The Blind Spot

The wealthy and powerful few have dominated the masses throughout most of human history. This is starkly visible now more than ever – today, the gulf between oligarchs and the average citizen is vastly larger than any gap that existed during European serfdom or the slave society of Imperial Rome.
The strange thing for the first time in history, this domination is accomplished through democracy. Yet we aren’t in open revolt against the system. In fact, we keep voting to prop it up. Why?
In The Blind Spot, political scientist Jeffrey A. Winters delivers an urgent, incisive account of how we reached this era of in-your-face oligarchy, exposing how modern democracy was designed to protect the interests of the ultra-rich. Tracing the evolution of oligarchy through the democratic era, he demonstrates how the power of the wealthy isn’t just a flaw in our democracy, it was built into its very foundations. Now, in an extraordinary paradox, we exist in a state of ‘participatory inequality’: a world in which 99.99% of us participate openly and freely – democratically, even – in our own ongoing economic exclusion.