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Not long ago, social scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern released one of the most sweeping analyses of political influence in modern America. Their decades-long evaluation—covering 1,779 policy decisions from 1981 to 2002—found something the political establishment refuses to say out loud:
“The United States does not operate as a democracy. It functions as an oligarchy.”
Their peer-reviewed findings concluded that election outcomes rarely influence policy unless they align with the interests of the wealthy elite.
LA Progressive has covered this anti-democratic dynamic for years
- The U.S. Is Not Yet Ready for Revolution
- Plato’s Cave and American Politics
- Why Economic Inequality Threatens Democracy
The Princeton Study gives the clearest explanation for why the richest country on earth consistently fails to meet the basic needs of its people, especially the most vulnerable, seniors and children.
So what exactly is an Oligarchy? and How Does the United States Fit the Definition?
An oligarchy is a system where power is concentrated in the hands of a small elite group—wealthy families, corporate factions, military brass, and entrenched political insiders.
Scholar and author Aaron Good, in "American Exception: Empire and the Deep State", argues that the U.S. is structured as a “tripartite state”: a visible democratic layer, a powerful national-security apparatus, and a hidden corporate-security elite that sets the real boundaries of policy. According to Good, the hidden corporate-security elite is the oligarchy while the visible democratic layer is a facade.
Key features of oligarchy include:
- Small ruling class with outsized influence
- Institutions engineered to preserve elite control
- Democracy as spectacle, not substance
- Inequality by design, not accident
- Policy captured by and for the few
In everyday language:
Oligarchy is rule by the few, for the few—at the expense of everyone else.
None of us — other than the tiny sliver sitting at the top — actually wants to live under an oligarchy. But we also have to be honest: democracy demands far more from us than showing up at the ballot box. A society is only democratic when:
- Leaders are chosen in free, fair, genuinely competitive elections
- Every adult has equal political power in practice, not just on paper
- The law binds the powerful as tightly as it binds everyone else
- Government decision-making is transparent and accountable
- Minority rights aren’t optional or negotiable
- Public policy reflects the preferences of the majority
Anyone awake to the reality of American politics knows we don’t meet this standard. And the Princeton study simply puts academic weight behind what millions already understand: the United States is not a functioning democracy — and, truthfully, never has been.
The question that has haunted me for years — long before Dick Price and I launched the LA Progressive — is this: Are human societies even capable of organizing themselves democratically at scale? Can any modern nation truly operate as a participatory democracy, not just a performance of one?
Before diving into that, it’s worth looking back at the moments when oligarchies have been pushed aside — and what those rare transitions teach us.
History’s Hard Lesson: No Solidarity, No Democracy
Every time humanity has toppled an oligarchy and moved toward genuine democracy, the toppling was successful when people who did not naturally see themselves as one people chose to fight as one people, in other words, there was solidarity.
Whenever solidarity was narrow or fractured, oligarchy survived—or reemerged under a new name.
Whenever solidarity was broad and deep, oligarchy cracked and revolution was possible.
Revolutions That Worked—and Why. Hint - the American Revolution wasn't one
1. The French Revolution (1789)
France was a sealed-tight oligarchy backed by monarchy, nobility, clergy, and military power.
- Peasants had numbers but no organization
- Urban workers had energy but no legitimacy
- The bourgeoisie had wealth but no mass support
Only when these groups acted together—uneasily, imperfectly, but decisively—did the old order collapse.
Lesson: Without sustained cross-class solidarity, oligarchy returns.
2. Haiti (1791–1804)
The Haitian Revolution stands alone as a complete, bottom-up democratic revolution.
Enslaved Africans (from Kongo, Igbo, Fon, Yoruba, and others), maroons, free Black people, and some mixed-race elites built a solidarity so strong it dismantled the wealthiest slave colony on the planet.
They didn’t just overthrow an elite—they destroyed the entire plantation system that made that elite possible.
Lesson: The most oppressed populations can defeat the most powerful oligarchies when solidarity is wide, deep, and disciplined.
3. The Russian Revolution (1917)
The Romanov oligarchy had survived uprisings for a century.
But in 1917:
- Workers formed soviets
- Peasants seized land
- Soldiers mutinied
When these groups aligned, the old order collapsed within months.
Lesson: No single exploited group can topple an oligarchy alone. Solidarity is the force multiplier.
Why the American “Revolution” Wasn’t One
America’s War of Independence doesn’t meet the historical definition of a revolution. A revolution is a rapid, deep, and irreversible transformation of a society’s political, economic, or social structure — a true break from the old order, not just a reshuffling of who’s in charge.
A genuine revolution or transformation from oligarchy to democracy demands:
- Solidarity across race, class, and ethnicity
- A wholesale reorganization of political power
- Redistribution of rights, resources, and sovereignty
- A collapse of entrenched hierarchies
By that standard, the American founding doesn’t qualify.
After the War of Independence:
- Slavery expanded dramatically
- Indigenous nations faced even greater dispossession
- Women remained politically invisible
- Poor whites were still shut out of real power
- Free Black people lost rights in many states
- Land and wealth stayed firmly in elite hands
This wasn’t a democratic revolution. It was a handoff of power from wealthy white British-born men to wealthy white American-born men — a horizontal exchange within the same racial and economic caste, not a redistribution of power to the public.
I want to live in a real democracy, and I suspect you do too. I wrote this piece to expose the forces blocking us from ever achieving one. In the coming week, I’ll turn to the harder question: whether a genuine, participatory democratic transformation is possible without violently tearing down the system we have now.
Where That Leaves Us
If we’re honest, the United States has never undergone the kind of deep structural break that creates a true democracy. We’ve changed leaders, amended laws, expanded rights in waves — but we’ve never reorganized power at its roots. That’s why the same caste of wealth and whiteness continues to dominate every major institution, generation after generation.
But here’s the hopeful part: history shows that entrenched systems can be transformed when people understand what they’re up against and refuse to settle for symbolic victories. Naming the problem is not cynicism; it’s the beginning of strategy.
We don’t have to accept a political order that treats democracy as a performance rather than a lived reality. We don’t have to keep rehearsing the same myths about our origins, our institutions, or our possibilities. We can choose honesty over nostalgia — and once we do, new options come into view.
Real self-government demands courage, clarity, and collective imagination. It asks us to think beyond elections and beyond the narrow script written for us by elites who benefit from stasis.
In my next piece, I’ll take on the question that matters most:
Is it possible to build a genuine participatory democracy in this country without a violent rupture?
If the answer is yes — and history suggests it might be — then the work ahead is not only necessary, it’s entirely within reach.
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