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For years, political experts have warned that America is in a state of democratic decline. Now some say democracy in the US could be giving way to something else entirely: an oligarchy. That’s an alarm former president Joe Biden sounded in his farewell address.
Addressing the nation as president for the last time on January 15, Biden warned that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy.” He spoke of a “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people” and said there would be “dangerous consequences, if their abuse of power is left unchecked.” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are currently criss-crossing the country on a “fighting oligarchy” tour.
If the meaning of “oligarchy” feels like a blur from history class, don’t worry — its definition is actually pretty simple. What it means for America to become one is a bit more complicated, however. Below, we break down what an oligarchy is, using examples from history and the present. Then, we’ll summarize why some experts fear America could be becoming one — and what we can do about it.
What Is an Oligarchy?
An oligarchy is a form of government where a small group of people — typically, the very wealthy — holds most or all of the power, using it to make decisions that serve their own interests over those of the general public.
What interests, specifically, are they serving? Two different types of “wealth defense,” according to Jeffrey Winters, director of the Equality Development and Globalization Studies program at Northwestern University and a researcher of oligarchies. In his 2011 book Oligarchy, Winters outlined the two arms of wealth defense as “property defense” (defending what you already own) and “income defense” (protecting and expanding your ability to own more).
Where democracy is meant — in definition, if not always in practice — to be a system of majority rule, an oligarchy is ruled by the elite few. It’s a term that was coined by Aristotle in his 4th century BC book Politics, where he outlined six models of government and labeled oligarchies one of three corrupt types. (FYI, Aristotle also considered democracy to be corrupt, warning that it could be twisted by self-interested leaders and fail to serve the common good. As many witnesses to modern American democracy have argued, he wasn’t totally off base. Today, just 19% of Americans think the US is a good example of democracy.)
Though the definition of oligarchy is simple, conversations about the US becoming one today may feel confusing — especially because power imbalance along socioeconomic lines has long existed in America. So has backdoor corporate influence on politics and politicians. So what’s different about the era we’ve entered now? Some political observers say the outsized influence of an elite few has been legitimized, made overt, and built into our systems of power. It’s something we’ve seen play out before, both abroad and at home.
Examples of past and current oligarchies
One of history’s most famous oligarchies was Sparta, the ancient Greek city-state. While it had two kings, real power arguably lay with the “few” (oligoi) — a council of 28 aristocratic men over the age of 60 who shaped policy. Along with the kings, they formed the gerousia (council of elders), and ruled over the perioeci (the middle class of farmers and artisans) and the helots (enslaved people). Citizen assemblies offered only a symbolic check to their power. A board of elected ephors (judges) was later introduced as another kind of check, but instead of weakening the oligarchy, they tended to uphold it. In Politics, Aristotle labelled ephors as “open to bribery.”
As we said before, the US has its own long history of wealthy elites weaponizing political influence in order to pad their pockets. From the late 1870s to the early 1900s, a new class of uber-powerful industry magnates — or “robber barons” — came to dominate the economy and wield enormous political influence. Figures like John D. Rockefeller (oil), Andrew Carnegie (steel), and J.P. Morgan (finance) built monopolies that shaped government policies and election outcomes in their favor. With political power concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy elites, economic inequality skyrocketed.
This era of oligarchic dominance eventually led to progressive reforms, like antitrust laws and labor protections, aimed at breaking up monopolies and curbing the power of the ultra-rich. But some today worry oligarchs are back, this time as the leaders of what Biden called a “tech-industrial complex.” (More on that soon.)
When it comes to modern oligarchies, 1990s Russia is a prime example. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a small group of businessmen amassed fortunes by buying up former state-owned industries (think energy, banking, and natural resources). By pulling the puppet strings of political connections, these newly minted oligarchs were soon able to steer government decisions, elections, and economic reforms.
When Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, some oligarchs were exiled or sidelined while others were brought under tighter state control. Today, “oligarch” is still used in Russia to describe the nation’s mega-wealthy elite, though they wield less direct political power today. Under Putin’s top-down system of power, Russia is usually described as totalitarian — not oligarchic.
- China: Though officially a communist state, some argue China functioned as an oligarchy after its 1978 economic reforms. Business tycoons and high-ranking Communist Party officials colluded to make fortunes in sectors like tech, real estate, and finance, turning China’s parliament into a “billionaires club.” In recent years, President Xi Jinping has cracked down on billionaires under a slogan of “common prosperity.” But, though earnings have since risen for most Chinese, income inequality persists.
- Iran: Iran is often described as a “clerical oligarchy” in which a small, interconnected group made up of clerics (or religious leaders), military leaders, and business elites steer its theocratic political system. This group controls what the Middle East Institute calls Iran’s “semipublic sectors,” which are exempt from taxation and, per the Institute, prone to corruption.
