The Relentless March to Oligarchy

I've been crafting and rewriting this over a couple of weeks.

The slow march of oligarchy has often been disguised as democracy’s natural evolution. But peel back the layers of rhetoric and national pride, and what you’ll find is an increasingly concentrated sphere of power, where the line between wealth and influence has become as blurred as a foggy Cotswold morning.

 

Democracy, by its nature, is meant to disperse power across the many – government of the people, by the people, for the people, or so the line goes. Yet, in practice, modern democracies have increasingly become playgrounds for the wealthy few. What was once a system designed to reflect the will of the people has steadily morphed into one that prioritises the interests of those with the deepest pockets. We can see it clearly in the post-pandemic political landscape: billionaires saw their fortunes swell, while ordinary people were handed inflation and austerity measures wrapped up as "necessary economic policies."

Take the UK, for example, where our political class appears to be little more than an extension of the boardroom. The revolving door between Westminster and big business spins faster with each passing year, and politicians are more likely to answer the phone to hedge fund managers than their constituents. While the government preaches “levelling up,” the truth is that wealth and power have never been more concentrated at the top. It's not democracy at work; it's oligarchy with a democratic paint job.

In the United States, the oligarchic tilt is even more blatant. Political campaigns are eye-wateringly expensive, and those bankrolling them are hardly philanthropists with a pure love of democracy. They're investors expecting a return – in the form of deregulation, tax cuts, or legislation that favours their industries. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision was the final nail in the coffin, opening the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending in politics under the guise of “free speech.” When money talks, democracy walks.

Even in Europe, where many nations pride themselves on a more egalitarian tradition, we’re not immune to creeping oligarchy. The rise of technocratic governance, where unelected officials and corporate interests hold sway over policy decisions, has distanced everyday citizens from the levers of power. Meanwhile, the EU’s handling of crises often reveals a stark prioritisation of markets and financial institutions over people’s livelihoods.

Russia? Well, it speaks for itself and is what stares us in the face.

The result of all this is a profound disillusionment with traditional democratic institutions. People feel – and rightly so – that they are no longer participants in democracy, but spectators. This sense of alienation is fertile ground for populism, nationalism, and extremism, as voters grasp at anything that promises to break the oligarchic stranglehold. But beware: these movements often end up reinforcing oligarchy, simply swapping one elite for another while stoking division to distract from the power grab.

The sad irony is that oligarchy thrives best in democracies. In authoritarian regimes, power is seized by force, but in democracies, it’s bought – quietly, insidiously, and often legally. And because it wears the cloak of democracy, it’s much harder to call out.

To fight this erosion, we need more than platitudes about accountability and transparency. We need to overhaul the very structures that allow wealth to translate into power. Campaign finance reform, lobbying restrictions, wealth taxes, and decentralisation of media ownership would be a start. However, when the solutions are held hostage by the oligarchs and their well-placed clients in government, democracy needs a more primal intervention. You can’t politely ask an entrenched elite to loosen its grip on power – it has to be wrested from their hands, and history shows us this usually happens when people start looking beyond the ballot box.

The problem with traditional democratic solutions like campaign finance reform, lobbying restrictions, and wealth taxes is that they require the consent of the very people who benefit from not implementing them. Asking a government stacked with former bankers, hedge funders, and corporate executives to regulate themselves is like asking a fox to reconfigure the security on the henhouse. It’s simply not in their interests to deliver meaningful reform – they’ve got too much to lose.

So, what’s left when the system itself is rigged? Civil disobedience and grassroots movements. Not the soft kind where people stand around waving placards for an afternoon, but sustained, organised disruption that forces those in power to take notice. The oligarchs thrive in stability – predictable markets, steady cash flows, and a docile populace that grumbles but ultimately plays along. Disruption unsettles that balance. Think about the suffragettes chaining themselves to railings, the labour movements of the 20th century grinding industry to a halt, or more recently, movements like Extinction Rebellion bringing cities to a standstill. These actions remind those in power that their wealth and comfort are built on the cooperation of the many – and that cooperation can be withdrawn.

But here’s the catch: to succeed, such movements need to be intelligent and broad-based. The powers that be are experts at exploiting division – they’ll pit middle-class homeowners against renters, public sector workers against private, and rural communities against urban ones (does that ring a bell with the likes of the right wing press in the UK). They’ll deploy the full force of the media to paint protesters as extremists or criminals, all while quietly tightening their grip on power. The challenge for any movement is to overcome those divides and focus on the common enemy – the oligarchic system itself.

