Oligarchy
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An Oligarchy is a Power Structure that ...
- See: [[Oligarchy [1] [2] [3] is a Form of]], Ecclesia (Ancient Athens), Wikt:Ὀλιγαρχία, Wikt:Ὀλίγος, Wikt:Ἄρχω, Power Structure, Power (Social And Political), Nobility, Wealth, Education, Corporate, Religious.
References
2020
- (Wikipedia, 2020) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy Retrieved:2020-7-1.
- Oligarchy [4] [5] [6] is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may be distinguished by nobility, wealth, education, corporate, religious, political, or military control. Such states are often controlled by families who pass their influence from one generation to the next, but inheritance is not a necessary condition of oligarchy. Throughout history, oligarchies have often been tyrannical, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, [7] for which another term commonly used today is plutocracy. In the early 20th century Robert Michels developed the theory that democracies, as all large organizations, have a tendency to turn into oligarchies. In his “Iron law of oligarchy” he suggests that the necessary division of labor in large organizations leads to the establishment of a ruling class mostly concerned with protecting their own power. This was already recognized by the Athenians in the fourth century BCE: after the restoration of democracy from oligarchical coups, they used the drawing of lots for selecting government officers to counteract that tendency toward oligarchy in government. [8] They drew lots from large groups of adult volunteers to pick civil servants performing judicial, executive, and administrative functions (archai, boulē, and hēliastai).[9] They even used lots for posts, such as judges and jurors in the political courts (nomothetai), which had the power to overrule the Assembly. [10]
- ↑ "Ὀλίγος", Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
- ↑ "Ἄρχω", Liddell/Scott.
- ↑ "Ὀλιγαρχία". Liddell/Scott.
- ↑ "ὀλίγος", Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus Digital Library
- ↑ "ἄρχω", Liddell/Scott.
- ↑ "ὀλιγαρχία". Liddell/Scott.
- ↑ Winters (2011) p. 26-28. "Aristotle writes that 'oligarchy is when men of property have the government in their hands... wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy'."
- ↑ Hansen, Mogens Herman (1991). The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Oxford: Blackwell. .
- ↑ Bernard Manin. Principles of Representative Government. pp. 11–24 (1997).
- ↑ Manin (1997), pp. 19–23.
But while you shouldn’t be too much of a cynic, it remains true that America is less of a democracy and more of an oligarchy than we like to think. And to tackle inequality, we’ll have to confront unequal political power as well as unequal income and wealth.