No time to lose

Last week, SOMO hosted a civil society gathering to confront the rising tide of corporate monopoly power and its deepening entanglement with the global far-right while exploring strategies to mitigate their impact on democracy. Organisations from Europe, the US, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and India came together to share experiences and chart paths forward.

Here are some of the key takeaways.

Monopoly Power. An all-encompassing threat to democracy.

Never before have the threats created by extreme corporate power been so clear.

The image of the Big Tech oligarchy at the Trump’s inauguration has become the poster for the collusion between extreme right politics and corporations. Together, Trump and the billionaire broligarchy are wielding their power to block public interest regulation and antitrust tools. This has meant, for instance, the illegal firing(opens in new window) of Federal Trade Commission staff that had fought against companies like Amazon, in a clear example of the battle between “the rule of law versus the rule of billionaires” taking place in the US.

Beyond the US, Elon Musk has used X to amplify(opens in new window) the German far-right AFD, and Mark Zuckerberg decided(opens in new window) hateful content against migrants and trans people is now acceptable on Meta. Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon also control the digital infrastructures (cloud and data centres) upon which business and public services across the world run. A Trump-Big Tech alliance, puts us(opens in new window) all at risk.

Yet, this is not just about the US or Big Tech. Oxfam has warned(opens in new window) that “billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than in 2023”, driven in part by monopoly power. According to Oxfam, “18% of the world’s billionaires’ wealth is from monopoly power”. This includes Amazon’s Jeff Bezos but also Aliko Dangote, the Nigerian businessman that controls the cement market across the African continent.

Monopolies beyond market power

The economic power of big companies goes beyond traditional conceptions of power. Big Tech and Big Pharma, for instance, have dominated research and taken over the course of innovation, creating intellectual monopolies(opens in new window) . Big Pharma’s monopolies on patents, for instance, have allowed the companies to impose exploitative conditions on public healthcare systems, keeping drug prices high.(opens in new window)

Concentrated economies that serve the few are easier for far-right politicians to capture(opens in new window) . Fascism and monopoly power are two sides of the same coin.

The way to defend ourselves from the collusion of right-wing extremism and corporate power is not to simply advocate for a return to the status-quo. In fact, as economist Isabella Weber(opens in new window) reminded us, it was the status quo that drove us here: the inability of the political establishment to address and respond to issues like the cost of living has pushed people into the arms of the far-right. As Weber concluded, it is fundamental that “opposition to the status-quo” is not monopolised by the far right.

A moment for bold alliances and global action

The current challenge to the status quo is an opportunity to build bold new alliances. Now is the time to stand tall, move fast and organise.

Today’s monopolists are not limited by borders; they repeat the same tricks everywhere. This is their biggest strength but also their flaw. Civil society, regulators, and activists from different jurisdictions can exploit this weakness by coordinating simultaneous legal and policy action.

Global projects such as the Digital Merger Watch, which bring together and supports CSOs to block Big Tech’s expansion via mergers and acquisitions, will be fundamental to enable coordinated action.

With a collaborative approach, we can push for bolder competition enforcement, including:

• A shift away from fictional market models and toward practical, grounded financial analysis.
• Faster, more responsive tools like the EU’s Digital Markets Act type policies rolled out across the world.
• Structural interventions, including merger bans and corporate breakups.

In this regard, the Google-Ad Tech investigations happening in parallel in the US(opens in new window) , Canada(opens in new window) , and the EU(opens in new window) shows that much can still be done, even in this challenging political environment.

A vision for the future

Competition approaches alone will not suffice. The current dependence on private and highly concentrated infrastructure, which guides innovation systems to serve toxic business models will also require public support for alternatives.

Civil society must lead in advocating for this approach, putting forward a vision of the economy that prioritises the real needs of workers and communities and enabling us to address climate change and other shocks to the system, including war. This will inevitably require public interest conditions and scrutiny.

We must also guard against de-regulation and simplistic nurturing of national or regional champions. We all must heed the warnings from India where the government’s approach of nurturing national monopolists has funnelled public wealth into private hands, heightening social and economic inequality. National champions were also content with co-existing and even collaborating with Big Tech.

The road ahead

At the end of last week’s gathering, Cory Doctorow reminded us that to “move fast and break things is good – if you break the right things”.

We must seize this moment of crisis and transform it into an opportunity to build resilience and create fertile grounds to sow new visions for the future.

Now is the time to challenge monopoly power, oppose the collusion of billionaires and authoritarian regimes, and advocate for a new world order. One that is grounded in justice, equity, and democracy.

At SOMO, we will continue working in partnership with movements across the globe to ensure that we do.