Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises

Jul 31

In her latest book, Wealth Supremacy, Distinguished Senior Fellow Marjorie Kelly identifies a key driving force behind the multiple global crises we face today: financialization. She calls it “the problem we’re not yet talking about.” There is too much financial wealth in too few hands.

Economists have warned for decades about the problems created by financialization: economic injustice, society-wide fragility, planetary crisis, monopolies, asset poverty, deep damage to democracy. It’s a problem as big as the climate crisis, but far less visible.

That’s because capitalism is like the air we breathe. We are so steeped in its premises that we don’t question how it functions or whom it benefits.

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Financialization, Kelly argues, is the logical outcome of a system based on “wealth supremacy”—the idea that wealth and the wealthy matter more than everyone else. By examining the ways this bias toward wealth is embedded throughout our culture and economy, Kelly lays the foundation for delegitimizing the current system and imagining and building the next system: a democratic economy.

Naming the problem

Kelly’s premise is that we all see the world through an invisible lens of capital bias. As with gender and racial bias, which were once seen as normal and unremarkable, even divinely ordained, we can’t see capital bias unless we name it.

But once we see it and name it, we are no longer beholden to it. We can see our economy for what it is: not a great wealth creator in which wealth “trickles down,” but a giant sucking machine that takes from the many and gives to the few. Today, Kelly writes,

Instead of having an economy designed to produce more value in the real world, for regular people, the economy’s machinery has been rejiggered to produce higher asset valuations. These financial assets have become a burden, a giant sucking action squeezing consumer pocketbooks, creating unemployment, pushing housing prices to unreachable heights, creating monopolies that hobble family businesses, blocking our ability to tackle climate change, destabilizing the economy with stock market booms and busts. And enabling billionaires to capture democracy.

Identifying solutions

More than just a penetrating analysis of the flaws in our current system, Wealth Supremacy offers a vision of a workable, practical alternative that puts our common good before maximum private wealth accumulation. By highlighting models that are already in place and pathways to bring these models to scale, Kelly provides us with a roadmap for real system change.

Central to all of this is our capacity to believe and see that another world is possible. “We will never win against extractive capitalism if it’s a matter of power versus power,” Kelly writes. “The real power we the people possess— the ultimate power—is legitimacy. When we withdraw legitimacy, we fatally weaken the system, turning its cultural foundation to sand.” That is the point at which we can suffuse democracy into our economy and build the new political-economic system now necessary for our survival.

“In a democratic society founded on the truth that all persons are created equal, we have permitted an economic system based on the contrary principle that wealthy persons matter more than others: possess greater rights, greater voice, and claim a limitless right to extract from the rest of us. Capital bias is the DNA of our economy.”

— Marjorie Kelly in ”Wealth Supremacy”

Videos, webinars and podcasts

”The Laura Flanders Show,” Feb 4, 2024: Clip | Full video.

Impact Alpha: “What Is Wealth Supremacy, How Does It Drive Crises, and What Can Be Done about It?”

Yes Presents: “Rising Up with Sonali”

Next Economy Now: “Imagining the Next System of Capital,” with host Ryan Honeyman.

Deep Transformation Network: “Wealth Supremacy: Decoding the Operating System of Global Capitalism, a conversation with Jeremy Lent” (Webinar)

Women’s Way: “From Extraction to Equity—Tackling Wealth Supremacy” (webinar)

University of Colorado, Boulder, Media Economies Design Lab: “Where I Went Wrong: Marjorie Kelly on Why Advancing Ethical Business Isn’t Enough.” a webinar moderated by Nathan Schneider (October 30, 2023).