HOW TO REMOVE
THE RICH FROM POWER
by John Spritzler
August 31, 2022
[The URL of this article is https://www.pdrboston.org/how-to-remove-the-rich-from-power
or https://tinyurl.com/3j2emnss]
This is the very short version of my longer, more detailed, "How We CAN Remove the Rich From Power," which explains why it is possible to do what I talk about below; I highly encourage you to read the longer version too.
It is well known that the United States is a dictatorship of the rich (billionaires) disguised as a fake democracy; for proof of this go here. It is also well known that this dictatorship of the rich enforces class inequality, i.e., the division of our society into many have-nots and a few haves, and that in order to keep the have-nots "in their place," the rich treat us like dirt; for many examples of this go here. The rich also need to keep us have-nots divided against each other and for this purpose do despicable things, many of which are described here.
To have a genuine democracy instead of our current dictatorship of the rich requires--obviously!--removing the rich from power, not merely taxing them more; no matter how much we may tax the rich, billionaires will still have the real power and will still treat us like dirt to hold onto that power. And no matter what laws restricting the rich we enact, the rich will use their power of money to get around them as they have always done. Nor can we shape all of society by our positive values while leaving the rich in power and trying to achieve that goal "through the back door" as some people mistakenly believe; read about the limits of cooperatives and alternative societies here and here.
Vote the rich out?
The rich were never elected to be billionaires and thus cannot be un-elected. The rich hold elections to control us, not to enable us to control them (and certainly not to enable us to remove them from power.) Read about the purpose of elections here and their history here.
The Way to Remove the Rich from Power
The way to remove the rich from power is to build a movement with that explicit aim (described here), a movement so large and so determined and so unified (i.e., savvy about how to resist all of the ruling class's divide-and-rule stratagems) that it can win over to its side (i.e., persuade to refuse orders to attack the revolutionary movement and possibly help defend it against those who do attack it) a critical mass of the armed forces that the ruling class relies on to defeat those who challenge its power. This is the way ruling classes were removed from power in the past.
This can one day happen in the U.S. because most of the people in the U.S. armed forces did not join to keep the rich in power and they dislike living in a dictatorship of the rich as much as civilians do; they obey orders because they fear what would happen if they disobeyed but will think differently if/when the revolutionary movement is likely to prevail if they disobey those orders.
When the revolutionary movement thus prevails over the force, or credible threat of force (including violence), that the ruling class uses to enforce its dictatorship, then the revolutionary movement will be able to actually shape society by the egalitarian values of no-rich-and-no-poor equality, mutual aid, fairness and truth, as described here. Until then, the ruling class will be able to prevent people from shaping society by these values.
The Moral of the Story
Build the explicitly egalitarian revolutionary movement. Here's how.