds. He, like Bernie Sanders, speaks about the forbidden topic — class. But Trump, though an embarrassment to the oligarchs, does not, like Sanders, pose a genuine threat to them. Trump will, like all demagogues, incite violence against the vulnerable, widen the cultural and social divides and consolidate tyranny, but he will leave the rich alone. It is Sanders whom the oligarchs fear and hate.
There is a great deal more, which you can read if you are interested in the argument as it has developed so far. These are the choices before us; although after today's primaries, it may well be that we are left with a simpler choice. The oligarchs want to recapture all the levers of power; they are sure their superiority in wealth and power implies their superiority, and their fitness to rule over us and tell us how to live our lives. There are no better options on the table, not at least without the kind of revolution that Aristotle warns is likely to come out of this dynamic.
