By Dilip Bobb
Till recently, the term “oligarch” was popularly associated with ultra-rich Russians who had gained control of significant portions of the economy in the late 1990s, especially in energy, metals and natural resources. Many of these had close ties with government officials, particularly the president, leading some to characterize modern Russia as an oligarchy intertwined with the state. Now, much the same is being said about post-Trump America.
In his farewell speech, former US President Joe Biden warned of the rise of an oligarchy in the US that “literally threatens our entire democracy”. He said that a new Gilded Age of “robber barons” was in danger of eroding hard-won freedoms. The group he referred to is headed by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and now the most powerful civilian the world has ever seen. Tesla and X owner Musk helped bankroll Trump’s campaign to the tune of $30 million, and since then, he has been a constant at the president’s Palm Beach base and at the Oval Office in the White House, sitting in on cabinet meetings and other official functions. He refers to himself as “the first buddy”.
The world’s richest man is now seemingly inseparable from the world’s most powerful office. Musk has singlehandedly cut thousands of jobs under his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) and even won praise from Trump and his MAGA supporters for his efforts. When Tesla cars and showrooms were attacked because of the DOGE jobs massacre, Trump promptly posed on the White House lawns with a brand-new red Tesla he says he had bought to show solidarity with is new best buddy. Some are calling it “broligarchy”.
He is not the only one using his financial clout and closeness to Trump to do the latter’s bidding. Other billionaires like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns the storied Washington Post, have also used their weight and influence to back Trump. There is also another billionaire with Indian origins, Vivek Ramaswamy, who also fought the 2024 elections as a presidential candidate before dropping out and endorsing Trump. He was appointed by Trump to join Musk at DOGE, but dropped out to focus on his political ambitions to become governor of Ohio, where he was born, as a Republican candidate.
In the latest issue of The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum writes: “A group of American oligarchs want to undermine European institutions because they don’t want to be regulated.” She was referring to Big Tech and Musk. Adds Onur Bakiner, a well-known political scientist: “I believe that the incoming Trump administration points to a historical transformation in American capitalism. A new oligarchy is making itself heard.”
For years, Oxfam has been warning that extreme concentration of wealth is leading to extreme concentration of power, allowing an ultra-rich few to tighten their grip on governments, economies, and, more importantly, the media. “The crown jewel of this oligarchy is a billionaire president, backed and bought by the world’s richest man Elon Musk, running the world’s largest economy,” said the charity’s executive director Amitabh Behar.
For long, political scientists have warned that when power belongs to just a few, democracy suffers as the inequality gap widens. Meta and Amazon each donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Zuckerberg abruptly ended Meta’s third-party fact-checking. Bezos killed a Kamala Harris endorsement from the paper’s editorial board during the campaign, and said the paper would end its long-standing practice of endorsing presidential candidates.
An activist group recently posted about advertising campaigns they were running, calling out Musk and Trump for the “damage” they were doing, which X and Meta refused to air.
The US has contended with oligarchy in the past. In 1948, Supreme Court Justice William O Douglas argued that: “Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people, not in the hands of an industrial oligarchy”.
Tellingly, the world’s three richest men, Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg (who owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) were seated in the front row at Trump’s inauguration, along with Apple’s Tim Cook. Equally tellingly, Ruth Marcus, a long-time editor and columnist for Washington Post opinion section, resigned recently after her column criticizing owner Jeff Bezos’ changes to the section was scrapped. Bezos announced last month that the opinion section would begin writing in “support and defence” of “personal liberties and free markets” and would not publish viewpoints opposing those principles. Writing to Bezos and publisher Will Lewis, who she says killed her column, Marcus warned that the Post’s new policy “threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, and not what the owners has deemed acceptable.” Bezos and other CEOs have also come under fire for removing DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion—initiatives, a long-time target of conservatives. Daniel Kinderman, associate professor of political science at the University of Delaware who has researched how businesses respond to right-wing populism, said current income inequality in the United States constitutes “oligarchic conditions”. “Since the late 2000s, the top one percent of Americans, roughly 3 million people, have owned upwards of one-third of the wealth and capital in our country. It’s now about 35 percent. The bottom 50 percent of Americans, which is about 150 million people, own about 1.5 percent of wealth,” he said, adding: “This is oligarchy 2.0. It’s kind of a turbocharged technological oligarchy that has control over media and technology.” While acknowledging the corporate elite has always influenced government, Kinderman noted that the country is now in uncharted territory because the current top CEOs have more control over the public discourse.
The original definition of an oligarchy dates back to Ancient Greece and means “rule by few”, a form of government in which power rests with a small number of people. Business groups may be considered oligarchies if they meet the following criteria: They are the largest private owners in the country. They possess sufficient political power to influence their own interests. The owners control multiple businesses, coordinating activities across sectors.
