Major Study Proves What We Already Know - U.S. is an Oligarchy

[The Intransigent Faction]

Zachary Davies Boren (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10769041/The-US-is-an-oligarchy-study-concludes.html), The Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/)
Apr. 16, 2014, 8:16 AM 99,481 133 (http://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4#comments)


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4#ixzz2zAflzNEE


The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded.

The report, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens (http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf)" (PDF), used extensive policy data collected between 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the U.S. political system.
After sifting through nearly 1,800 U.S. policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile), and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the U.S. is dominated by its economic elite.
The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."
Researchers concluded that U.S. government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lobbying organizations: "When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it."
The positions of powerful interest groups are "not substantially correlated with the preferences of average citizens," but the politics of average Americans and affluent Americans sometimes does overlap. This is merely a coincidence, the report says, with the interests of the average American being served almost exclusively when it also serves those of the richest 10%.
The theory of "biased pluralism" that the Princeton and Northwestern researchers believe the U.S. system fits holds that policy outcomes "tend to tilt towards the wishes of corporations and business and professional associations."
The study comes after McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (http://www.vox.com/cards/mccutcheon-v-fec-explained/what-is-the-mccutcheon-v-fec-ruling#E5369579), a controversial piece of legislation passed in the Supreme Court that abolished campaign-contribution limits, and record low approval ratings for the U.S. Congress (http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/01/congress-somewhere-below-cockroaches-traffic-jams-and-nickleback-in-americans-esteem.html).http://pixel.newscred.com/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT03NzI2ZDM1YzExMTMwMWIxZTc2Mjc xNzZjZTRkOTJkYiZub25jZT0yYjczOTcyNC03OTg4LTQ3M2MtO DI1MS04M2JlYjkwYWQyYzkmcHVibGlzaGVyPTczMGViODZhYjU 5ZjBkNDE5MjZhYzY1YjAxZjgzZTJm


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4#ixzz2zAfeBVTt


So, a friend of mine shared this, but all we can think of to say is "well duh!". Perhaps some of you folks have something illuminating to add?

It is interesting that the business press reports this sort of thing so bluntly.

[Xena Warrior Proletarian]

I always thought that Oligarchy was the most suitable term to describe it, but recently I changed my mind and know I think it's more of a Plutocracy than an Oligarchy. What are everyone else's thoughts?

plutocracy
pluːˈtɒkrəsi/
noun
noun: plutocracy
1.
government by the wealthy.
"the attack on the Bank of England was a gesture against the very symbol of plutocracy"
a state or society governed by the wealthy.
plural noun: plutocracies
"no one can accept public policies which turn a democracy into a plutocracy"
an elite or ruling class whose power derives from their wealth.
"officials were drawn from the new plutocracy"


oligarchy
ˈɒlɪgɑːki/
noun
noun: oligarchy; plural noun: oligarchies
1.
a small group of people having control of a country or organization.
"the ruling oligarchy of military men around the president"
a country governed by an oligarchy.
"he believed that Britain was an oligarchy"
government by an oligarchy.

Basic definitions I know, but not the worst place to start...

[The Intransigent Faction]

I always thought that Oligarchy was the most suitable term to describe it, but recently I changed my mind and know I think it's more of a Plutocracy than an Oligarchy. What are everyone else's thoughts?

plutocracy
pluːˈtɒkrəsi/
noun
noun: plutocracy
1.
government by the wealthy.
"the attack on the Bank of England was a gesture against the very symbol of plutocracy"
a state or society governed by the wealthy.
plural noun: plutocracies
"no one can accept public policies which turn a democracy into a plutocracy"
an elite or ruling class whose power derives from their wealth.
"officials were drawn from the new plutocracy"


oligarchy
ˈɒlɪgɑːki/
noun
noun: oligarchy; plural noun: oligarchies
1.
a small group of people having control of a country or organization.
"the ruling oligarchy of military men around the president"
a country governed by an oligarchy.
"he believed that Britain was an oligarchy"
government by an oligarchy.

Basic definitions I know, but not the worst place to start...

