Billionaires to Trillionaires
Billionaires are boring.
Billionaires are boring. Who will be the world’s first trillionaire? Jeff Bezos? Elon Musk? Maybe a surprise underdog? Cast your bets! If you can bet on the presidential election, why not this rat race? Oh, you can’t bet on the election? Well, maybe you can soon.
Oxfam says we’ll have the answer within a decade. Since 2020, the world’s five wealthiest men have doubled their fortunes, while almost 5 billion people have been made poorer. “We are witnessing the beginnings of a decade of division, with billions of people shouldering the economic shockwaves of pandemic, inflation, and war, while billionaires’ fortunes boom,” said Oxfam interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar: “No corporation or individual should have this much power over our economies and our lives.”
Like mass shootings, news about staggering wealth inequality has little to no shock value in the United States. In a country where a substantial majority thinks the political process is “dominated by special interests, flooded with campaign cash, and mired in partisan warfare,” few are surprised to learn that the rich are thriving and the poor are suffering.
Oxfam offers several ways to reduce inequality. Governments “should ensure the universal provision of healthcare and education, and explore publicly-delivered goods and public options in sectors from energy to transportation.” In addition, monopolies should be broken up, a universal living wage should be provided, the rich should be taxed, and the number of employee-owned businesses should be increased.
There are three perspectives on the American left: electoralist, socialist, and democratic republican. Each has a different definition of democracy, a different stance toward the U.S. Constitution, and a different idea of political agitation (the ideas presented to the public to get them politically active).
The “electoralist” perspective says democracy is the ability to vote. The U.S. is more or less democratic, and the best strategy is to work through the three branches of government to enact progressive laws. Political agitation should consist of concrete demands for improving people’s lives through electoral campaigns and legislation. The best response to Oxfam’s report is to support politicians who will fight for legislation that addresses these pressing issues, such as the Green New Deal, Medicare For All, and the Third Reconstruction Act.
The socialist perspective scoffs at the electoralists for being naive and insufficiently radical. Enough with the law and “bourgeois democracy.” The state is the managerial committee of the bourgeoisie and will never pass any legislation interfering with capital accumulation. Political agitation should develop “socialist consciousness” by telling people about the absurd wealth discrepancies and explaining that the only solution is a working-class party and a “workers’ state.” Capitalism is the problem; life could be better if we had socialism.
Democratic republicanism says that a democratic revolution is needed to socialize the economy. Democracy is defined as complete and unobstructed political rule by the people, and a democratic state vests total lawmaking power in a unicameral legislature elected by universal and equal suffrage. Political agitation should couple concrete demands with criticisms of our undemocratic political system. Therefore, the best response to Oxfam’s report is to acknowledge the necessity of expansive legislation like the Green New Deal, Medicare For All, and the Third Reconstruction Act and point out that meaningful and lasting change is impossible under the existing Constitution.
The rich get richer because the majority of society doesn’t have political power. We lack power because the Constitution denies us a unicameral legislature elected by universal and equal suffrage. Victor Berger’s words resonate. The Senate, he said, is an “obstructive and useless body, a menace to the people's liberties, and an obstacle to social growth...All legislative powers [will] be vested in the House of Representatives. Its enactments, subject to a referendum…[will] be the supreme law, and the president shall have no power to veto them, nor [will] any court have the power to invalidate them.”
Among his many skills, Lenin had an incisive pen. “Any propagandist and agitator,” he wrote, must “find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.” Decades later, Carl Oglesby said we are “trapped in a system” that must be named, described, analyzed, and changed.
In the face of massive wealth inequality at home and abroad, we must name the system: capitalism. But that is not enough. In the United States, we are oppressed by an additional system: an undemocratic Constitution. To have any chance of changing the former, we must first overthrow the latter. Democracy is our only hope.
Therefore, as propagandists and agitators along the lines of Lenin, we take the myriad abuses identified by Oxfam and turn our ire toward the Constitutional regime. We brand this government as an obstacle to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness at home and abroad. This government is illegitimate. It facilitates the accumulation of absurd amounts of wealth and has destroyed democratic projects across the world — all while denying its citizens the right to universal and equal suffrage. DSA must open its political platform and orient its political agitation around the declaration that the United States “is no democracy at all.”