- The Philippines: Some consider the Philippines an oligarchy due to the relationship between its political dynasties and elite business families; they dominate industries like media and real estate and are believed to have used political connections for self-gain, especially under former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Institutional and economic reforms were made following Marcos’s removal, but critics say certain political clans still hold disproportionate power, and Marcos’s son became president in 2022.
So, Why Are Some People Saying the US Is Becoming an Oligarchy Today?
Talk of the US becoming an oligarchy is growing, with Biden’s warning driving a spike in Google searches to the term. But American political and economic experts have been ringing the “oligarchy” alarm for years, pointing to worsening income inequality and rising corporate political influence.
Both led one team of researchers to label the US an oligarchy as far back as 2014. In that study, conducted by Princeton University and Northwestern University professors, the authors found that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” In the decade since this study was published, inequality has only deepened.
Today, the top 1% of wealth holders in the US make 26.3 times more money than the remaining 99%, and America’s roughly 800 billionaires hold more wealth than half the nation combined: $6 trillion, a figure that’s more than doubled since President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law in 2017. That act gave the top 1% tax cuts more than triple the value of cuts given to the bottom 60% of earners. Some provisions expire in 2025, but the tax package being proposed by House Republicans extends them, doubling down on benefits for the wealthiest.
Among those set to benefit are the billionaires we’ve seen curry Trump’s favor, during and after his reelection campaign. More billionaires voiced support for former vice president Kamala Harris’s candidacy, but Trump’s billionaire backers donated more, giving sums made possible by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling. While campaign donations from individuals are capped at $3,500, Citizens United effectively allows for unlimited corporate campaign spending so long as the money goes to “independent” groups (like super PACs). This ruling — which allows someone like Elon Musk to pour more than $250 million into Trump’s America PAC — created what the Brennan Center for Justice calls a “fusion of private wealth and political power unseen since the late 19th century.”
Mega-wealthy individuals are already seeing their support of Trump pay off, including Musk. He’s one of 13 billionaires nominated by Trump for government posts, adding up to what ABC News calls the wealthiest presidential administration in modern US history. While cabinet members must be confirmed by the Senate, in the case of Musk, who Trump tapped to head the new Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), it’s currently unclear what degree of power he can formally hold. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order making DOGE part of the government, which complicates whether Musk can officially head it. In the meantime, though, he’s been active in the new administration. Days after the election, ABC News reported Musk was weighing in on key White House staffing decisions, and Axios broke the news he had joined Trump on a phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Some fear he could even gain regulatory authority over the federal agencies that oversee his companies, like Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink.
Musk may be a glaring example of what some are calling America’s new oligarch class, but other tech titans are similarly close to Trump. Trump’s inauguration attendees included the three wealthiest men on the planet, per The New York Times: Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg has recently cozied up to Trump by dismantling Meta’s DEI and fact-checking programs and relaxing its hate speech policies, affecting Facebook and Instagram. And Bezos reportedly blocked the Washington Post, which he owns, from making a planned endorsement of Harris. Bezos and Zuckerberg also both pledged million-dollar donations to Trump’s inaugural fund through their companies, as did OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Many of these tech leaders stand to financially gain from Trump policies that favor the unrestricted growth of tech and unregulated artificial intelligence. (Trump has already revoked a Biden executive order aimed at addressing AI risks.)
Experts like Winters say what we’re seeing now is a structured, highly visible relationship between billionaire business leaders and US politics — one that feels similar to the power robber barons held over a century ago. He told NPR: “The thing that really stands out [from the Gilded Age] is that there was a visibility, an awareness of this kind of power being exerted politically at that time, and it kind of parallels the consciousness or awareness that people have now… In between that long period, there have been oligarchs, and there’s been oligarchic power, but it hasn’t been as visible and as agitating to people as it is now.”
What Will Stop the US From Becoming an Oligarchy?
The mega-wealthy’s outsized influence over every aspect of our lives is something many Americans oppose. With the current administration in power, what can you do if you’re one of them?
Experts like Ganesh Sitaraman, a professor of law and director of the Program on Law and Government at Vanderbilt Law School, advise taking action to build solidarity across America’s middle and working classes. Writing for Democracy Journal, he said that “in even a nominally democratic society, and most countries around the world today are at least that, it should be possible for the much larger majority to overthrow the oligarchy.” Because oligarchs use “divide-and-conquer tactics to ensure that a majority doesn’t coalesce,” Sitaraman says “there must be some degree of social solidarity because, as Lincoln put it, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’”
Solidarity against the oligarch class can look like a lot of things, including building community offline, organizing for causes you care about, and being strategic about your consumer purchasing power. Consider the recent example Washington Post subscribers set after Bezos pulled the paper’s Harris endorsement: 200,000 people cancelled their subscriptions.
Writing for The Guardian, Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor and professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, backed up this approach, saying to not underestimate the power of consumer boycotts. “Loud, boisterous, attention-getting boycotts can harm brand names and reduce the prices of corporations’ shares of stock,” he said.