I think both could apply. Oligarchy's maybe just more commonly used, or broader. From the basic definitions, oligarchy seems to imply plutocracy, and given that while the ruling class rules overtly in economics while using bourgeois politician "middlemen" in state institutions, maybe oligarchy accounts for this 'indirect' executive power.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I really don't see what the point is in pretending that the US is anything else than a bourgeois democracy of the garden variety. Yes, the government acts as the executive committee of the bourgeoisie - not "the economic elite" or, even worse, "corporations" - but that's the problem with class society. Calling it an "oligarchy", as if the US were turn-of-the-century Guatemala, gives rise to the illusion that we (well, you Americans, I guess) need a "more democratic" system with the economic basis of capitalism - the private ownership of the means of production - untouched.

[The Intransigent Faction]

I really don't see what the point is in pretending that the US is anything else than a bourgeois democracy of the garden variety. Yes, the government acts as the executive committee of the bourgeoisie - not "the economic elite" or, even worse, "corporations" - but that's the problem with class society. Calling it an "oligarchy", as if the US were turn-of-the-century Guatemala, gives rise to the illusion that we (well, you Americans, I guess) need a "more democratic" system with the economic basis of capitalism - the private ownership of the means of production - untouched.

I don't see how. If anything that's more likely to be inferred by referring to it as "democracy" in any way, shape or form, especially when the oligarchy is so blatantly an economic class. Democracy is a word that needs to be reclaimed. Even for Bordigists, it's misuse by bourgeois politicians to describe their countries as democracies is a problematic misnomer.

That *would* explain, granted, why the business press would report something like this, but if that's the reasoning then it could easily backfire.

[Xena Warrior Proletarian]

I don't see how. If anything that's more likely to be inferred by referring to it as "democracy" in any way, shape or form, especially when the oligarchy is so blatantly an economic class. Democracy is a word that needs to be reclaimed. Even for Bordigists, it's misuse by bourgeois politicians to describe their countries as democracies is a problematic misnomer.

I wholeheartedly agree. Democracy does need to be reclaimed. 'Parliamentary democracy' or anything claiming to be democracy under capitalism is not democracy.

Demos - people
Cracy - rule
Democracy - rule of the people

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

And that is part of the problem. "The people" is supposed to be some kind of supra-class entity. Communists don't advocate rule by "the people", but proletarian power. In practice (etymology meaning little - I mean, etymologically chancellors are people who stand at latticed screens, which is not something I see Merkel doing these days), democracy means that the executive and legislative powers of the state are vested in officials elected by a free and secret ballot. This is the case in the United States (and wasn't the case in e.g. Guatemala). Socialists generally do refer to the United States and similar countries as bourgeois democracies - you can try to "reclaim" that word, but to what end?

If you say that the United States are not democratic, the obvious solution is to make them more democratic, in some sense. But as we've seen, democracy is not necessarily a socialist demand - one can have "rule by the people" without any sort of class power. Nor is it true that "the oligarchy" is generally identified as the bourgeoisie - it is identified with a section of the bourgeoisie, the owners of major corporations. This leads to a very rotten sort of populism that portrays Northrop-Grumman and its owners as the Devil incarnate, but owners of small and medium-sized companies as good guys.

[Loony Le Fist]

I think I've heard Noam Chomsky mention that in college political science classes they refer to the US as a plutocracy.

[consuming negativity]

Not everything being reported there is exactly what the study found. For example, the correlation between what an "average" (50th percentile) American wants and what an "elite" (10th percentile) American wants is .67, meaning that more often than not, the middle class and "super rich" agree on policies. The correlation is even higher among the top 25%. So, yes, money correlates strongly with power, but the "average American" is significantly less disenfranchised than a poor American.

