A Marxist Intervention into a Degraded Political Literature
Over the past decade, an enormous, largely superficial literature on Donald Trump has accumulated. It comprises memoirs by disillusioned staffers, psychological profiles, insider gossip, and endless liberal laments over violated norms. Yet this genre seldom asks the only question that matters to anyone seeking to understand the crisis of American democracy: In whose class interests does Trump rule? The new Mehring Books volume, *Oligarchy: Trump and the Breakdown of American Democracy*, edited by David North, chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, puts that question at the centre of its analysis and answers it with uncompromising clarity.
North’s foreword opens by rejecting the two dominant bourgeois explanations for Trump’s rise. The first, favoured by the liberal establishment, casts Trump as a monstrous aberration—a freakish intrusion into an otherwise healthy democratic system. The second, its reactionary mirror image, depicts him as a demonic political genius, a singular figure imposing his will on a helpless nation. Both explanations share the same flaw: they reduce a profound social process to one individual’s personality, obscuring the class forces that produced Trump and the material interests he serves.
Against these illusions, the volume insists on a historical materialist truth: Trump is not the cause of oligarchic rule but its political instrument. He did not create the conditions for authoritarianism; he emerged from them. His ascent reflects the interests of a financial oligarchy whose wealth and power have grown to grotesque proportions and whose relationship with democratic forms of rule has become openly hostile.
The book uses stark figures to make this reality clear. More than 900 American billionaires now control roughly $8.2 trillion—nearly twice the wealth of the population’s bottom half. Their political interventions are decisive, not symbolic. In 2024, Elon Musk spent more than $250 million to return Trump to the White House. It was rewarded with the Department of Government Efficiency, which he used to dismantle regulatory agencies and social programmes. Musk was not alone: Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos, who had cultivated a liberal image for years, aligned themselves with a would-be dictator. They concluded that authoritarian rule would protect their wealth more reliably than the decaying institutions of bourgeois democracy.
This is the central argument of *Oligarchy*: Trumpism is not a departure from American capitalism, but its logical outcome amid terminal decline. The book places Trump’s rise within a half-century of economic and political degeneration. It examines the end of dollar–gold convertibility in 1971, the collapse of the postwar monetary order, decades of deindustrialisation, the trade union bureaucracy’s suppression of class struggle, the growth of financial parasitism, and the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR in 1991, which removed the last external restraint on American militarism. Trump did not create these processes; he is their political crystallisation.
By grounding its analysis in class relations rather than personality cults, the volume cuts through the fog of liberal moralism and reactionary mythmaking. It demonstrates that the crisis of American democracy cannot be understood through psychological speculation or appeals to civic virtue. It must be understood as the political expression of a ruling class that has become irreconcilably hostile to democratic constraints.
In this sense, *Oligarchy* is more than a book about Trump: it examines the social order that produced him and warns that defending democratic rights requires a struggle against the oligarchic power he represents. For workers and young people seeking to understand how American democracy reached its current state, this volume is indispensable.
The Oligarchs Behind the Throne
The book marshals figures that reveal Trumpism’s real social foundation. More than nine hundred American billionaires now control approximately eight point two trillion dollars—nearly twice the wealth held by the bottom half of the population. This concentration of wealth is no incidental feature of contemporary capitalism; it is the essential precondition for the political phenomena the book analyses. Trumpism is rooted in the interests of a ruling class whose fortunes have reached levels incompatible with democratic rule. The oligarchs who dominate American society have concluded that the traditional mechanisms of bourgeois democracy no longer reliably defend their wealth. Their turn toward authoritarianism is not a matter of personal preference, but of class necessity.
The book offers concrete examples of this oligarchic layer’s direct intervention in politics. In 2024, Elon Musk spent more than $250 million to help return Trump to the White House. In return, he gained the Department of Government Efficiency, a new bureaucratic instrument he used to dismantle regulatory bodies, social programmes, and environmental protections. Musk’s actions were not the eccentricities of one billionaire; they formed part of a coordinated movement among the financial elite. Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, and Jeff Bezos, who had cultivated a liberal image for years, also threw their support behind Trump. Bezos’s shift was especially revealing: his earlier image as a socially progressive billionaire collapsed when preserving his wealth required authoritarian rule. The book shows that these figures did not merely support Trump as individuals. They represented a class whose interests were threatened by political instability and growing anger among the working population.
