More than 11% of the world’s more than 2,000 billionaires have run for election or become politicians, according to a study highlighting the growing power and influence of the super-wealthy.
While billionaires have had mixed success at the ballot box in the U.S., billionaires around the world have a “strong track record” of winning elections and “lean to the Right ideologically,” said the study, which is by three professors at Northwestern University.
“Billionaire politicians are a shockingly common phenomenon,” the study said. “The concentration of massive wealth in the hands of a tiny elite has understandably caused many observers to worry that the ‘super-rich have super-sized political influence.’”
As an anti-capitalist, I disagree. He conflated the role of the employer with the owner of the means of production, which led him to the mistaken conclusion that rejecting capitalist appropriation requires rejecting private property per se. It’s really the employment contract that enables capitalist appropriation and exploitative property relations. There are other reasons to oppose private ownership, but that is another story. The classical laborists’ criticisms are spot on not Marx’s