The object of this new American industrial empire, so far as that object was conscious and normative, was not national well-being, but the individual gain of the associated and corporate monarchs. ... The uplift and well-being of the mass of men, of the cohorts of common labor, was not its ideal or excuse. Profit, income, uncontrolled power in My Business for My Property and for Me—this was the aim and method of the new monarchial dictatorship that displaced democracy in the United States in 1876. ~ W. E. B. Du Bois

Average Americans have little or no influence over the making of U.S. government policy. ... Wealthy Americans wield a lot of influence. By investing money in politics, they can turn economic power into political power. ~ Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens

In the political organization of the United States, the United States is a federal republic in which the president, Congress and federal courts share powers reserved to the national government, according to its Constitution.

Quotes

• The object of this new American industrial empire, so far as that object was conscious and normative, was not national well-being, but the individual gain of the associated and corporate monarchs through the power of vast profit on enormous capital investment; through the efficiency of an industrial machine that bought the highest managerial and engineering talent and used the latest and most effective methods and machines in a field of unequaled raw material and endless market demand. That this machine might use the profit for the general weal was possible and in cases true. But the uplift and well-being of the mass of men, of the cohorts of common labor, was not its ideal or excuse. Profit, income, uncontrolled power in My Business for My Property and for Me—this was the aim and method of the new monarchial dictatorship that displaced democracy in the United States in 1876.
  • W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (1935), p. 586

• A recent change in U.S. political discourse — spurred by events such as the 2008 financial crisis, the Occupy movement, and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign — is the increasingly common use of the words “oligarchy” and “plutocracy” to describe the country’s political system. Though dramatic, the terms, melded together, describe a fairly simple and common state of affairs: power exerted by and exercised for the exclusive benefit of a small group of people who wield the greatest financial power.
  • Glenn Greenwald, The FBI’s Hunt for Two Missing Piglets Reveals the Federal Cover-Up of Barbaric Factory Farms (October 5, 2017), The Intercept.

• The preponderant weight of economic power in the Constitutional Convention, while conceding the outward forms of political democracy, went on at once to curb the exercise of the very power it had just granted; it crippled the force of democratic power at the source by parceling up this power by a marvelously dexterous system of barriers to its expression. Thus political equality under the ballot was granted on the unstated but factually double-locked assumption that the people must refrain from seeking the extension of that equality to the economic sphere. In short, the attempted harmonious marriage of democracy to capitalism doomed genuinely popular control from the start.
  • Robert Staughton Lynd, Foreword to Business as a System of Power (1943), p. vii

• Average Americans have little or no influence over the making of U.S. government policy. ... Wealthy Americans wield a lot of influence. By investing money in politics, they can turn economic power into political power.
  • Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It (University of Chicago Press: 2017), p. 90

• Money in politics is the cancer underlying all the others. The only way to heal it is thru public funding of federal campaigns plus a constitutional amendment. Til then, health insurance, big Pharma, gun manufacturers, oil & gas, food, chem & defense contractors run this country.
  • Marianne Williamson, Twitter (8 January 2020)

• As long as health ins & Big Pharma determine so much health care policy, gun manufacturers so much gun safety policy, oil & gas companies so much environmental policy & defense contractors so much defense policy, we’re functioning not as a democracy but as a corporate aristocracy
  • Marianne Williamson,Twitter (22 Oct 2019)

• We should have total public funding of federal campaigns. That is the only way to get the dark money out of politics...the undue influence of money on our politics is the cancer underlying all other cancers.
  • Marianne Williamson,Twitter (24 Nov 2019)

• Money in politics is the cancer underlying all the others. The only way to heal it is thru public funding of federal campaigns plus a constitutional amendment. Til then, health insurance, big Pharma, gun manufacturers, oil & gas, food, chem & defense contractors run this country.
  • Marianne Williamson, Twitter (8 January 2020)

• As long as health ins & Big Pharma determine so much health care policy, gun manufacturers so much gun safety policy, oil & gas companies so much environmental policy & defense contractors so much defense policy, we’re functioning not as a democracy but as a corporate aristocracy
  • Marianne Williamson,Twitter (22 Oct 2019)

See also

• United States

External links