There’s also an uncomfortable truth to reckon with: you can’t defeat an entrenched elite without causing some discomfort to those around you. The same middle classes who complain about inequality also tend to vote for stability – they’re often unwilling to rock the boat if it means short-term economic pain. But history shows that real change only happens when people are willing to endure hardship for a greater cause. It’s not a pleasant thought, but there’s no easy way out of this mess.

And let’s not forget the role of the media. In its current form, much of the press acts as a mouthpiece for oligarchic interests, keeping the public distracted with culture wars and scare stories while the real looting happens quietly in the background. One solution is to push for decentralised, independent media that isn’t beholden to billionaire owners – platforms that can cut through the noise and expose the cosy relationship between wealth and power.

Finally, there’s the digital front. The internet could be democracy’s best tool or its downfall – it all depends on how it’s wielded. Oligarchs have capitalised on digital platforms to spread propaganda and crush dissent, but the same tools can be used to organise, educate, and mobilise people in ways that were unimaginable a few decades ago. Decentralised platforms, encrypted messaging, and online communities offer new ways to challenge power – provided people are savvy enough to see through the distractions and focus on the core issues.

The truth is, if you wait for oligarchs to hand you the keys to democracy, you’ll be waiting forever. Real change comes from below – through solidarity, disruption, and the willingness to make those in power deeply uncomfortable. In short, democracy isn’t something you vote for once every few years. It’s something you take.

The two world wars broke the backs of the old oligarchies, but as we’ve seen, those backs are remarkably good at straightening themselves over time. The wars forced a reckoning that toppled the old elite order, bringing about an era of redistributive democracy – a temporary moment in history when the wealth and power amassed by the few were forcibly redistributed for the benefit of the many. Yet here we are, less than a century on, watching the pendulum swing back toward oligarchic dominance, as if none of it ever happened.

Before the Great War, society was firmly in the grip of aristocrats and industrial magnates. In Britain, landowners ruled the roost. In Europe, emperors and their courts played geopolitical chess, with ordinary people as pawns. In the United States, the Gilded Age had spawned its own oligarchs – the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, the Morgans – who wielded more power than many governments. Democracy, as we understand it today, was in its infancy, and where it did exist, it was largely a facade – a thin veneer over a deeply unequal society.

Then came the horrors of the First World War, which shook that old order to its core. The aristocrats who sent millions to die in the trenches lost their legitimacy. The Russian Revolution swept away the Romanovs and sent a shiver down the spines of oligarchs everywhere. In Britain, returning soldiers – men who had been promised a "land fit for heroes" – began to demand more than crumbs from the table. Universal suffrage followed. The working class, who had borne the brunt of the slaughter, started to realise their collective strength.

But it was the Second World War that truly reshaped the world. The devastation left no room for the old elites to cling to their privileges. The economies of Europe were in ruins, and rebuilding them required a new social contract – one that prioritised fairness, opportunity, and security for all, rather than the preservation of wealth for the few. The welfare state was born out of this necessity. In Britain, the Beveridge Report laid the foundation for a cradle-to-grave social safety net. In the U.S., Roosevelt’s New Deal had already laid the groundwork for a more regulated, redistributive economy.

Key to this transformation was the recognition that peace could not be sustained if inequality remained unchecked. The war effort itself had been a massive exercise in redistribution – the state took control of production, rationed resources for all, and mobilised entire populations. After the war, it was impossible to simply hand power back to the old oligarchs and pretend none of it had happened. The working classes had fought, died, and sacrificed – they weren’t about to go back to tugging their forelocks.

Remember this when the wealthy try to persuade you to sacrifice everything to growth; sluggish growth is not the bogeyman they would like you to believe it is. The obsession with GDP growth is outdated and often misleading, but persists among the wealthy. What matters is not how fast an economy grows but how well it distributes the gains, maintains stability, and preserves the environment. Sluggish growth is not necessarily a problem; it can be a sign of a mature, stable, and sustainable economy. Policymakers should focus less on chasing growth for growth’s sake (and the bank balances of the wealthy) and more on improving quality of life, reducing inequality, and addressing the climate crisis. In the end, a slower, more thoughtful approach to economic growth might be exactly what the world needs.

In the grand sweep of history, it’s clear that aristocratic and oligarchic rule brought far more frequent wars than democracy has. Democracies, for all their flaws, have generally been more peaceful and restrained. However, as democratic institutions erode and power becomes more concentrated in the hands of wealthy elites, the risks of unnecessary conflict rise once again. If we don’t reverse this trend, we may find ourselves returning to a world where wars are waged not for security or justice, but for the profit and prestige of a few (the military industrial complex) – a grim echo of the aristocratic past.