The influence of the wealthy in politics is nothing new, and certainly not just in the United States of America.
In Russia, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Communist Party bureaucrats and industry and factory managers converted themselves into highly rich oligarchs by buying up the economy when it came up for grabs, moving from state capitalism to a market economy. They payrolled Yeltsin in the 1990s, financing his election in 1996. When Putin came to power, the influence of the oligarchs weakened for a while, but a second wave of oligarchs, individuals close to Putin himself and sponsored by him, came to the fore. This indicated a turn from crony capitalism to a form of state capitalism where oligarchs did well out of funding from state banks and from access to public procurement projects. Putin’s relations with oligarchs have not always been easy, with his eventually coming to an agreement that they must give him full support if they wished to survive and prosper.
In China, when Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, he maintained a firm Communist Party control over the state capitalist economy, but allowed some free enterprise. Private businesses were encouraged, leading to the emergence of billionaires. China now has more of these than anywhere else in the world, a whopping 814. Some of these billionaires are members of the Communist Party, and even served as delegates to the yearly National People’s Congress. The Chinese state seeks to maintain control over these super-rich whilst at the same time encouraging them. Some of the wealthiest billionaires, who have increased their wealth phenomenally, are in the car industries, renewable energy, and the richest is Zhong Shanshan, head of a bottled water company, with a wealth of $50.8 billion.
In India, Narendra Modi runs a regime of crony capitalism where hugely wealthy oligarchs like Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani are granted rich pickings in public projects like roads, ports, airports and railways, and digital connectivity. Unsurprisingly, Ambani and Adani are enthusiastic supporters of Modi. Billionaires had an increase of 42% in combined wealth in the last financial year, to more than $905 billion.
In Britain, the last Conservative Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, was the first millionaire to rule. He and his wife, Akshata Murty, have a combined wealth of £651 million. In 2023, the Tories made Mohamed Mansour, an Egyptian billionaire with a wealth estimated by Forbes magazine at $3.3 billion, senior treasurer of the Party. Mansour served as Minister of Transportation under the dictatorial regime of Hosni Mubarak.
Alongside this we have a party of the far right, Reform UK, whose leaders and MPs are all wealthy. They include billionaire property developer Nick Candy, party treasurer, and deputy leader Richard Tice, with a wealth of £40 million, made from property investment.
In the United States, the influence of the super-rich is taking on new dimensions. Whereas elsewhere billionaires exert influence mainly from outside the State and parliament, here 12 billionaires have actually taken on government roles. This present US administration is now the wealthiest in modern history.
The wealthiest of these is Elon Musk, now co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency. His wealth is at least $400 billion and rising, alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, who made a fortune of $1 billion from biotechnology. After this are billionaires Howard Lutnick, Secretary for Commerce, Linda McMahon as Secretary for Education, and Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary. The financier Warren Stephens will serve as ambassador to the UK, airline magnate Leandro Rizzuto Jr. as ambassador to the Organization of American States, property billionaire Simon Witkoff as Special Envoy in the Middle East, the property developer Charles Kushner, wealth $1.8 billion, as ambassador to France, Jared Isaacmann , NASA administrator, also with a wealth of $1.8 billion made from payments processing and aviation, Tom Barrack, ambassador to Turkey, with a wealth of $1 billion, Frank Bisiganano, Social Security Administration Commissioner, who made his wealth of $1 billion from financial technology, and David Sacks, venture capitalist who has been appointed Trum’s AI and Crypto Czar. There are also Kelly Loeffler, Administrator of Small Business Administration, who got rich from crypto currency, Doug Bergum, Interior Secretary and venture capitalist, Mehmet Oz, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, with a wealth of $100 million, a snake oil salesman who promoted an anti-malaria drug as an antidote to Covid.
As for Donald Trump himself, Bloomberg, the business news and data company, estimates his wealth at $7.08 billion.
Trump’s cabinet has a wealth of at least $7 billion, whilst the combined wealth of the wider administration stands at least $460 billion.
Is this unprecedented development a new stage in the development of capitalism, as oligarchs merge with the State? It remains to be seen whether this is a momentary hiccup , as Trump is notorious for falling out with his backers, and he could still clash with the likes of Musk over the latter’s fairly favourable attitude to China and his support for cheap immigrant labour under the H1-B visa scheme.
Whatever the outcome, the integration of these billionaires and multi-millionaires into the administrative structures only spells misery for the working class. Musk and Ramaswamy will scrap programmes that combat homelessness, and cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid, the two main government healthcare programmes.
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