If there’s one figure who captures the mood of our times, it’s Luigi Mangione—the alleged killer of a health insurance CEO. After the killing, he was instantly elevated to the status of folk hero. It’s not hard to see why.
He became the symbol of the brewing anger against billionaires, who own and control everything.
While life is getting harder for working class people, billionaire wealth has reached record highs. As of this year, there are just over 3,000 billionaires in the world and they hold a combined US$16.1 trillion in wealth. This has increased $2 trillion since 2024. To give an example of how obscene this is, Elon Musk’s $420 billion is more than the economy of Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, South Africa or Nigeria, some of the most populous countries in the world.
Dictatorship of the billionaires
But not only do the ultrarich have enormous wealth, they also maintain enormous control over the governments of the world and over every fundamental aspect of our lives.
In the United States in 2024, billionaires spent over $2 billion on presidential and congressional campaigns for both the Democrats and the Republicans—guaranteeing that whoever was elected, their interests were assured.
While in Canada, the rules for electoral spending are much more strict, the wealthy still end up pulling the strings. Politicians, bureaucrats, bankers and businessmen are all part of the same club—and we’re not in it. Once politicians reach the end of their careers spent slashing taxes and giving subsidies to corporations, they get rewarded with lucrative and cushy jobs as board members and advisors for corporations.
To give a few examples: former prime minister Jean Chrétien became international advisor for Ivanhoe Energy; former prime minister Stephen Harper is currently chair of the board of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation; former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard was president of the Quebec Oil and Gas association, amongst many other similar positions.
This time again, billionaires have lined up behind Mark Carney, and in exchange he has adopted an “open door” policy for Canada’s corporate elite. It is therefore unsurprising that he is doing their bidding by cutting government spending, slashing taxes and regulations and massively increasing the military budget.
But controlling the government isn’t the only way billionaires exert their power. Most of the major decisions governing our lives—from what we eat, what we wear, how we sleep, to how we work—are in fact made in corporate boardrooms dominated by the billionaires and their lackeys. They make all of the major economic decisions that determine whether millions can afford a roof over their heads.
And if you thought of saying something about it, good luck, because they also control the media, both traditional and social. With this powerful tool, they dominate people’s minds, set the narrative of political debates, censor speech, etc.
Inescapably, the conclusion is that the “democracy” we live in is nothing but a dictatorship of billionaires. No matter which party is in power, the billionaires control the economy and use this power to control the government. This is why governments always favor the rich at the expense of the poor.
Abolish billionaires?
Faced with this situation, some left-wing personalities and parties across Europe and North America have sensed this anger and are tapping into it.
In the U.K., for example, the new party launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana to “take on the rich and powerful” is receiving huge support.
In New York, the next mayor is likely to be Zohran Mamdani, who is on record stating: “I don’t think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality, and ultimately, what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country.”
As a result of being seen as taking up the fight against billionaires, Mamdani has had a fantastic rise in popularity. This is similar to Bernie Sanders who says “billionaires should not exist” and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) who has said that “a system that allows billionaires to exist is immoral.”
Sanders’ plan in 2020 was for an eight per cent tax on wealth above $1 billion. Mamdani for his part plans to increase New York’s top corporate tax rate from 7.25 per cent to 11.5 per cent.
But there are a few problems with these plans.
Firstly, neither of these plans will eliminate billionaires. In fact, it is clear from listening to what these politicians say that they don’t actually plan on eliminating billionaires, just taxing them ever so slightly. For example, AOC eventually walked back her comments, stating: “I don’t think that necessarily means that all billionaires are immoral.”
Mamdani has also stated: “I look forward to working with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fair for all of them.”
But secondly, and more importantly, the problem with these policies is that none of them attack the problem at the root. They don’t challenge the economic system, they only propose to mitigate its negative effects. None of them actually challenge the billionaires’ right to exist, which derives from the fact that they own everything.
The nature of the capitalist state
The rich aren’t powerful because they control the government—they control the government because they’re powerful.
And their power lies in their control of the economy. They are capitalists—they own what we call the means of production: land, factories, natural resources and so on. The whole economy is a dictatorship of capitalists, who manage it to maximize their profits.
And the state is their tool to facilitate this enrichment. As Karl Marx put it in The Communist Manifesto, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”
Theoretically, we live in a democracy. Representatives of workers and the poor can be elected to parliament. But parliamentarianism is just a mask to give the illusion of choice.
In practice, a left-wing party, radical though it might be, could get elected and govern, but it would soon discover that democracy only exists insofar as it serves the interests of the capitalist class. The latter would immediately use its economic power to sabotage any democratically elected government that went against its interests.
This is particularly true today. In the post-war boom period, reformism seemed a sensible solution. Capitalists had some leeway to make concessions to workers. To prevent a revolution from below, they conceded reforms from above—the so-called welfare state.
Today, in a time of economic crisis, capitalism has no room for reform. One after another, past reforms are being dismantled.
Reformist governments elected in this day and age are quickly confronted by the unified opposition of the capitalists, which presents them with a choice: break with capitalism or abandon any serious reforms.
We saw this with Bob Rae’s New Democrat government in Ontario in the ‘90s who bent to the economic sabotage of the capitalists, abandoned any progressive reforms in their programs and even instituted cuts to social services. We saw this in France a decade ago, with François Hollande’s Socialist Party—which abandoned its promise to raise taxes on the rich after they threatened capital flight. We also saw this in Greece with Syriza in 2015 who capitulated to the pressure of the European capitalists and ended up implementing one of the worst austerity packages in Greek history.
A revolutionary solution
Billionaires can’t be fought half-heartedly—if we take them on, we must be prepared to go all the way. Like a dragon guarding its treasure, we can’t take just a few gold coins—we have to slay the dragon, or perish in the flames. We need a revolution.
While some continue to argue that revolution isn’t possible, they must be living under a rock. In country after country, mass movements, strikes and even revolutions develop, overthrowing governments and challenging the rule of the billionaires.
Even in the United States and Canada, the masses are chafing under the dominance of a small handful of billionaires who are squeezing every last drop of profits out of us. A revolutionary consciousness is starting to develop—there is a complete rejection of the status quo, all the institutions and parties of capitalism, and a search for a new way forward. The popularity of Luigi Mangione is the proof.
Therefore, it’s only a matter of time before a mass revolution against the billionaires breaks out here too. This is what the Revolutionary Communist Party is preparing for.
We must build a mass revolutionary communist party, made up of communist militants armed with Marxist ideas. This party is the vehicle to give the masses a fighting program when the time comes.
A party like this would be a force capable of not only opposing billionaires but of fighting for a new society, free of poverty, racism, environmental destruction—all the evils of capitalism.
We appeal to the “Luigi generation” to join us and help us build this party.
