AILSA CHANG, HOST:
When Donald Trump was sworn in on Monday, he was flanked by billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. An American government, closely aligned with money and power is something that outgoing President Joe Biden warned about in his farewell address.
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JOE BIDEN: Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms.
CHANG: Oligarchy - it's a word more commonly associated with wealthy businessmen in Eastern Europe, right? But it's being used increasingly here in the U.S. We wanted to understand why, so we called someone who's written a lot about this. Jeffrey Winters is a professor of political science at Northwestern University and joins us now. Welcome.
JEFFREY WINTERS: Nice to be here. Thank you.
CHANG: Nice to have you. So I suppose we should just first define what an oligarchy is exactly. What is your understanding of the term, and where does this term come from?
WINTERS: Yeah, you know, its current interpretation in the United States is quite negative. I teach a course at Northwestern and on the very first day of this oligarchs and elites course, some years ago, one of the students said, Russia has oligarchs and the United States has rich people. And there was this sort of interpretation, right? But it turns out, the word has a lineage that goes back more than 2,500 years. And the meaning is simply persons who are super powerful because they are super wealthy. And it is the use of wealth power as political influence that has always defined oligarchs throughout history.
CHANG: In other words, an oligarch is an extremely wealthy person, and there is the suggestion that that person uses their wealth for personal gain.
WINTERS: Well, OK. It might be personal, but it is the deploying of it in politics. So let me give you an example. There might be an oligarch who feels very strongly about abortion policy, but they're using that money power in the political system to sway the political outcome. That's one, but overwhelmingly, what you refer to is correct, which is - the No. 1 political objective of oligarchs throughout history has been wealth defense, defending their fortunes from redistribution.
CHANG: Well, I want to get back to Biden's farewell address in which he talked about this rising oligarchy in America. And he likened today's super wealthy to the robber barons of the 19th and early 20th centuries, you know, to people like John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan. Is that a fair comparison? Would you say that today's megawealthy hold the same kind of influence that those men did way back then?
WINTERS: Yeah. And the thing that really stands out 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. And so yes, 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.
CHANG: But let me ask you this. I mean, these so-called modern-day oligarchs - they are, for the most part, quite successful people. You know, they're leaders in business. Their companies are a huge part of the American economy. Are there legitimate benefits to have them sharing their expertise and insights with government leaders or future leaders?
WINTERS: Sure. Absolutely. I mean, we're talking about people who are very, very talented. There's no doubt about it. They wouldn't be where they were - unless they inherited their money, they wouldn't be where they were. But I don't - you know, I don't think the United States should avoid drawing on very talented people. Of course, it should draw on talented people. But one of the ways that's been done, Ailsa, is that in the past, if you were brought in, for example, from industry or from the finance sector, you had to sort of leave that position and come and serve and not still maintain your businesses. You had to be sort of shielded from doing things that were beneficial to your business. So those kinds of protections in the past have been very important.
CHANG: Well, you've kind of been nipping at the edges of the answer to the next question, but let me just ask you straight out. What do you see as the biggest risk of a president being closely aligned with the billionaire class?
WINTERS: Well, I would just simply say, it's not the first time. I mean, one of my messages is this is not new, its - only its visibility is new. Really, that is the fundamental message. The United States is a vastly more unequal society today than it was 50 years ago. And that's partly because the power of oligarchs has been so great for the last half-century that the RAND Corporation, for example, estimates that over those 50 years, $50 trillion in wealth has been shifted upward to a very small number of people while people at the average level of society have not benefited. So...
CHANG: But would you say that there is something unprecedented about this current administration in the sense of the kind of political influence you see from the mega, mega rich, or is this just history replaying itself?
WINTERS: I think it is history replaying itself. I wouldn't go so far as to say absolutely unprecedented. But I would say, definitely one of the reasons we and the country are talking about it is, it is incredibly visible, and people are concerned about the impact.
CHANG: I mean, we saw the seating chart at inauguration. It is very visible. The billionaires...
WINTERS: Yeah.
CHANG: ...Were right there.
WINTERS: Yeah, literally right there - there is a risk to having that much visibility, which is, we saw in the gilded age, in the robber baron era, that there was a backlash. So one of the strategies of oligarchs throughout history has been not to be too visible, and that has worked well for them, and visibility has not always worked well.
CHANG: Well, I was just going to ask you, how do you see Trump's alliance with Musk and other powerful CEOs playing out? Do you see a backlash down the road from people who have just had enough with this?
WINTERS: I'm going to deflect the question by saying, political scientists have a hard enough time explaining what has happened and trying to predict...
CHANG: Really? You can't just get your crystal ball out (laughter)?
WINTERS: No, I'm - you know, we're...
CHANG: Fair enough.
WINTERS: We're challenged just explaining what has happened so...
CHANG: Fair enough.
WINTERS: Yeah.
CHANG: Jeffrey Winters is a professor of political science at Northwestern University. He's also author of the upcoming book called "Domination Through Democracy: Why Oligarchs Win." Thank you so much for joining us today.
WINTERS: Thank you. It's a pleasure.
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