49 Quotes About Oligarchy

(O)n a whole range of issues, there has been a massive popular shift in public opinion toward a progressive critique of the current political economic system. It is, of course, largely subliminal, not carefully worked out, and lacks a coherent vision for what needs to be done -- but there can be little doubt that this shift has happened, and is deepening. People are increasingly disenchanted, and they are hungry for alternatives.

He had seen enough to know that everyone should have realized by now that the government was run by competing bands of criminals who answered not to the voters, but the powerful oligarchies that controlled them and kept their campaign funds and pockets full.

On a basic level, he had seen first-hand how his government used the element of fear to accomplish its objectives; the same element of fear that had been used as an excuse to engage its huge war machine in conflicts for the profits of America’s oligarchy.

polskie społeczeństwo oligarchiczne było tak mocno ugruntowane, że nie było w stanie zreformować się wewnętrznie - tak jakby tkwiło w czarnej dziurze, w której grawitacja jest zbyt silna, by cokolwiek, nawet światło, mogło się z niej wydostać

It is perhaps a form of disillusionment similar to that experienced in many Eastern European countries the moment many people realized that they have lost whatever benefits they had under the former communist regimes without winning anything in return under the draconian, capitalist EU system of exploitation.

Ideology must be our foundation as it was for the Bolsheviks, but the new archives show that the personalities and patronage of a minuscule oligarchy were the essence of politics under Lenin and Stalin, as they were under the Romanov emperors—and just as they are today under the 'managed democracy' of twenty-first-century Russia.

The Establishment is amassing wealth and aggressively annexing power in a way that has no precedent in modern times. After all, there is nothing to stop it.

I say, they [those at the top] don't have to conspire, because they all think alike. The president of General Motors and the president of Chase Manhattan Bank really are not going to disagree much on anything, nor would the editor of the New York Times disagree with them. They all tend to think quite alike, otherwise they would not be in those jobs.

The composition of the oligarchy of government [...] emerges as the dominant theme of political history [...] ; it is something real and tangible, whatever may be the name or theory of the constitution.