0.1% - The billionaires empire

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0.1% - The Empire of the Billionaires is a book published in 2012 and 2015 in a revised and expanded edition by the sociologist Hans Jürgen Krysmanski, who is based on Marxist dialectics .

The work in the thematic area of power structure research and wealth research deals with the economic, social and political role of the modern globalized financial and money elite . This is increasingly gaining power over the functional elites and thus also influencing the political structures of rule .

According Krysmanski place in the "Trans capitalism" a refeudalization one in terms of money nobility held which extends over the inheritance law and tax law perpetuated . The unequal distribution of wealth is based on a systematic redistribution from the bottom up and therefore harbors social explosives . The representative democracy was developing at an ever-dwindling middle class of a meritocracy towards an oligarchic plutocracy or even kleptocracy . For the future, he expects a global "scenario of naked struggles for survival".

Krysmanski thinks that research on wealth is taboo and marginalized in Germany . The German sociology still as there is Empire is that the middle class , the lower class watch critical to allow the power of the upper classes to hedge, or, as with the Frankfurt School , in sublimated considerations of time saw the concrete on the "hard" conditions.

Krysmanski sees himself in the tradition of American-style sociology and relies in particular on Thorstein Veblen's theories in The Theory of the Leisure Class on demonstrative consumption , Charles Wright Mills ' theory of the power elites in The Power Elite (1956) and on sociological methodology in The Sociological Imagination (1959).

content

The statement of 0.1% of the world population in the title is, in the opinion of the author, a coarse, 0.001 is a more precise calculation of the super-rich, whose income starts at $ 500 million disposable income, even if according to other definitions people with $ 30 million disposable income Income would be considered super rich. About 10 million people worldwide would have a million dollars or more. Among these 10 million there are two to three thousand billionaires, who, however, should not be imagined as individual personalities, but rather as family clans who formed a wreath of around 100 helpers and supporters from nannies to yacht captains to lawyers, in Germany that is about 50,000 people around the 500 super-rich. In Krysmanski's view, wealth of this magnitude can no longer be legally incorporated.

In the opinion of the author, the globally nomadic super-rich in richistan (Robert Frank), despite their seclusion, are interested in nothing other than the maintenance of the system that is organized by the functional elite for mutual benefit. Expenditures in the area of ​​foundations for the purpose of charity also served only to maintain power by obscuring interests and by involving politicians and intellectuals, and to a lesser extent also to appease a bad conscience of upstarts, who, as a rule, would have disregarded humanitarian concerns during their rise .

In the crises of the past, wealth was only protected individually, within national borders and the barriers of the nobility. It was not until 1989 that, according to Krysmanski, the “planetarization” of wealth emerged as a unified global phenomenon beyond personal or national ties. Today's exponentially growing capital can exploit all legal loopholes in international tax law.

In the capping discussion, the author is of the opinion that the super-rich will never accept an upper limit because their ideas grow with the possibilities. Their interest going, as Chrystia Freeland in plutocrats performing , to preserve and increase their wealth and securing their empires by any means.

The financial elite consider the world to be overpopulated and seem to be in favor of depopulation strategies , even if this currently appears as a satirical dystopia , as in the Lugano Report Susan Georges .

In think tanks , the complex strategy of maintaining power would systematically developed. In addition, the elite also creates a new ideology to maintain it, which is spread, for example, in the film industry.

Unlike Jean Ziegler , he sees the chance of overcoming the plutocracy in overcoming the information advantage of the elites through transparency, for example through the revelations of the elite's plans by WikiLeaks .

For Krysmaski, Obama as a figurehead is also a product of the planning of the financial elite in line with population growth.

In his analysis, Krysmanski follows a model of social theory based on Marx, whereby he emphasizes the empirical content of his research. In doing so, however, like any researcher, Marx remained caught in the limits of the thinking of his time.

reception

The Süddeutsche Zeitung stated that "especially in times of crisis, it is a justified, critical examination of the often questionable behavior of an elite that only defines itself through a lot of money".

For the Frankfurter Rundschau , the book is “a well-founded look into the world of wealth”.

Deutschlandradio Kultur agreed with the author in his analysis: “For Krysmanski, 'Richistan', the empire of the super-rich, therefore exists outside of state and democratic control. He diagnoses global ' plutocracy ' and the 're- feudalization ' of society. 'The money channels themselves are built according to the plans of the super-rich'. "

According to reviewer Marcus Klöckner at Telepolis , Krysmanski provides “an anatomy of the mega-wealth of this world. It unveils the sometimes difficult to grasp power that is associated with these enormous monetary values, and thus makes it clear that even in complex systems and structures, specifically identifiable actors are at work ".

Wolfgang Hetzer explains on the reflective pages : "Krysmanski succeeds in describing and explaining the abstract and concrete conditions and consequences of an obscenely unequal and thus unbearably unjust distribution of wealth and income with personal passion and scientific sobriety."

expenditure

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b Review: Hans Jürgen Krysmanski, 0.1% The Billionaire Empire . NachDenkSeiten - The critical website. October 16, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2014.
  2. ↑ a b Arno Orzessek: Appropriate the appropriators! Hans Jürgen Krysmanski: "0.1 percent - The billionaires' empire", Westend Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2012, 240 pages. Book review. In: deutschlandfunkkultur.de . November 22, 2012. Retrieved March 22, 2018 .
  3. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 12, 2013
  4. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau , December 29, 2012
  5. ↑ Marcus Klöckner: The money elite becomes independent. In: Telepolis . November 4, 2012, accessed on March 22, 2018 (interview with Krysmanski on the book).