Additionally, their findings in regards to what influence the public and other groups wield (or do not wield) are being misrepresented. What they found is that, comparatively, the "super rich" hold more political sway than business lobbying groups, who hold more sway than "mass-based" (ie. unions, AARP, etc.) groups, who hold more sway than unorganized average people that have opinions. First and foremost, obviously any organized group is going to hold more sway. But that the general public agreeing on an issue, say, with a 60% majority, losing to a combination of organized mass-interest, business interest, and "super rich" votes doesn't mean that public opinion doesn't matter at all. Rather, it just means that having more organization and more money brings more power (usually defined as the ability to force something against the will of others), politically-speaking. Moreover, the strength of opinions isn't given, which is a huge limitation of this study. The majority of people aren't going to hold strong opinions about over 1,700 different bills; I can't even name 20-30. The non-inclusion of these poll results combined with the general political apathy that increasingly pervades US society as we get poorer calls these results highly into question: it makes perfect sense that people who care more about politics are going to one, get organized, and two, make a bigger difference likewise.

Another huge limitation of this study is that the opinions of average Americans (defined as median income, according to these people) obviously aren't going to matter as much when average Americans aren't lobbying in DC or voting on bills. Congress itself is composed of mostly millionaires, and lobbying groups and the wealthy are much more likely to be able to go to DC and make their cases in front of public officials.

In short, the study highlights important issues, but at the end of the day, it's pretty meaningless outside of highlighting what even the average voter would agree is obvious: that organized groups of people with financial backing hold a bigger sway than do unorganized groups of apathetic persons who don't actually get to vote or even voice their opinions in Congress. In other words, the authors are right to point out how much influence is wielded by the wealthy in America, and we do indeed "already know" much of this, but to say that America is ruled by an "oligarchy" or that public opinion has no sway on public policy is false, not supported by the data, and little more than sensationalist, defeatist rhetoric.

[RebelDog]

"We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Of course, this study was done using capitalism's own micro-economic theory of methodological individualism - using people's individual expressed preferences to conduct what is essentially a cost-benefit analysis for different socio-economic groups in society.

We can't criticise methodological individualism when it is used to suggest something we disagree with, then jump on the bandwagon when it points to results we do agree with.

This study is worthless to us.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

Of course, this study was done using capitalism's own micro-economic theory of methodological individualism - using people's individual expressed preferences to conduct what is essentially a cost-benefit analysis for different socio-economic groups in society.

We can't criticise methodological individualism when it is used to suggest something we disagree with, then jump on the bandwagon when it points to results we do agree with.

This study is worthless to us.

I understand why methodological individualism is bad generally, say, in trying to understand the world, but I fail to see how it's bad in this particular case. Care to explain?

Because ultimately the study doesn't ask why these things are as they are (do they?), but how things are.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

[QUOTE=Leftist;2741277]I understand why methodological individualism is bad generally, say, in trying to understand the world, but I fail to see how it's bad in this particular case. Care to explain?

Methodological individualism is a fairly un-reliable way of actually ranking anything, it essentially asks people to express their preferences, either according to their favourite tastes or in rank order, and then assumes that this the only variable that should matter in a policy decision.

It is inflexible, rigid, and ahistorical. It takes no account of context, the possibility that people are different, that people have different interpretations of a particular preference, or that there are any variables in the world other than expressed preferences and price.

In short, methodological individualism has absolutely no social basis, and is largely useless for large-scale analysis such as attempted in this study.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Also if you actually find a link to the study there are more problems:

a) it's not published yet;
b) because of its draft nature, it hasn't even provided the data, tables and figures that support its conclusions.

A case of (probably) right conclusion, wrong methodology and, as of yet, un-published evidence.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

[QUOTE]

Methodological individualism is a fairly un-reliable way of actually ranking anything, it essentially asks people to express their preferences, either according to their favourite tastes or in rank order, and then assumes that this the only variable that should matter in a policy decision.

It is inflexible, rigid, and ahistorical. It takes no account of context, the possibility that people are different, that people have different interpretations of a particular preference, or that there are any variables in the world other than expressed preferences and price.

In short, methodological individualism has absolutely no social basis, and is largely useless for large-scale analysis such as attempted in this study.

You see, I recognize these problems and I would come to the conclusion that it is useless for a study, which would aim to answer why people make these choices, why they have such preferences etc. But I fail to see how it is bad in this particular case.

