United States, a Republic with an Oligarchic Vocation

From Republican Dreams to Oligarchic Realities

In one of his brief but significant messages, the magnate Elon Musk celebrated Donald Trump’s investiture, describing it as “the return of the king”. Perhaps he is right, although it is true that Donald Trump wields such enormous power over a vast and populous territory that it might not have been a bad idea to have opted for “the return of the emperor”. Moreover, the fact that the new president has also expressed his desire to expand the country’s borders—even if by military means—suggests that this second title might be even more appropriate.

Nevertheless, Musk’s assertion has its point. The truth is that despite its republican trappings, the United States Constitution is essentially monarchical. In fact, this was one of the points most fervently extolled by its supporters at the end of the eighteenth century. For example, Alexander Hamilton stated that the Constitution “combines all the internal advantages of a republican form of government with the external strength of the monarchical”. In response to that conception, during the constitutional debates the so-called anti-federalists advocated for a more limited political system, with fewer prerogatives for the president and, above all, with mechanisms that preserved the effective control of citizens over their own destiny. As the reader may surmise, it was not the anti-federalists who prevailed.

Thomas Jefferson, liberal in his attitudes despite being a representative of the American aristocracy and owning a significant number of slaves, was then one of the staunchest defenders of a grassroots democracy rooted in the territory. Jefferson was the principal draughtsman of the United States Declaration of Independence of 1776 and one of its signatories, and he championed a continuist constitution based on the ideas expressed therein. This meant, among other things, defending local institutions and promoting direct democracy. Both ideas were nevertheless rooted in an agrarian and ruralist vision of the United States. But above all—and here lies the main point of my argument—Jefferson contended that Hamilton’s federalist proposal would inevitably lead to a centralised oligarchy.

The condition of being a new nation had well suited the Americans to see themselves as a special people, one that was also free from the burdens of inherited and oppressive churches or aristocracies. Consequently, they considered themselves capable of building from scratch a country founded on the basis of small, well-governed rural communities. That said, in order to do so, they had previously dispossessed indigenous peoples of their lands and massacred them while also placing their nascent wealth upon the back of the enslavement of a significant portion of the population. However, within only a few years of the Declaration of Independence, that republican impulse—sustained by those who thought like Jefferson—began to lose vigour in favour of elitist proposals which, arguing that giving power to the popular classes was dangerous and unstable, went on to consolidate a democracy controlled and scrutinised by the wealthiest. Indeed, oligarchic institutions soon began to be put in place, such as the senatorial chambers of the States, which were accessible only to the richest members of the community.

The 1787 Constitution proposal was the consolidation of this trend. And centralisation was manifest in the numerous powers assigned to the President, who, among many other functions, could even appoint the Supreme Court justices—a lifetime appointment, no less. The anti-federalists’ criticism of this Constitution was extensive, but it centred on the fear that citizens would only be able to choose between the best-known and most popular candidates, who, in practice, also turned out to be the richest. According to the anti-federalists, a constitution like that of the United States would eventually lead to power being concentrated in an oligarchy, which could have been avoided with more representative institutions, greater popular involvement, and more mechanisms to control the rulers.

It is ironic that, nearly two and a half centuries later, the chief fear of Jefferson and the anti-federalists has been expressed in such graphic terms. The image of Donald Trump and his retinue of ultra-rich reactionaries is excellent evidence in favour of those eighteenth-century republican suspicions. It must be said that from the very beginning, American democracy was characterised by this oligarchic tendency, which meant that effective political participation was practically impossible for the most modest segments of society. In more modern times, when mass media have reached such a level of power, it is even more difficult to escape the elitist tendencies of a system in which a large part of electoral success depends on private financial investment during the campaign.

All of this being true, what we are witnessing is simply historical. In a manner that perhaps not even Jefferson could have imagined, the court accompanying the new king is filled with multi-millionaires who, as we might imagine, have interests very different from those of the average citizen.

And although all eyes are on the multi-millionaire Musk—who donated more than 260 million dollars to Trump’s campaign and has been honoured with heading the new “Department of Governmental Efficiency”—he is not the only one. According to CNN, the new Secretary of Education donated 21 million dollars; the new Secretary of Commerce donated 9 million; the new ambassadors to the United Kingdom and France, 3 and 2 million, respectively; and the Secretary of the Treasury contributed another 1.5 million. Most likely, the list is even longer, but this is already significant in the type of profiles that form part of Trump’s government. Apart from all those other ultra-rich and ultra-powerful individuals who now grovel before the new king, such as the magnates of Silicon Valley, we must also not forget that, according to Forbes magazine, Trump’s own fortune is estimated at nearly 7 billion dollars. In short, perhaps never before has the claim that the 1% of the richest of the population are the ones occupying the positions of power been so literal.

In the end, the republican dream of Jefferson and the anti-federalists seems to have been diluted into a reality favouring economic elites above citizen control. The consolidation of a political oligarchy, fuelled by multi-million-dollar donations and media campaigns, has distorted the foundational ideals of a democracy based on republican virtue. Perhaps, as Musk suggested in his tweet, the United States is not simply facing “the return of the king”, but the reaffirmation of a system that, in addition to being monarchical, has institutionalised the power of money as its central core. And that does not bode well for the popular classes, far less for those important segments of the popular classes who are women, immigrants and/or Black people. After all, this oligarchy is also deeply reactionary.