The oligarchs concluded that the decaying institutions of bourgeois democracy could no longer guarantee their dominance. Trump was their solution. He offered a form of rule that dispensed with the constraints of constitutional procedure and replaced them with executive fiat, militarised repression, and the cultivation of a fascist movement. The book argues that Trumpism is not an aberration but the political expression of a ruling class that has exhausted the democratic forms through which it once governed. The oligarchs did not choose Trump because he was charismatic or ideologically aligned with them. They chose him because he was willing to act as the instrument of their interests, and because his contempt for democratic norms made him uniquely suited to the tasks they required.
The book situates this development within a broader historical trajectory. The rise of Trumpism is inseparable from the long decline of American capitalism. The end of dollar–gold convertibility in 1971, the collapse of the postwar monetary order, decades of deindustrialisation, the trade union bureaucracy’s suppression of class struggle, and the hypertrophy of financial parasitism created a social landscape defined by inequality, insecurity, and political decay. The dissolution of the USSR in 1991 removed the last external restraint on American militarism and opened a period of unending war. These processes eroded the foundations of democratic governance and produced a ruling class increasingly reliant on coercion rather than consent.
In this context, the oligarchs’ support for Trump appears not as a sudden departure but as the culmination of a long process. The book shows that the financial elite did not merely tolerate Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. They encouraged them, financed them, and integrated them into the machinery of the state. Their actions reveal a ruling class that has abandoned any commitment to democratic principles and embraced a form of governance that protects its wealth through repression and violence.
The book’s analysis is therefore not limited to Trump as an individual. It is a study of the social order that produced him. It demonstrates that the crisis of American democracy cannot be understood through psychological speculation or moral condemnation. It must be understood as the political expression of a ruling class whose interests have become irreconcilable with democratic constraints. Trumpism is the form of rule that emerges when oligarchic wealth reaches a point where democracy becomes an obstacle rather than a mechanism of governance.
A History Written in Real Time
The book’s distinctive value lies in its method. It is not a retrospective reconstruction shaped by hindsight or by the smoothing effects of historical distance. It is a chronicle written as events unfolded, drawn from thousands of articles, statements, and lectures published by the World Socialist Web Site between 2015 and 2026. Each text was produced when the outcome of events was still uncertain, the political crisis was developing in real time, and the broader public had not yet fully recognised the dangers confronting the working class. Read sequentially, these documents form a running record of a political catastrophe. They show how a Marxist analysis, rooted in class relations rather than personality cults, made it possible to identify the emergence of a fascist conspiracy at a time when the media and political establishment dismissed it as bluster or theatrical excess.
The book shows that the WSWS could foresee the trajectory of Trumpism because it treated the phenomenon not as a psychological curiosity but as the political expression of deep historical processes. The rise of Trump is situated within the long decline of American capitalism, a decline that unfolded over half a century and reshaped every aspect of social and political life. The volume traces this decline through several decisive stages. It begins with the end of dollar–gold convertibility in 1971, which shattered the postwar monetary order and inaugurated a period of financial instability. It examines the decades of deindustrialisation that followed, during which entire regions of the United States were stripped of their industrial base and millions of workers were thrown into economic insecurity.
The book also analyses how the trade union bureaucracy suppressed class struggle, transforming unions from defensive working-class organisations into instruments of corporate management. This suppression created a political vacuum that reactionary forces could exploit. The hypertrophy of financial parasitism further intensified the crisis. The growth of speculative capital, Wall Street’s dominance over productive industry, and the economy’s transformation into a mechanism for enriching a narrow elite produced levels of inequality incompatible with democratic stability.
Finally, the volume emphasises the significance of the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR in 1991. This event removed the last external restraint on American militarism and opened a period of unbroken war. The United States embarked on a global campaign of military interventions, coups, and occupations, and the methods used abroad increasingly shaped domestic political life. The erosion of democratic norms, the expansion of executive power, and the militarisation of the state were not accidental developments. They were the internal consequences of imperialist policy.
This is the historical terrain on which Trump emerged. The book shows that you cannot understand his rise apart from these long-term processes. Trumpism is not an aberration but the political crystallisation of a declining social order. The WSWS recognised this because it analysed events through the lens of class struggle and historical materialism. The book’s method is therefore inseparable from its conclusions. It demonstrates that only a Marxist perspective can make sense of the crisis of American democracy and reveal the forces driving it toward authoritarian rule.
Part One (2015–2020): The Social Roots of Trumpism
Part One examines the conditions that produced Trump. It begins from the premise that his rise cannot be understood apart from the social devastation inflicted on the American working class, the bipartisan commitment to imperialist war, and the Democratic Party’s promotion of identity politics as a substitute for any challenge to capitalist power. The book shows that Trump did not emerge from a political vacuum. He arose from a society marked by inequality, militarism, and the systematic suppression of class struggle. These conditions were not created by one party or one administration. They were the cumulative product of decades in which both parties of the ruling class dismantled social protections, enriched the financial elite, and cultivated forms of politics that obscured the real sources of social misery.
