Oligarch

“ But, alas! little reck the wealthy and great for those whose arms defend them, or whose enterprise procures them all the bounties of the earth.
An oligarchy has cramped the privileges and monopolised the rights of a mighty nation. ”

“ There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob. Every oligarchy is merely a knot of men in the street--that is to say, it is very jolly, but not infallible. And no oligarchies in the world's history have ever come off so badly in practical affairs as the very proud oligarchies--the oligarchy of Poland, the oligarchy of Venice. ”

“ Have we broken any laws by showing to the people how these abuses, that have occurred for the last twenty years, are invariably pursuing one object, viz: to establish an oligarchy in this country as strong and powerful and monstrous as never before has existed in any country? ”

“ Well, I said, and how does the change from oligarchy into democracy arise? Is it not on this wise: the good at which such a State aims is to become as rich as possible, a desire which is insatiable?
What then?
The rulers being aware that their power rests upon their wealth, refuse to curtail by law the extravagance of the spendthrift youth because they gain by their ruin; they take interest from them and buy up their estates and thus increase their own wealth and importance? ”

“ The oligarchical man and State resemble one another in their estimation of wealth: In their toiling and saving ways, in their want of cultivation. Yes, he said; at any rate the individual out of whom he came is like the State out of which oligarchy came. ”

“ They constituted the balance of power in the struggles between the labor castes and the oligarchs, and now to one side and now to the other, threw their strength according to the play of intrigue and conspiracy.
The oligarchs themselves were going through a remarkable and, it must be confessed, unexpected development. As a class, they disciplined themselves. Every member had his work to do in the world, and this work he was compelled to do. There were no more idle-rich young men. Their strength was used to give united strength to the Oligarchy. ”

“ Prostrated, exposed, and permanently expelled from ill-gotten power, the Oligarchy will cease to exist as a political combination. Its final doom may be postponed, but it is certain. Languishing, it may live yet longer; but it will surely die. ”

“ The great driving force of the oligarchs is the belief that they are doing right. Never mind the exceptions, and never mind the oppression and injustice in which the Iron Heel was conceived. All is granted. The point is that the strength of the Oligarchy today lies in its satisfied conception of its own righteousness.*
* Out of the ethical incoherency and inconsistency of capitalism, the oligarchs emerged with a new ethics, coherent and definite, sharp and severe as steel, the most absurd and unscientific and at the same time the most potent ever possessed by any tyrant class. ”

“ Aristocracy, according to etymology, is the government of the best. Oligarchy is the government of the few, being not even aristocracy, but an abuse of aristocracy, as despotism is the abuse of monarchy. ”

“ Such are the principles, the universal prevalence of which, would make the world a moral Eden—the rejection of which, keeps it a little hell; especially where freemen hold slaves; for of all governments, an oligarchy is the worst. It consists of a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand tyrants, instead of one. It is "diffusing tyranny every where." It is "bringing despotism home to every man's door." It involves the greatest deliberateness and desperation of iniquity, both with law and without law, which it is possible for power to perpetrate against weakness. ”

“ Necessities which dissolve a government, do not convey its authority to an oligarchy or a monarchy. They throw back, into the hands of the people, the powers they had delegated, and leave them as individuals to shift for themselves. A leader may offer, but not impose himself, nor be imposed on them. ”

“ Now the corruptions attending each of these governments are these; a kingdom may degenerate into a tyranny, an aristocracy into an oligarchy, and a state into a democracy. Now a tyranny is a monarchy where the good of one man only is the object of government, an oligarchy considers only the rich, and a democracy only the poor ”

“ It is difficult, Sir, to conceive any spectacle more alarming than that which presents itself to us, when we look at the two extreme parties in this country; a narrow oligarchy above; an infuriated multitude below; on the one side the vices engendered by power; on the other side the vices engendered by distress; one party blindly averse to improvement; the other party blindly clamouring for destruction; one party ascribing to political abuses the sanctity of property; the other party crying out against property as a political abuse. ”

“ But I think that if there is one truth apparent in such a choice of evils, it is that monarchy is at least better than oligarchy; and that where we have to act on a large scale, the most genuine popularity can gather round a particular person like a Pope or a President of the United States, or even a dictator like Caesar or Napoleon, rather than round a more or less corrupt committee which can only be defined as an obscure oligarchy. ”

“ Because they know no better. That oligarchy, and those monarchs, have taken precious care to educate and train them to the belief that such is the natural state of man. They furnish them with school-books, which are filled with beautiful sophisms—all tending to inculcate principles of endurance of wrong, and reverence for their wrongers. They fill their rude throats with hurrah songs that paint false patriotism in glowing colours, making loyalty—no matter to whatsoever despot—the greatest of virtues, and revolution the greatest of crimes ”

“ You will be only an oligarchy. The Government, instead of being in the hands of the bureaucracy, will be transferred into the hands of an oligarchy—of another bureaucracy. My answer to that is that we do not want that. I ask you particularly to consider that question, gentlemen, and to realise its importance. My answer to them is that we do not want it. We want the franchise to be extended far and wide—we want our ryots and our cultivators to enjoy that franchise. We want them to exercise their franchise. ”

“ It is also absurd to say, that in an oligarchy there are two cities, one of the poor and another of the rich; for why should this happen to them more than to the Lacedaemonians, or any other state where all possess not equal property, or where all are not equally good? for though no one member of the community should be poorer than he was before, yet a democracy might nevertheless change into an oligarchy ”

