Contributed by Joe Montero

Multibillionaires are organising themselves ever more tightly into a united political force. They may not be concentrated into a single political or other type of organisation. But unity of purpose is there. This is obvious in the Unbited States, a tightly knit group of has shifted to backing Donald Trump, while at the same time, leaving their options open. In Britain is the shift has been towards a controlled Labor led government. In Australia it has been a similar government led by Labor under Anthony Albanese.

This is incredibly important, because this group based mainly in the United States happens to be the major economic force in all three countries. It is the biggest contributor to the major political parties and has the major media outlets, especially that of Rupert Murdoch, in its hands. Their enormous power is being put into effect to control the political system more thoroughly and narrow down the political options permitted to the contenders in traditional two-party systems.

Photo from Keystone USA-Zuma/Rex Shutterstock

Oligarchs is the proper title for these people. They are acutely class conscious and acutely aware of decline of trust from those who have to work in normal jobs for a living or have been relegated to the scrap heap of unemployment. They know that the gap between the fabulously wealthy and the rest is wide than ever before.

According to an article in Mother Jones (January-February 2024) by Tim Murphy, the oligarchs don’t have to pay tax in the United States.

“Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who built one of the world’s largest companies around a loophole in sales taxes and has raked in millions in tax breaks designed for impoverished communities, paid no income tax at all in 2007 and 2011, according to ProPublica – a period in which he owned part of a mountain range. His rival for the title of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, paid nothing at all in 2018. (In Cameron County, Texas, where SpaceX has scorched a state park and uprooted a beachfront community, Musk’s company will finally begin paying taxes in 2024.) Peter Thiel has used a loophole in the tax code to stash $5 billion in a Roth IRA. While the IRS targets working-class Black Americans…”

Most of them stay out of sight. There are group like Citizens United and the Super PAC labels behind which major political donors hide.

All of them are putting their money into Donald Trump camp. They expect they he will deliver to them a greater share of the wealth. At the same time, they know that their legitimacy is eroding, and to preserve their privileges at all costs, they see a need to propel government towards greater autocracy. Discontent must be controlled through deception and compulsion.

The economic system they depend on is floundering and could potentially collapse. Despite short-term up and downs, the Greenback continues on its longer-term downward trajectory, and now under greater threat through the rise of a new global trading order through the BRICs alliance.

Most of those who are finding themselves worse off are being driven to discontent because the realisation that find the political system controlled by the oligarchs is not delivering for them. This is the source of the rising distrust that is beginning to transform itself into anger.

A similar development is taking place within the European Union with its own oligarchs. In both cases, they call for a tightening of the screws on everyone else to get more for themselves, and for increasing authoritarianism to police the discontented.

Rising unity between the oligarchs to achieve these ends has given rise to a counter group that sees such a hardnosed strategy as dangerous. They fear that too hard a push can lead towards greater illegitimacy for them and rebellion.

An expression of this is the several hundred strong group calling itself the Patriotic Millionaires. It was founded in the United Sates in 2010, which from its inception, has argued for increasing taxes on the rich, to at least the level of tax paid by others. The extra revenue can then be used to increase services and through this, restore faith in the system. Among them there are those who support reducing carbon emissions, building a sustainable economy, some income redistribution, and liberalising the political system, as means to create political capital to save it.

This faction is losing the battle. It has failed to recognise that the problem is not about cosmetics, but a failure of the economic and political system to meet the needs of society. A combination of the prevailing economic winds, the widening wealth gap, and the tightening grip of the oligarchs on the pollical system, is making the business of government more perilous. Political instability is on the rise. The two-party system is in decline as rusted on support bases dissolve. There is an emerging mood for change and a search for new ways to find it. Some of the oligarchs. The United States, Britain and Australia trio, and the European Union are at a point where era of single party governments is ending, and new political forces are coming onto the scene.

Many of the oligarchs and the media they control call this a loss of faith in democracy. On the contrary, this is a search for genuine democracy.