In Joe Biden’s farewell address, delivered on the 15th of January, he made a bold political statement, claiming that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence”. He went on to say that this “threatens our democracy, our basic rights and freedom”. But what did her actually mean by this?
It is important first to understand what an oligarchy is, and it is most commonly defined as ‘a small group of very powerful people that controls a government or society’. Biden’s warning of an oligarchy taking shape in the USA is a clear reference to the growing power of billionaires in American politics, especially the involvement of Elon Musk (founder of Tesla and SpaceX, and the world’s richest man) in the 2024 presidential election, in which he contributed an estimated $277 million dollars to Donald Trump, and other Republican candidates’, campaign for election.
It is also important to question why Biden felt it necessary to include this warning in his farewell address, and what about an oligarchy’s presence is dangerous. Those who rise to the top of an oligarchical system are usually the wealthy and get there through their use of their wealth as a means of influence. Because of this, commonly the defence of their wealth becomes their central interest in their political pursuits. They may also pursue other political ends, but this is commonly how they defend their wealth under the guise of being ‘for the people’.
At Trump’s inauguration on the 20th of January, just five days after Biden’s farewell address, his very warning of an oligarchy taking shape became reality. In the second row of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th President of the United States, sat some of the richest men in the world. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos were all prominent figures seen at the inauguration, and many have seen this as highlighting their new political status. Combined, the three have an estimated net worth of $887.3 billion USD, almost 1 trillion dollars. To put that into perspective, the combined net worth of the lower half of the US population, just over 173 million people, is just under 4 trillion dollars. Further, Elon Musk’s contributions to Donald Trump’s campaign, both monetary and other, can be seen to have bought his way into federal office. Musk is set to take charge of a new government department under Donald Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), despite his relative lack of political or legal experience.
So, what now? Now that an oligarchy is taking shape in the USA, there is relatively little that can be done. In other instances of oligarchy, the oligarchs gain control of public spaces, community, expression, and livelihoods, which prevents people from organising against the oligarchs. In the contemporary world, this takes shape in the form of censorship and blocking content on social platforms.