Several years ago, I made a post on social media about billionaires. I do not remember exactly what the claim was that I made, but as a counterpoint, someone brought up the example of Oprah Winfrey.
I think they did that as a way to frame Winfrey as some sort of diversity hire, and that whatever negative thing I said about billionaires would also affect a Black woman.
I was thinking about this exchange recently, and I thought I would talk about it here.
To start with, we must understand that there is no such thing as a self-made billionaire.
Did Jeff Bezos build Amazon? Did Bill Gates build Microsoft? Did Howard Schultz build Starbucks?
It can be tempting for us to see people like them as responsible for the success and growth of the companies they founded. After all, it was their dream, their plan, their starting capital, and their initial sweat equity.
However, Jeff Bezos is not adding products to Amazon’s website. He is not fulfilling orders in Amazon warehouses. He is not the one driving Amazon delivery vehicles.
Likewise, Howard Schultz was not the one pouring coffee, buying product, and taking drive-thru orders. Nor was Bill Gates the one coding Windows 95 or Microsoft Office apps.
Amazon does not have a market cap of nearly $2 trillion dollars because Bezos is grinding away at order fulfillment or making sure the Amazon Web Services server farms are running smoothly. No, it is worth that much because of the labour of over 1.5 million workers around the world.
JK Rowling is not a billionaire because she was a good writer. There was a team of workers behind the publication and distribution of her books, then later a huge number of workers that made the Harry Potter films a success. She is rich because of the labour of a lot of workers.
Oprah Winfrey is not a billionaire because she was a good talk show host. Her production company employed workers who booked guests, managed the set, operated the equipment, coordinated show distribution, and so on. She is rich because of the labour of a lot of workers.
Taylor Swift is not a billionaire because she a good singer. Lots of workers record, produce, and distribute her songs; coordinate and set up her concerts; produced the Eras Tour concert film; and manage her multiple real estate holdings. She is rich because of the labour of a lot of workers.
The late Giorgio Armani was not a billionaire because he was a good seamster. Thousands of workers ran his company, designing and producing his clothing lines, organizing events, and so on. He was rich because of the labour of over 10,000 workers.
Billionaires are billionaires because of the labour of workers. That labour creates value, a portion of which is given to the workers in exchange for that labour. But some of that value is appropriated by the billionaires, and as they accumulate that surplus labour value, they build their net worth, which eventually exceeds a billion dollars.
Again, no billionaire is self-made.
Every billionaire is a billionaire because they accumulated surplus labour value that workers generated for them instead of ensuring those workers received that value.
And it does not matter whether the billionaire is a woman, a person of colour, a queer person, or someone with disabilities. They will always exploit the working class to accumulate wealth.
Some people celebrate when a woman, a queer person, a person of colour, a disabled person attains positions of power, thereby displacing cisgender straight white able-bodied men from those positions, positions such people have held for a long time.
But if a queer billionaire still exploits workers, if a woman billionaire still exploits workers, if a Black billionaire still exploits workers, if a disabled billionaire still exploits workers, then workers are still exploited.
A boot on the neck is still a boot on the neck, even if it pink and covered in glitter.
