An excess
of billionaires is destabilising politics – just as academics predicted
Zoe Williams
Politicians
have always courted the wealthy, but Elon Musk and co represent a new kind of
donor, and an unprecedented danger to democracy
Thu 31 Oct
2024 10.00 GMT
The concept
of “elite overproduction” was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin
around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich
people for not enough rich-person jobs. It’s a byproduct of inequality: a ton
of poor people, sure, but also a superfluity of the wealthy, without enough
positions to house them in the influence and status to which they think
themselves entitled. In a modern context, that would mean senior positions in
the government and civil service, along with the top tier of finance and law,
but Turchin tested the hypothesis from ancient Rome to 19th-century Britain.
The names and nature of the contested jobs and titles changed; the pattern
remained. Turchin predicted in 2010 that by the 2020s it would be destabilising
US politics.
In the UK in
recent years the phrase has been repurposed in the wildest ways – to mean an
excess of people at university creates unwanted activism (my précis); or, in
the Economist (paraphrasing again), landslides create too many mediocre
backbench MPs, who can’t hope for preferment so make trouble instead. And while
the second proposition might be true, the first is basic anti-intellectualism.
Turchin didn’t specify exactly how much wealth puts you in a situation with an
overproduced elite, but he didn’t mean debt-laden students; he didn’t mean MPs;
he meant, for brevity, billionaires or the top 1%. When a lot of your media are
billionaire-owned, those media sources become endlessly inventive in taking the
heat off billionaires, nipping criticism in the bud by pilfering its vocabulary
and throwing it back at everyone.
But put a
pin in that for a second, because elite overproduction in its true sense is
hitting global politics square in the jaw. Elon Musk has inserted himself into
the US election by means long term and short, above board and below it. His
impact on X (formerly Twitter) since he bought it was mired for a while in
comical cackhandedness, but over the past few months the real purpose has
crystallised. Paid-for verification removed any faith in trusted sources that
couldn’t be bought; Republican accounts flourish, Democratic ones languish.
Musk himself has amplified lies and conspiracy theories. He has directly given
$75m to his America PAC (political action committee), which has an X account
and a yellow tick (whatever the hell that means) – it peddles xenophobic bilge.
Musk opened a $1m Philadelphia voter giveaway that may be illegal earlier in
the month.
Musk also
spoke at the Madison Square Garden rally, but left the “ironic” fash posting
(derogatory language about places and races) to others. He made one promise:
“We’re going to get the government off your back.” He fleshed out what small
government meant, in a telephone town hall (like a radio phone in, except the
radio phones you, the constituents) over the weekend: ordinary Americans would
face “temporary hardship” as welfare programmes are slashed in order to
restructure the economy, but they should embrace the pain, as “it will ensure
long-term prosperity”.
It’s not the
worst thing to come out of Trump’s camp in these last, nail-biting few days,
and it’s by no means the worst thing Musk has said, but it is the cleanest
image yet of what elite overproduction looks like: Elon Musk could never have
got himself elected into office in the US. But as the cost-cutting tsar, a
made-up role Trump has promised him, he would exert extraordinary power to
cause pain, with the only choice left to citizens being whether or not to hug
it. Another billionaire donor, John Paulson, has been floated for the treasury
secretary job, and Trump has a track record of rewarding big-ticket donors with
a seat at the table – the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman boasted in print about
his role in the new North America Free Trade Agreement negotiations in 2018,
and as part of Trump’s “strategic and policy forum” during the 2017
administration.
Inconveniently,
more billionaires (21) have donated to Kamala Harris’s campaign than to Trump’s
(14); this is a problem for mature democracies everywhere. All political
parties court high net worth individuals. It creates an atmosphere of
equivalence – if a rich man buys your clothes, how is that different to his
buying you a social media platform, except that you’re a cheaper date? If a
rich man quashes an endorsement of your rival, but doesn’t endorse you, does
that pass the sniff test? If a rich man creates a thinktank, which devises an
ideological scheme that people are medium-sure that you, in government, will
adopt wholesale, whose proposals are recruiting ideologically loyal civil
servants, collecting data on abortions and limiting the use of abortion pills,
is that any different to a money-bags with a pet peeve buying a tennis match
with a political leader at a charity auction?
And what
about the billionaires who keep a finger on both scales, donate to both
candidates because why not, it suits them to stay friends and it’s chicken feed
to them anyway? Is all this just the same game?
Qualitatively,
yes: all billionaires are bad news in politics; all bought influence is
undemocratic. But as billionaires line up behind a neofascist, you can see that
this is a new phase in which they’re looking for more bang for their buck.
They’re not trying to protect their commercial interests; they don’t need more
money. They don’t even seek to shore up their own political influence – rather,
to neuter any influence that may countervail it. Delinquent elites are in an
open crusade against democracy, which, yes, does appear to be pretty
destabilising.
Zoe Williams
is a Guardian columnist
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário