The New Oligarchy

What is more, I believe that the incoming Trump administration points to a historical transformation in American capitalism. A new oligarchy is making itself heard.

The laws and policies that shaped the American economy up until now represent a long and layered trajectory when it comes to the protection of the common good. The largely unregulated economic development of the nineteenth century, early anti-trust efforts of the 1910s, Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s, the bipartisan Keynesian consensus of the post-War era, the rollback of that consensus during and beyond the Reagan administration, and developments in the more recent past leave us with a complex picture. On the one hand, regulatory agencies have existed to safeguard competition and consumer wellbeing for over a century. On the other hand, those agencies have always faced rollback from politicians and pushback from corporations. The checkered playing field is not only a reflection of how regulatory agencies are treated. Labor unions have time and again made significant gains, but also, they have become a shadow of their former selves since the 1980s. There exist somewhat functional public options for services like healthcare and education, but it is no secret that most Americans have to pay for private health insurance and private schools. All in all, America retains some notion that citizens and businesses should be protected from unregulated market forces, but defending the common good is always an uphill battle.

The new oligarchy wants to take away whatever has remained of the social protections of the past. Calls from businesspeople to abolish the National Labor Review Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, plans to weaken the Federal Trade Commission, the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (which, despite its deceiving name, is not a cabinet position), and cabinet appointments that place individuals known for wanting to destroy government agencies at the helm of those agencies converge on an intentional strategy to eliminate the vestiges of antitrust regulation, consumer protection, and public goods provision. Nor are these developments merely a product of Trump’s election victory: the Supreme Court’s Relentless v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo ruling in June 2024 seriously curtailed federal agencies’ power to interpret statutes in legally ambiguous regulatory situations.

What explains the alliance of corporate leaders and the Trump administration to make the total destruction of government-as-we-know-it a reality? It appears that they converge on the economic and cultural dimensions of deregulation. Fighting wokeness is central to how they market their project. In their interpretation, woke refers to anything vaguely progressive-sounding, like women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, demographic diversity, environmental sustainability or vaccines (or for some individuals in that camp, science in general). It would be a mistake, however, to deduce that the business leaders practically residing in Mar-A-Lago for the past month partake in the anti-woke crusade for cultural reasons only. I believe that this small yet influential group of mega-wealthy entrepreneurs, obviously not elected to political office, want to seize this cultural moment to capture political power. Hence the oligarchy.

The post-Reagan policy landscape reflected the breakdown of the post-WWII consensus around industrial policy, strong unions, and regulation through federal agencies. As Republicans sought to deregulate the economy further, Democrats chose to address what they considered the worst excesses of deregulation with moderate levels of infrastructure investment, deficit-spending, and pro-regulation appointees at federal regulatory agencies. As government proved too inconsistent and weak to regulate corporations, citizens stepped in to push those corporations to do better, which explains the modern obsession with corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations, ethical business models, and of course, business self-regulation, especially in the technology sector. For all the cheerleading and negative attention these corporate self-regulatory schemes have received, however, they have modest accomplishments to report. The gap between what needs to be done to heal the planet and its human societies and what actually gets done is heartbreaking.

Yet even this moderate level of scrutiny bothers some corporate actors. They do not want to be held accountable to moral or scientific standards. They do not want to be told that they are doing something wrong. They do not want to face competition from within or abroad. They do not want workers to demand better wages and work conditions. They do not want elections to raise the specter of federal regulation every two-to-four years. That is why they are seizing the moment to roll back whatever is left of federal regulation, harass government employees, and ultimately, transfer their economic power to political power. If they succeed in their plans, they will reconfigure the relationship between capitalism and politics. The decisions affecting our lives will shift away from elected representatives who, for all their flaws, still seek our consent, at least minimally, to make policy, to unaccountable corporate leaders.

Corporate greed and political capture have a long history in the United States. So do struggles by workers, consumers, civic activists, journalists and public-minded politicians to defend fundamental rights and the common good. There is no doubt that a new oligarchy is on the rise, but only time will tell if it conquers Washington, D.C.