An upcoming book to be published by Penguin Random House.

Autorentext

Bernie Sanders is the longest-serving independent in congressional history. In 2016 and 2020 he sought the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States. He served as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for eight years, U.S. Representative to Congress for sixteen years, and is now in his fourth term in the U.S. Senate. He lives in Burlington with his wife, Jane, and has four children and seven grandchildren.

Zusammenfassung
“Oligarchy is a system in which a small number of extremely wealthy individuals control the economic, political, and media life of a nation. It is a system in which ordinary people have very little power to determine the future of their country. If you’re an American, it is the system in which you’re living. That must change. In the wealthiest nation on earth we must build a political movement that creates a government that represents all Americans, not just a handful of billionaires.”
—Bernie Sanders

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Senator Bernie Sanders breaks down the unprecedented crises we face today in Trump’s America, as Trump undermines democracy at every turn—and how we can effectively fight back.

From the moment that Sanders began his Fighting Oligarchy tour in the early days of the Trump administration, it was clear that his message resonated with Americans across the political spectrum. Record-breaking crowds numbering in the tens of thousands showed up across the country. Large numbers of Americans, in red states and blue states, were prepared to stand up and fight back. In this book, he shows how we can continue that fight.

In a series of short, pointed chapters, Sanders explains how the United States today is an oligarchic society in which a small handful of multibillionaires exercise enormous economic and political power. He describes what it means when the very rich get much richer, while the majority of Americans struggle to pay the rent and put food on the table. And he observes how a corrupt campaign finance system allows billionaires in both parties to increasingly control our political system.

Sanders also discusses how, under Trump, we are rapidly moving toward authoritarianism–with a president who is undermining our democracy as he attacks Congress, the courts, the media, and law firms and universities in search of more and more power for himself. With relentless optimism and focused energy, Sanders reminds readers that true power rests with the people—and he presents a path forward to a reinvigorated democracy.

Leseprobe
What is Oligarchy?

Oligarchy is a system in which a small number of extremely wealthy individuals control the economic, political, and media life of a nation. It is a system in which ordinary people have very little power to determine the future of their country. If you’re an American, it is the system in which you’re living. Increasingly, it is the system that is dominating people in almost every country on Earth.

In America today, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of our country. Right now, the people on top have never had it so good. Meanwhile, while the rich get richer, the middle class struggles to pay the rent, put food on the table, and pay for health care. The poor live in desperation. Today, one man—Elon Musk—now owns more wealth than the bottom 52 percent of American households. Let me repeat that. One man, worth nearly $400 billion, now owns more wealth than the bottom 52 percent of American households. The top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent. And the CEOs of large corporations make 350 times more than their average employee.

But it’s not just income and wealth inequality that make this an oligarchy. In America today, we have more concentration of ownership than we have ever had, with a small number of giant corporations controlling sector after sector of our economy.

Do you want to know why the prices of beef, pork, and chicken are so high in our nation’s grocery stores? Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that just four companies in America control 80 percent of the processing of beef, 70 percent of pork, and nearly 60 percent of poultry.

And it’s not just agriculture. The same is true for transportation, financial services, energy, health care, Big Tech—you name it. In America today, a handful of multinational corporations determine what is produced, how employees are treated, and the prices we pay.

And who owns these multinational corporations?

Well, if you can believe it, three huge Wall Street firms. Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street are the major stockholders in 95 percent of S&P 500 corporations. In other words, they have significant influence over many hundreds of companies that employ millions of American workers—and, in fact, the entire economy.

You want to know who owns General Motors? Well, their three largest shareholders are Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street.

Okay. But who owns Ford, GM’s supposed rival? If you guessed Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street, in that same exact order, you would be correct.

What about the big oil companies, ExxonMobil and Chevron? That’s right. Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street are the three largest shareholders of both those companies.

How about Pfizer, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson, three huge pharmaceutical companies? Yup. Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street own all three.

Over the last several years, both as chairman and ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee in the Senate, I have advocated on behalf of union workers who were engaged in labor struggles against a number of corporations for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. And time and time again, when I contacted the managers of these companies, I was told, in so many words: “We’re not the owners, it’s somebody else.”

That opaque consolidation of power makes it harder to hold ownership accountable for their actions.

The media, which is supposed to objectively inform us as to what is happening in our country and the world, is now also controlled by a handful of giant international conglomerates and billionaires. That’s why issues that impact the working class of this country, or serious analyses of wealth and power, get relatively little airtime. That’s why there has never been a TV program focused on why the United States, alone among wealthy countries, does not guarantee health care for all or provide guaranteed paid family and medical leave. That’s why we hear virtually nothing about the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Topics like these are just not of great interest to the billionaires who own the networks.

In America today, we have more media concentration than we have ever had. Just six international media corporations control what 90 percent of the American people see, hear, and read. They own the traditional media—newspapers, radio and TV networks, movie studios—as well as much of the internet.

Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on Earth, owns X (formerly Twitter); Jeff Bezos, the fourth wealthiest person in the world, owns The Washington Post, Amazon Prime, and the streaming platform Twitch; and Mark Zuckerberg, who is now the third wealthiest man alive, owns Meta, which controls Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Larry Ellison, the second wealthiest man on Earth, just purchased Paramount, which owns CBS. Rupert Murdoch, another multibillionaire, owns Fox, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, HarperCollins, and right-wing media throughout the world. Billionaires own and control vi…