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In the year of Cowboy Carter, 2025, we are hearing a lot about “oligarchys,” “broligarchys,” and other “-archys” in the news. But what is an oligarchy? What does it mean? Why is it important to learn about in this time? Are we using oligarchy to really mean fascism? Or dictatorship? Or tyranny? I have my suspicions.
Definition
Oligarchy is defined in a few ways by Merriam-Webster:
- government by the few
- a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also a group exercising such control
- an organization under oligarchic control.
The term is borrowed from Middle French, Late Latin & Greek olig- meaning “few” or “little,” and -archy meaning “rule” or “government.”
First Usage
Here, I disagree with M-W, which states that the first usage was in the 1500s. Shocking, right? But I was a political science major in college (yay humanities!) and I purchased—VOLUNTARILY—the book History of Political Philosophy. This anthology collects work by white men who are considered “chief contributors to the Western tradition of political philosophy from classical Greek antiquity to the twentieth century.” I would love to update this to include literally anyone else, but that’s a topic for a different day.
The reason I bring this up is because in Plato’s Republic, authored around 375 BCE, Socrates (the main character) explores five kinds of governmental regimes: 1) kingdom or aristocracy, the rule of the best man or the best men, which is directed toward goodness or virtue, the regime of the just city; 2) timocracy, the rule of lovers of honor of the ambitious men, which is directed toward superiority or victory; 3) oligarchy, or the rule of the rich, in which wealth is most highly esteemed; 4) democracy, the rule of free men, in which freedom is most highly esteemed; and 5) tyranny, the rule of the completely unjust man, in which unqualified and unashamed injustice holds sway. So this term, this idea, has at least been in the philosophy of politics since 375 BCE, which is literally over a thousand years before Merriam-Webster alleges.
Additional Understanding
In my research, I found that the first named instance of an oligarchy was in 411 BCE in ancient Greece. During the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, a coup occurred, which overthrew the democratic government of Athens and replaced it with a short-lived oligarchy known as the Four Hundred. In his book Oligarchy, Jeffrey Winters writes that when we talk about oligarchs, it’s important to note that they are distinct from all other empowered minorities because the basis of their power—material wealth—is unusually resistant to redistribution efforts. He also discusses that the scope of oligarchic minority power is important to understand because sometimes you think you’re in an oligarchy and are powerless to confront the people in power but(!!) you’ve got more power than you think you do.
Imagine, for example, that you’re in the Fashion Club. The club has been dominated for years by an exclusive group of tightly-networked fashion fanatics who control all of the decisions for the club. If you decide that this is not the vibe for you, you can easily leave. Doesn’t matter that the control is managed by a few people, because the scope of power they wield is limited to the club. Now, if the Fashion Club’s control extends to the entire school district, which encompasses an entire county, and you want to leave the influence of Fashion Club, it becomes more difficult to do so because there are no other schools you are zoned for, and you would have to move, which is cost prohibitive. This is an oligarchy. The first is just a bad time.
Another dimension of oligarchs and oligarchical power is the acquisition aspect. An oligarchy can’t be sustained if the powerful, wealthy folks who are concentrating power don’t embrace and promote consumerism—because it’s the money that gives them the entry to social, political, and financial channels, which allows them to build more power to concentrate.
(Side note that’s possibly important if you’re looking at the family tree of types of governments: Some people would argue that this consumerism-based form of oligarchy is a plutocracy. This is defined as a form of government where society is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or wisdom (plutos—wealth, and -kratos—power). But my political scientist brain wonders if this is an “every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square” situation.)
In any event, oligarchs—as extremely rich actors—have a set of skills. Skills that have taken them a lifetime to acquire. One of those skills is wealth defense. While you and I want to keep our personal possessions and wealth protected from theft, oligarchs are interested in possessing fortunes and incomes of such size that they can secure claims to wealth and property AND keep as much of the flow of income and profits from their wealth as possible under conditions of secure property rights. Think of this as vertical integration vs. horizontal integration in business. It’s about the scale and consolidation of control. The last and most obvious characteristic of oligarchs is that they love an unequal distribution of wealth. It’s their favorite thing in the world. Why? Because the more they can generate for themselves, the more powerful they become, and the less others have (whether power or money), the more influence they can wield.
