The “Oligarchs” and “Aristocrats” – Plato’s definitions used in the current context

Oligarchy or Aristocracy

When you are looking at a government of the few, you are looking at either?oligarchy or aristocracy as defined by Plato, the Greek philosopher. The other forms of government as theorized by him are democracy, timocracy, and tyranny.

Idea of a democracy

Abraham Lincoln gave a lofty and perhaps very idealistic ?definition of democracy which is “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

But in a representative form or indirect democracy the above definition does not hold good. The citizens choose their representatives and those representatives choose the head of the government (Westminster Model) . Sometimes, both the people's representatives and the head of the government are chosen by the people separately (US Model). But in both cases, the people have no control on how the elected government or their representatives would work. And every government fails, at least partly, in implementing their pre-poll promises. The people can influence the government to some extent only through democratic agitation, and mid-term elections. ?But there also the government decides, which is a ‘legitimate’ agitation and which is an ‘anti-national’ agitation, and then the matter moves to the slow process of courts to decide. In large democracies the citizens do not have the right to recall their representatives or recall their head of the state. And this is the biggest lacuna in indirect democracy.

In the process, and as a result, the system morphs into either an “aristocracy”, or "oligarchy" . As per Plato "aristocracy" is good because the aristocrats are good knowledgeable people, who know what is good for the people, and on the other hand as per Plato “oligarchy” is bad because they are a group of people who work in their self-interest only ignoring the people's interest to run a state.

Is the US government influenced and run by the likes of Rothschilds, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Trump and his children, Hunter Biden, Elon Mask and some such names? ?US will say no, and some will say they are aristocrats, working not only for the good of USA, but also for the good of the world. They have to grandiose themselves to be in the mind space of the world citizens.

Indian Context

These are basically nothing but very high net worth individuals of a country. In Indian context they can be the likes of Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Gautam Adani, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Narayan Murthy etc. etc. Do any one call them Oligarchs? No. Not yet.?Do they influence government? Of course, yes. Do some of them give aircrafts to the politicians during elections, of course, yes. They are probably aristocrats.

But wait a minute. If India deviates too much from the beaten path or if India is in direct competition with the West, particularly USA, some day they may be called Oligarchs also. They will be branded, as if, they are working against the “hapless” Indian citizens.

If they were living in Russia or were Russian citizens living in London, they would be called “oligarchs” definitely. ?If the West considers you as an aristocrat the means, the means to your wealth are all transparent like crystal, but if you are an Oligarch, your road to wealth is all dubious, and all your contributions to the society are nothing but smoke screen to serve the political boss of your country.

Hardly any difference

In reality the difference between a “Western aristocrat” and a “Russian oligarch” is very thin. Both have private aircrafts, yachts, swiss bank accounts, many girl-friends, archives of marital discords and divorces, love for French perfumes and Italian wines, and both do lot of charities and both have a say in the state’s affairs, sometimes in the affairs of multiple states. Both have greed for money and greed for being seen as successful. These are nothing but symptoms of capitalism.

Why then the term "Oligarchic"?

Now you see the problems of any state that was practicing socialism like China and Russia, who slowly but surely wanted to return to capitalism, free enterprise etc., because the West only wanted them to “reform”. ?

If in the process capitalists are created in such countries they will be called “oligarchic”, so that they are easily set apart from the capitalists of the West, the blue blooded aristocrats. If they create an enterprise like Alibaba, still they cannot be blue blooded capitalists like those of the West. If their own country, for example China, clamp down upon their own capitalists, it would be said that China is clamping down on its oligarchic, because the blue blood capitalists, the so-called aristocrats are untouchable, they are bigger than any state. West seems to indirectly suggest that no capitalist in Russia or China has matured to a level of being called "aristocrats". There is an element jealousy also. How come these people from those underdeveloped parts of the world enjoy the same privilege and luxury, which was once only reserved for the aristocrat capitalists of the West ?

Why the faucet of aristocratic capitalism is important? Because the western countries know their weakness. This weakness is in their debts, high level of debts compared to their GDP – from 150% to 350% in some cases. There is no mortal possibility of?repaying these debts in full. The debts can only go up. So they have to keep the tensions on, keep the wars on, keep the CIA and NATO in place, keep pressure on Russia and China, so that no viable alternative and stable economic model emerge. China and to some extent Russia are show casing ?an alternative economic model, which can loosely be called “State Capitalism” or “state monitored capitalism”, which the western aristocracy based capitalists do not like as it is very difficult for the aristocrat capitalists of the West to plunder on ?such state monitored capitalism.