“ To this I answer, if parliament is to be our supreme legislature, we shall be under a complete oligarchy or aristocracy, not the British constitution, which this writer himself defines a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. For king, lords, and commons, will constitute one great oligarchy, as they will stand related to America, as much as the decemvirs did in Rome; with this difference for the worse, that our rulers are to be three thousand miles off. The definition of an oligarchy is a government by a number of grandees, over whom the people have no control. ”

“ You cannot catch them; they vanish under your grasp as principles, not men. Their voice is never heard saying, "I will!" but always, "The law requires." And these autocrats—this oligarchy—are only men like ourselves, with like passions, limitations and sinful inheritance. ”

“ It cannot be too often repeated that to secure a Monarchy, or at least an Oligarchy, over which the leading Conspirators should rule for life—whether that Monarchy or that Oligarchy should comprise the States of the South by themselves, or all the States on a new basis of Union—was the great ultimate aim of the Conspirators ”

“ At the opening of every great political campaign, we hear a great deal about the privileged classes; the ruffled-shirt and silk-stocking gentry: and sometimes men prattle about the aristocracy of talent, or the aristocracy of wealth—but who ever heard any complaints of our legal aristocracy—an oligarchy rather—for they make all the laws, they expound all the laws, and they hold all the offices worth having—in perpetuity. ”

“ What has been already said will almost of itself sufficiently show how an oligarchy ought to be founded; for he who would frame such a state should have in his view a democracy to oppose it; for every species of oligarchy should be founded on principles diametrically opposite to some species of democracy. ”

“ We have seen that this whole movement, which tends to transform the great majority of the independent citizens of a republic, into the financial slaves of an oligarchy, is the natural outgrowth of the competitive system. Taught by history, we know, that [Pg 410] as the oligarchy rises and reigns, the republic dies. ”

“ The evils of such a compromise with a political idea are evident enough. The oligarchy will be luxurious and corporately corrupt, and individually somewhat despicable, with a sort of softness about it in morals and in military affairs. ”

“ The insatiable desire of wealth creates a demand for democracy, the insatiable desire of freedom creates a demand for tyranny. The good which oligarchy proposed to itself and the means by which it was maintained was excess of wealth—am I not right? ”

“ Lack of principle, lightly disguised corruption, privileged incompetence, a pampered and leisurely civil service, slavish adherence to party, the substitution of oligarchy for any true democracy—these and such like features of public life are trenchantly and often convincingly attacked ”

“ In the State all this vicariousness is gone; office is a trust, not a right; the select man is a servant, the selecting people master. For personal conduct and reputation each man is amenable to the common humanity of all, for personal character amenable only to God. But each official operative in the national mill for conduct and character must answer not only to his God, but to the people, the mill-owner.
Theocracy, the priest power; monarchy, the one-man power; and oligarchy, the few-men power—are three forms of vicarious government over the people, perhaps for them, not by them. ”

“ When the deliberative class being elected out of those who have a moderate qualification are numerous and they respect and obey the prohibitions of the law without altering it, and any one who has the required qualification shares in the government, then, just because of this moderation, the oligarchy inclines towards polity. But when only selected individuals and not the whole people share in the deliberations of the state, then, although, as in the former case, they observe the law, the government is a pure oligarchy. ”

“ The net result, in every civilization, has been a ruling oligarchy, self-appointed and self-perpetuating, which has shaped policy, planned and directed administration, exercised authority and lived comfortably and at least semi-parasitically on the backs of the underlying urban and rural masses, sharing its sinecure with its middle class handymen. In some times and in certain localities the oligarchy has maintained a representative front. Elsewhere it has functioned arbitrarily. In extreme cases one man has ruled for a brief period. Generally the oligarchy has held the reins of authority. ”

“ It is this last feature which will particularly surprise the English reader, for it is the singular and permanent advantage of oligarchic communities such as the British that they retain under any stress and show throughout the whole commonwealth the sense of the State. To betray the State, to act against its interests, to be imperfectly conscious of its existence, are crimes or weaknesses unknown to the citizens of an oligarchy, and a citizen of this country cannot easily conceive of them to-day. ”

“ The oligarchs themselves were compelled to listen to the decrees of the Groups, and often, when they disobeyed, were punished by death—and likewise with the subordinates of the oligarchs, with the officers of the army and the leaders of the labor castes. ”

“ As the people have been always necessitated to establish monarchical and aristocratical powers, to check themselves from rushing into anarchy, so have aristocratical bodies ever been obliged to contrive a number of divisions of their powers to check themselves from running into oligarchy. ”

“ But when the rich and the noble prevail more by their quality than they are deficient in quantity, there an oligarchy ensues; and this oligarchy may be of different species, according to the nature of the prevailing party. Every legislator in framing his constitution ought to have a particular regard to those in the middle rank of life; and if he intends an oligarchy, these should be the object of his laws; if a democracy, to these they should be entrusted ”

“ The same difficulty occurs, should it ever happen that the poor compose a smaller part of the people than the rich, but from their superior abilities acquire the supreme power; for this is what they call an oligarchy ”

“ Every faculty of the soul revolts against the ferocious reactionary movement, the more disgraceful from its execrable hypocrisy. We are governed by an oligarchy; the only article maintained is that respecting the taxes. The laws have ceased to exist; the Statute is buried; a licentious soldiery rules over everything, and the press is constantly employed to asperse honest men. ”

“ Another sign of human progress in our day is the closer tie establishing itself between the aristocracy and the people. There still exist some oligarchs everywhere, more or lest callous, more or less insolent, who affect the arrogance and authority of former times, when the outrageous and intolerable feudal pretensions were in full force. ”