chy, represented at their head by Putin. They are an entrenched ruling class that have evolved from the nomenklatura, or Communist bureaucrats, of the Soviet Union. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, Western business had hoped to enter Russia to steal and plunder her resources. However, they found that the Russians had already organised themselves into an Oligarchy capable of plundering their own nation’s wealth. The same process can be identified in China where previous state-owned enterprises, under the guiding hand of the old Communist ruling class, are transferred into the ownership of the new post-Communist ruling class. Who just happen to be the same people!
In ancient China Confucius stood up against Oligarchy. One of the main problems China faced in his time was the constant warfare driven by the private needs of the Chou dynasty. Confucius regarded many of the nobility as useless parasites and idlers. He promoted the ideas of education on the basis of ability and a government filled with advisers (to the leader) who served not feudal loyalty but answered to higher moral principles. Confucius stood in opposition to entrenched privilege, which Oligarchy maintains, and was opposed to the domination by a caste of rulers with no intrinsic merits of their own.
Machiavelli, who lived in Italy during the Renaissance period, wrote about the body politic. Drawing on his country’s history he wrote about the nobility living as he saw it on the abundant revenue derived from their estates, and called them pests in his Discourse on Livy. He was of the opinion though that class conflict between the rich few and the many have-nots was a good thing for political development. He identified five classes: feudal nobility; bankers and merchants; the middle class; poor urban mass; and the country peasant. The key was that one group’s power did not become excessive. Machiavelli believed that a healthy republic required a series of checks and balances.
The idea of a series of checks and balances was enshrined at the heart of the US Constitution. The American Founding Fathers were concerned with preventing Tyranny, but they were also aware of the dangers of Oligarchy. They attempted to form safeguards in the Constitution to prevent the US from falling prey to this type of rule. It can be summed up in the slogan, “Of the People, By the People, and For the People.” Have the Oligarchs now taken over the United States? More commentators, like Thomas Piketty in his book Capital in the Twenty First Century that have focused on the widening inequality gap, are drawing this conclusion. The US is being run by Oligarchs.