Currently, the top five richest men in America control over a trillion dollars in wealth. They also have control over sections of social media and traditional media. We also have the examples of powerful billionaires like Australian-born Rupert Murdoch who owns Fox News in America, which is pro-Trump and has the highest viewership in the country. His company News Corp, also owns hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK (The Sun and The Times), in Australia (The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, and The Australian), in the US (The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post), book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News (through the Fox Corporation).
There is also billionaire George Soros, familiar to Indians because the ruling party has constantly complained about his “interference” in local politics and support for the Congress party. Soros says he supports progressive and liberal political causes through his Open Society Foundation, but numerous far right theorists, in many other countries, have claimed that Soros is a dangerous “puppet master” behind alleged global plots. Both have been called oligarchs.
As Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders recently said: “Of course the oligarchs run Russia. But guess what? Oligarchs run the United States as well, and it’s not just the United States, it’s not just Russia; Europe, the UK, all over the world, we’re seeing a small number of incredibly wealthy people running things in their favour.”
Oligarchy in America can be compared to what was termed “crony capitalism” in many Asian countries in the late 1990s where politicians and business leaders were in bed together, as the expression goes. Throughout history, power structures considered to be oligarchies have often been viewed as coercive, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, contrasting it with aristocracy, arguing that oligarchy was the perverted form of aristocracy.
The consolidation of power by a dominant religious or ethnic minority can also be considered a form of oligarchy. Examples include South Africa during Apartheid. Oligarchic rule was often tied to the legacy of colonialism. Robert Michels, the well-known sociologist, expanded on this idea in his Iron Law of Oligarchy. He argued that even democracies, like all large organizations, tend to become oligarchic due to the necessity of dividing labour, which ultimately results in a ruling class focused on maintaining its power. Other countries perceived as oligarchies included Columbia, Indonesia, Russia, Singapore and America. The rule of Ferdinand Marcos from 1965 to 1986, was described as an era of oligarchy in the Philippines.
Even in India, Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani are routinely described by the western media as “Oligarchs” because of their supposed closeness to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In fact, Modi faced a question from an American journalist about Adani’s influence during his joint press conference when he met Trump last February in the White House. Incidentally, both Adani and Ambani control sections of the media apart from their other wide-ranging business interests.
American oligarchy is not new, it is just more powerful and able to wield more influence than ever before. Former President Jimmy Carter in 2015 characterized the United States as an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery” following the 2010 Citizens United vs FEC Supreme Court decision, which removed limits on donations to political campaigns. This led to an influx of anonymous donations, allowing affluent donors to sway elections and policymaking without accountability. Such financial power often translates into political power, undermining the democratic principle of equal representation.
Unforeseen events also give rise to oligarchy. During Covid, Big Pharma acquired unprecedented influence over governments across the world. Now, we are seeing how the ultra-rich have bought themselves access to the Oval Office. Musk has been photographed with one or more of his numerous children playing in the Oval Office with Trump looking on in approval. So far, Trump has 13 billionaires—and counting—in his proposed administration, their combined net worth is more than the GDP of 172 countries, as US News & World Report calculated. Even without Musk, Trump’s cabinet would be the richest in history.
Former US President Biden highlighted a “tech industrial complex,” akin to Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 warning about the “military-industrial complex.” Jeffrey A Winters, in his book Oligarchy (2011), explained that oligarchs defend their wealth by using power and influence. Today, economic power concentrated through technological advancements, like AI, is intensifying oligarchic tendencies globally.
China is ostensibly a communist country, but Chinese companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei and BYD exemplify the proximity between corporate power and government influence in China. These firms play a pivotal role in advancing state-led initiatives such as the “Made in China 2025” programme and the Belt and Road Initiative, which aim to bolster China’s technological and geopolitical dominance. BYD, a leader in electric vehicles, has benefited from substantial government subsidies and policy support and has blurred lines between corporate ambitions and state power in China’s strategic vision. In fact, both the dominant superpowers—the US and China—have sought to leverage global resources and the reach of their respective corporate elite to advance their strategic interests.
Musk is being wooed in India by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Airtel’s Sunil Mittal for access to his Starlink satellite service and is also planning to launch Tesla in India. India is also witness to the power and greed of the East India Company, where it was historically proven that multinational corporations do not just want to expand their businesses, but also want a share of power.
The focus is now on America and the rise of the new oligarchs mainly because it is the most powerful country in the world, and the richest. There are signs, however, that some sections of American society are fighting back. Over 2,50,000 people ended their Washington Post subscriptions after Bezos vetoed the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. Millions of social media users have dumped Meta platforms and X for other social media sites since they rolled back their content moderation policies. There is power of the new oligarchs and, in a democracy, there is power of the people. Two Harvard Professors Archon Fung and Larry Lessig, wrote recently that the Trump era could be an inflection point that will force Americans to finally confront the country’s trend towards rule by the wealthy, and that it’s by no means certain that direction can be changed anytime soon.
—The writer is former Senior Managing Editor, India Legal magazine