If there was a study of what sort of preferences people have, I see no reason to say that methodological individualism is bad in this case; it would be bad if the study wanted to answer why they hold these preferences or how they came about.

There is evidence to suggest that people can't even consistently rank their own preferences, which invalidates this methodology from the very beginning, but it seems to me that you are arguing something different and I fail to see what exactly.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

[quote=vladimir innit lenin;2741283]

you see, i recognize these problems and i would come to the conclusion that it is useless for a study, which would aim to answer why people make these choices, why they have such preferences etc. But i fail to see how it is bad in this particular case.

If there was a study of what sort of preferences people have, i see no reason to say that methodological individualism is bad in this case; it would be bad if the study wanted to answer why they hold these preferences or how they came about.

the study assumes that policies happen in capitalist society because either one group or the other supports them. In actual fact, as we know, society is rather more fluid and interactive than this.

Secondly, and most importantly, you cannot separate the methodology from the conclusion. If there is no reliable basis for methodological individualism as an analytical tool, then we cannot just accept its use in this study.

I'm saying it's wrong to gloss over the glaring flaws in the methodology used in this study (not to mention that we don't even know what the data fully is yet because it's only been published in draft form, minus data/tables/figures!), just because we may agree with the conclusions.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't see how. If anything that's more likely to be inferred by referring to it as "democracy" in any way, shape or form, especially when the oligarchy is so blatantly an economic class. Democracy is a word that needs to be reclaimed. Even for Bordigists, it's misuse by bourgeois politicians to describe their countries as democracies is a problematic misnomer.

That *would* explain, granted, why the business press would report something like this, but if that's the reasoning then it could easily backfire.

Participatory democracy is the way to go for us on the left, workers and otherwise. So-called "representative democracy" is way past its expiry date and shelf life.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Participatory democracy is the way to go for us on the left, workers and otherwise. So-called "representative democracy" is way past its expiry date and shelf life.

It's not, and never was, and whatever you say will forever be wrong simply by virtue of you uttering it.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Participatory democracy is the way to go for us on the left, workers and otherwise. So-called "representative democracy" is way past its expiry date and shelf life.

It's not, and never was, and whatever you say will forever be wrong simply by virtue of you uttering it.

Yes, because the Chartist politics regarding "representative democracy," however primitive, was absolutely useless? Right. :rolleyes:

[Jimmie Higgins]

I really don't see what the point is in pretending that the US is anything else than a bourgeois democracy of the garden variety. Yes, the government acts as the executive committee of the bourgeoisie - not "the economic elite" or, even worse, "corporations" - but that's the problem with class society. Calling it an "oligarchy", as if the US were turn-of-the-century Guatemala, gives rise to the illusion that we (well, you Americans, I guess) need a "more democratic" system with the economic basis of capitalism - the private ownership of the means of production - untouched.i sorta half agree. First, yes I think that some of the more abstract discussion of u.s. Democracy is basically the kind of politics where if only we overturned the corporations as people court ruling, then everything would work out fine.

On a more practical level I think worldwide there has been an increasing trend of reducing whatever democratic rights or norms existed in some countries in order to pave the way for austerity. Restrictions on unionization and the ability to organize are "democratic" attacks but with obvious class connections. There is an increasing attempt to disenfranchise groups of people... Usually poor or black. So I think it is important to engage these debates when people bring them up at work or in coalitions or whatnot, if only to try and dislodge it from the normal way it's talked about. So IMO, this is a bourgeois democracy, not "oligarchy" or "creeping fascism", but there is also a specific restricting of popular levers of influence and organization... Of which reducing the ability for people to protect themselves from the state on the one hand, and our employers on the other.

Probably not much can done about this ATM, but if a class movement begins to reemerge, then I think it would necessarily have to take on these issues... And class movement could potentially pull the "popular" anger towards the class movement.

[RebelDog]

It's not, and never was, and whatever you say will forever be wrong simply by virtue of you uttering it.

How can any institution have any real functioning democracy without participation by the people affected by decisions made?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

How can any institution have any real functioning democracy without participation by the people affected by decisions made?

I don't believe that "democracy" is desirable in any way.