The Trap

So the Western states have laid a trap for the so called “oligarchic”.

” You put your wealth silently into our states’ economy we will encourage it, because that will actually weaken your home state and enrich us. We can even set up liberal rules for that. If your home state wants to arrest you for any wrong-doing , our judiciary will protect you. But if your home state fights us in any way, we shall appropriate your property, so that you put pressure on your home state not to fight us. This will to some extent help us to reduce our high level of debts too. If you flaunt your wealth too much, you can face our wrath too.”

Extent of Influence the Oligarchy can have

But things really do no work like that. The so called oligarchy has very limited say in the statecraft of the home country. They can set up discussion, set up one or two meeting for political or financial negotiations, but to influence the overall political decision of a country cannot be influenced by them. Such decisions are based on history, people's wish , threat perceptions, capacity to make war, international planning, population, relationship between the home state and other states supporting it and many more factors. Besides, the oligarchs are themselves a divided lot, they have competition and turf war amongst themselves all the time.

Therefore, targeting the capitalists of a country by calling them “oligarchs” ?does not really solve any problem. No capitalist put all his money in his own name or in his home state. The visible part of his luxury and life style is only like the visible part of an iceberg. The invisible part of his wealth is not easy to track and attach. ( An Indian Prime Minister promised before election that the Indian capitalists have so much money outside, that his first job in office will be to bring those money back to India and distribute amongst Indian people and he said that the money is so much that each Indian can have at least half a million rupee in his bank account. On attaining power his party chief said that it was not meant to be a reality, it was just an allegory or illustration. )

And if the West somehow discovers the invisible part of the wealth of the “oligarchs”, they will see that they are "self-sanctioning". And then they will be forced to withdraw or amend the sanctions. The capitalists may even entrap the West into some scandals by making their private knowledge public.

Already UK and USA have withdrawn some sanctions on some of the Russian “oligarchs” and more will follow for sure.

Roman Abramovich.

Take the case of Roman Abramovich. He is a Jewish. He was a good advisor of Boris Yeltsin. He only advised Yeltsin to nominate Putin as his successor, as a safe hand. He regards Putin as his big brother. But he is also a citizen of Israel and has a dual citizenship in Portugal. ?He is a liberal doner. He has donated huge sums for improvement of some areas of Russia, some institutions at Lithuania and Israel. ?After taking over and managing Chelsea FC Soccer team of UK he has taken it to a new height in international tournaments. He has holdings in steel and nickel companies of Russia, but not to the level of the holding of the state of Russia. He was a willing co-operator to the state ownership drive of Putin and sold his 73% holding in Russian oil company Sibneft to state owned Gazprom. He has his foot print in Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Israel and Portugal. It is stated that he only brokered the start of a discussion between Ukraine and Russia in the current conflict, which Russia also acknowledged.

How to use them positively

The world can use the best office of the Russian capitalists to bring a solution to the current crisis, but to expect them to overthrow Putin, will be a bit too much. And why would they? They are already humiliated by the West by calling them “oligarchs”, and confiscating the visible part of their wealth, so they cannot flaunt it. West is again doing the same thing which they did with the Russian president. They are hurting their egos.

Rabindranath Tagore, the well known Nobel Prize winning poet of India had written “Even the dust below your feet, if you hit hard will fly and sit on your head. And humiliating a person, who is a creation of the God, is not liked by the God either”.

The mindless expansion of NATO to the frontier of Russia, assuming it is a banana republic, is the main cause of this conflict, and without addressing that a solution to this problem is not possible. The earlier the better, because it has the potential to spiral into an atomic war, the World War III bringing a destruction of the entire human civilization. The aristocrats and oligarchs and some politicians can take refuge to the radiation-proof bunkers already prepared, but the population in general has no place to move to. They will be the sitting ducks. Atomic winter will engulf the world for decades if not for centuries. And when the market is fully lost because of depopulation what will be the use of living even for the aristocrats and oligarchs and the politicians?

West exposure to Ukraine cannot be so high that a World War III is warranted and entire human civilization is destroyed. Let good sense prevail.