“American” Plutocracy

Washington, Jan 21. - For a long time, the United States has been essentially a plutocracy, in the most classic Greek concept of Xenophon. A government of, for and by the wealthiest class. But it has never been more chemically pure than with the government that will take office in Washington starting this January 20.

The American mega-rich are already fed up with a political class mediating in their interests and putting warm obstacles to their aims of domination and wealth. They do not want others to operate power in their name, but rather they have decided to exercise it without hesitation. The government that is beginning is the one with the greatest accumulated wealth among its members in the entire history of the United States.

Nothing like this has been seen since the time when J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Andrew Mellon, magnates of oil, finance, steel and railroads, ran the American government at their whim in the late XIX and early XX centuries and, along with industrial expansion, promoted colossal corruption. They were called the “robber barons.”

More money than the GDP of almost all the countries in the world

Although Trump campaigned under the mantle of being “the voice” of the working class displaced and hit by the crisis, his government has nothing to do with his speech. To “Make America Great Again,” Trump has surrounded himself with magnates, Floridians and stalwarts. At least 13 billionaires make up his cabinet, including the richest man in the world

“Today, an oligarchy of extreme wealth, power and influence is taking shape in the United States that truly threatens all of our democracy, our basic rights and our freedom,” said none other than Joe Biden, in his farewell speech to power a few days ago.

Biden assured that a “dangerous concentration of power” was “in the hands of very few ultra-rich people.”

To give you an idea, the fortunes accumulated by the wealthiest members of the Trump administration together reach 450 billion dollars, a figure greater than the Gross Domestic Product of more than 170 countries.

Trump's wealth comes from real estate, which includes residential and office buildings, hotels and golf courses around the world, including Mar-a-Lago in Florida and Trump Tower in New York.

The re-elected president also has a $3.5 billion stake in his social network, Trump Media & Technology Group.

Trump's net worth is $6.2 billion, according to Forbes.

It is the best portrait of today's United States, never more unequal, with a greater concentration of wealth, where the most powerful 1% have more wealth than the 90% of the population as a whole, with a difference in salaries between executives and workers of more than 300 times. It is the ultra expression of the process of contradiction and imperial degradation already foreseen by Lenin at the beginning of the last century, when he warned of the clearly capitalist contradiction between the social character of production and the concentration of private ownership of the means of production in a few hands, which is sharpened under imperialism. This means that the monopolistic yoke "over the rest of the population becomes a hundred times harder, more sensitive, more unbearable" and the main profits go to the "geniuses" of financial machinations.

The technofascist paradigm

The most notorious figure in Trump's cabinet is Elon Musk, the South African tycoon, whose earnings have grown wildly since his election victory in November and today exceed 400 billion dollars. No one had amassed such a fortune in numbers in all of history (although it is estimated that Rockefeller's wealth would be equivalent to about 800 billion today).

In 2024 alone, the rise of Musk's wealth has been meteoric, with more than $218 billion added in the year. Nothing like this ever before.

Musk is the combination of business opportunism and ideological fascism. His audacity has no boundaries. He knows he is powerful and he exercises that condition without qualms. He bought the social network Twitter, which he renamed X, after paying 44 billion dollars, to have a caliber weapon with which to shoot his fascist and hegemonic ideas without intermediaries, and at the same time, serve Trump's electoral campaign as a content platform.

Musk initially supported Florida Governor Ron de Santis, but after his withdrawal from the race, he fully threw himself into Donald Trump's candidacy, to which he contributed more than 270 million dollars. No one had more prominence in the 2024 electoral contest than him.

Now, Musk will have Trump's "chainsaw" in his hands. The re-elected president appointed him to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a commission to curb government spending, which will not only prune supposedly wasteful programs but will also eliminate barriers that today limit these ultra-rich who have come to power (health regulations, work safety, environmental, among others). There will be no stopping the ambitions of the new power holders for wealth.

Now, Musk will have Trump's "chainsaw" in his hands. The re-elected president appointed him to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a commission to curb government spending, which will not only prune supposedly wasteful programs but will also eliminate barriers that today limit these ultra-rich who have come to power ( health, work safety, environmental regulations, among others). There will be no brakes on the wealth ambitions of the new holders of power.

As Xenophon and Thucydides foresaw in ancient Greece, plutocrats tend to ignore state interests, social responsibility and political issues, using power for their own benefit.

Musk is the symbol of today's "robber barons" along with Jeff Bezos, Peter Thile, Charles Koch, Jeff Yass, Ken Griffin and Rupert Murdoch, who have used their wealth to gain power and are now consolidating that power, through Trump, to gain more wealth.

The Select

"We are rapidly moving towards an oligarchic society. Never before in the history of the United States have so few billionaires (fortunes of a billion dollars or more), so few people had so much wealth and so much power. Never before has there been such a concentration of ownership in all sectors, so much Wall Street [the stock market]. We should talk about it, never have those at the top had so much political power," characterized the new US government the veteran senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Trump has invited his executive to another select group of golf friends or big donors to his electoral campaign, multimillionaire men and women who will mark the oligarchic, unbridled and deeply reactionary imprint of this administration.