The influence of an oligarch can be direct, like in the Philippines between 1965-1986. President Ferdinand Marcos favored and patronized select businesses, which received financial support, sole patronage, tax exemptions, and control over entire industries. This led to his friends and relatives acquiring a metric ton of wealth and economic power due to special favors and privileges extended by the administration, and eventually created monopolies that secured claims to wealth and property for his cronies and the flow of income and profits as much as possible.
Indirect influence can be seen in Russia. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 caused a class of Russian oligarchs to emerge under Mikhail Gorbachev. They gained control of significant portions of the economy but weren’t in power directly; instead, they wielded influence through politicians, whom they plied with money. There are lots of books/articles about this time, but the general gist is that by owning the industry and the land, they summarily owned the politicians and could steer the government in the direction that most benefited them.
Ok, so, Broligarchy of the U.S.?
Doing my research for this post, I found that some political philosophers and historians talk about oligarchy concerns during the founding of the country—Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both were anti-oligarchy and staunchly opposed to the monopolies created by the same. But these sweet summer children figured that since the colonies were self-sufficient farmers, tradesmen, and artisans and the government was being established FOR the people and not for corporations, they were safe. I mean colonists fought a whole revolution to shake off the yoke of corporation and monopolies and England. Surely this is the way it would remain until the end of time, right?!
Talk about Make America Great Again, amirite? As we get further through the 19th century, we get an economic condition that enables the creation of those conditions we talked about above—the acquisition of wealth and securing of property—by characters such as the Vanderbilts, the Mellons, the Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, etc. These men rapaciously extracted and destroyed natural resources, created wage slaves out of workers, squashed any and all competition, bought their rivals and folded them into their business structure, schemed together to sell stock at inflated prices, and—most importantly for us—influenced high levels of government with their money to ensure successful political outcomes.
“In the first half of the nineteenth century individual states held a tight rein on corporations. Licenses could be revoked, stockholders and owners were not shielded from liability for corporate acts, charters were for limited periods of time and had to be renewed, corporations could not own stock in other corporations or real estate that was unrelated to their purpose of business. They could make no political contributions, direct or indirect, and all corporate records were open to the legislature and the attorney general.” Thom Hartmann in Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights
This trend continues throughout American history. Slowly but surely, guardrails that aimed to control the acquisition and influence of wealth were eroded and corporations and their CEOs became more and more able to control the way the government functioned, aiming it towards their benefit. The history of regulation and deregulation exemplifies this, with Supreme Court Cases that poked holes in legislation meant to hold corporations accountable. One example of this is United States vs. E. C. Knight Co. (1895), the first court case that tested the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, where the Supreme Court ruled that a sugar trust that controlled 98% of the nation’s sugar refining capacity was not in violation of the Antitrust Act. Cases like this culminated in the 2010 decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which ruled that any laws that try to restrict the political spending of corporations and unions is a violation of the First Amendment’s right of free speech. In short, corporations are people! Which practically created the runaway train we’re on now. If I am a politician and I can get $50 million from Elon Musk, why would I listen to you, average person, whose political contribution is on average less than $100?
In Summary…
Basically, an oligarch controls, either directly or indirectly, the things you buy, where you buy them from, the land you live on in some cases, and now the politicians in office. For you to leave would be cost-prohibitive and maybe not possible, depending upon the reach of some impacting decisions in global markets.
Like most things, I don’t think oligarchy can be considered in a vacuum as solely a political philosophy. It is dependent on the psychology of human beings, the sociological circumstances in the nation, the economic pressures that exist in a system, and the governmental functions that work (or don’t!) in a given location. I hope this gives you some context and additional things to think about when you hear the term oligarchy. If there’s anything else you would like us to examine or explain, please let us know in the comments!
Resources to Learn More
Oligarchy by Jeffrey A. Winters (Book)
Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland (Book)
Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream by Alissa Quart (Book)
We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America by Jennifer Silva (Book)
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein (Book)
A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America by Lizabeth Cohen (Book)
How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America by Heather Cox Richardson (Book)
There is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century by Fiona Hill (Book)
The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Out Democracy from the Ruling Class by Thom Hartmann (Book)
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Book)
Beware, Fellow Plutocrats, the Pitchforks are Coming Nick Hanauer (Video)
What is Oligarchy? (Political Philosophy) (Video)