These are some of those new faces of plutocratic power in the US:

• Linda McMahon, $3 billion. Trump tapped McMahon, a co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, to lead the Department of Education, possibly hoping she would dismantle the department by style of professional wrestling. McMahon shares a net worth of $3 billion with her husband, Vincent McMahon, according to Forbes.

• Jared Isaacman, $1.7 billion. Trump appointed Isaacman, the CEO and founder of a credit card processing company, to lead NASA. Isaacman has collaborated with Musk since buying a number of space flights from SpaceX, his subsidiary, and in September he conducted the first private spacewalk, in which he emerged from his orbiting SpaceX capsule. He also co-founded Draken International, an aerospace defense company.

• Howard Lutnick, $1.5 billion. Trump has named Lutnick, head of the investment bank and brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald, as his commerce secretary. Lutnick, who currently serves as co-chair of Trump’s transition team, would be in charge of promoting and developing American industries.

• Doug Burgum, with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion. Trump has chosen Burgum, the current Republican governor of North Dakota and a former executive at Great Plains Software, to lead the Interior Department. As secretary, he would be responsible for managing federal lands and natural resources. The Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service would come under his leadership.

• Vivek Ramaswamy, $1 billion. Trump chose Ramaswamy to join Musk in co-leading the Department of Government Efficiency. In an op-ed they wrote together for the Wall Street Journal, the two said they see their role as “reducing the size of the federal government.” Ramaswamy is a businessman and former pharmaceutical executive who rose to prominence as a Republican presidential candidate and a rival to Trump. Finally he retired and gave his support to the former president.

• Steven Witkoff, $1 billion. Trump chose Witkoff, a Florida real estate investor and Trump partner in the golf world, to be his special envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff is chairman and CEO of the Witkoff Group, a real estate company with luxury condos, office space and hotels across the country. Witkoff is also co-chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee along with Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler.

• Scott Bessent, undetermined. Trump tapped money manager Scott Bessent for the coveted job of Treasury secretary, a decision likely to please Wall Street. Bessent was an economic adviser to Trump during the election campaign and is the founder of the hedge fund Key Square Capital Management. He also worked at Soros Fund Management, a hedge fund started by George Soros, a major Democratic donor. As Treasury secretary, Bessent would be responsible for advising Trump on domestic and international financial, economic and fiscal policy. Although Bessent is widely reported to be a billionaire, it is difficult to determine exactly his amount of wealth.

Trump's chosen ambassadors also include several billionaires, including financier Warren Stephens ($3.4 billion), who has been chosen to serve as ambassador to the United Kingdom, Conair executive Leandro Rizzuto Jr ($3.5 billion heritage), chosen to serve as ambassador to the Organization of American States, Charles Kushner (owner of a fortune of 7.1 billion dollars), ambassador to France, and Tom Barrack (with 1 billion worth), as ambassador to Türkiye.

The Trumpian Agenda

As US election scholar Marty Jezer has written, “Money is the single greatest determinant of political influence and success. Money determines which candidates will be able to launch electoral campaigns and influences which candidates will win elected office. Money also determines the parameters of public debate: what issues will be raised, in what framework they will appear, and how legislation will be crafted. Money enables rich and powerful interest groups to influence elections and dominate the legislative process.”

With the wealthiest cabinet in US history, it is easy to understand that Trump’s agenda in his new term is aimed at satisfying the appetites and visions of the most reactionary part of the wealthiest class in American society.

Trump's cabinet not only reinforces the already neoliberal policies of the United States, but introduces more extreme elements than his 2017 administration. Between billionaires, climate deniers and xenophobic positions, the vision of his government points towards a consolidation of policies that can accentuate social and economic inequalities in the United States.

During the campaign, Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025, the controversial and detailed master plan of government published by the conservatives of the Heritage Foundation in anticipation of a second Trump term.

Although Trump does not want to be associated with that plan, it was formulated by his allies: at least 140 people related to Project 2025 worked in the previous Trump administration, according to an analysis by Steve Contorno of CNN. Certainly, there is some overlap between much of what the 900-page Project 2025 proposes and what Trump has said he will do.

Among the measures already announced by the real estate magnate, skilled at corporate corruption and communication, are:

• Mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants.

• Closing the southern border and ending birthright citizenship.

• Unprecedented tariffs on foreign goods from all countries, but especially China.

• Expansive tax cuts to benefit corporations, tipped workers, seniors collecting Social Security, homeowners in the Northeast and many others.

• Multimillion-dollar cuts in public spending with the help of Elon Musk.

• Reform the country's health and food systems with the help of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• Reverse regulations aimed at addressing climate change, to particularly benefit oil companies.

• Build a new missile shield with the help of former NFL player Herschel Walker.

Today will be Trump's inauguration in the same Capitol that his troops attacked that disastrous January 6, 2021. We will have to see his speech and the first executive orders that he signs this afternoon to gauge how deep his plutocratic government will take its purposes. Everything can be expected. (Text: Randy Alonso Falcón/ Cubadebate) (Photo: Cubadebate)