A central contribution of the WSWS during this period was its early rejection of the slander, promoted by Democrats and the media, that Trump was the creation of a reactionary white working class. This narrative served two essential purposes. First, it absolved the two-party system of responsibility for the social catastrophe it had produced. By blaming workers for Trump’s rise, the political establishment avoided any examination of the policies that had destroyed jobs, gutted communities, and created the conditions for widespread anger. Second, it redirected popular anger downward, away from the financial elite from which Trump himself emerged. The myth of the reactionary worker transformed legitimate social grievances into a moral failing. It let the ruling class present itself as democracy’s defender against the very people it had impoverished.
The book shows that this narrative was not merely false but politically dangerous. It obscured the real class forces behind Trump and prevented any serious analysis of the authoritarian tendencies developing within the state. The WSWS insisted that Trump’s base was not the working class but sections of the petty bourgeoisie, elements of the police and military, and layers of the financial elite who saw in him a vehicle for their interests. This analysis shows the first term not as chaotic improvisation but as the deliberate laying of foundations for a fascist movement.
The first term witnessed the growth of armed militias, the encouragement of vigilante violence, and the cultivation of a political culture defined by resentment and nationalism. Anti-immigrant agitation became a central organising principle of the administration, used to divide workers and legitimise the expansion of state repression. Executive power grew rapidly, with Trump asserting the right to override legal constraints and govern through decree. These developments were not isolated episodes. They formed part of a coherent political strategy to create a movement capable of overturning democratic norms and establishing a form of rule suited to the oligarchy’s needs.
Part One therefore provides more than a chronicle of events. It offers a framework for understanding how social decay, political opportunism, and class interests combined to produce a movement that threatened the foundations of American democracy. It shows that Trumpism was not an accident but the expression of a ruling class that had lost confidence in democratic mechanisms and turned toward authoritarian solutions.
Part Two: The 2020 Coup and Its Cover‑Up
Part Two reconstructs the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and shows that January 6 was not an eruption of spontaneous chaos but the culmination of a coordinated effort to nullify the vote and impose authoritarian rule. The book presents January 6 as the endpoint of a months-long plot involving parts of the Republican Party, layers of the state apparatus, and influential figures in the financial elite. Trump was the figurehead of this operation, but he was not its sole architect. The conspiracy developed through legal challenges, pressure campaigns, the mobilisation of fascist groups, and the deliberate creation of conditions in which violence could be used to achieve political ends.
The WSWS identified this danger early because it analysed the unfolding crisis through the lens of class interests rather than through the personal behaviour of Trump. The book shows that the coup attempt was rooted in the needs of an oligarchy that viewed democratic procedures as an obstacle to its wealth and power. The refusal to accept the election results was not a psychological reaction but a political strategy. It aimed to create a precedent for overturning future elections and to establish a form of rule in which executive authority could override constitutional constraints.
The Biden administration’s response is presented as a cover-up. By reducing the conspiracy to the actions of one man and a mob, Biden shielded the network of officials, financiers, and Republican leaders who orchestrated the plot. The administration insisted that the country needed a strong Republican Party, even as that party had just attempted to overturn an election. The January 6 committee spent eighteen months narrowing its investigation until it resembled a criminal case against a single individual rather than an examination of a broad political conspiracy. This approach protected the stability of the two-party system and kept from exposure the class interests that drove the coup attempt.
The book argues that the cover-up was not a failure of political courage but a deliberate act. The Democratic Party shares with the Republicans a commitment to defending oligarchic wealth and American imperialism. To expose the real forces behind January 6 would have required confronting the financial elite, the military and police apparatus, and the political structures that sustain capitalist rule. The Democrats chose instead to present the coup as an aberration, a moment of madness, rather than as the logical outcome of decades of social decay and political reaction.
Eric London’s August 2021 lecture on the social origins of the conspiracy stands out as one of the volume’s most incisive analyses. London traces the roots of the coup attempt to the long decline of American capitalism, rising social inequality, and the ruling class’s increasing reliance on authoritarian methods. He shows that January 6 was not an isolated event but part of a broader movement toward oligarchic rule. His lecture provides the theoretical foundation for understanding why the coup occurred and why the political establishment refused to confront its real causes. Part Two therefore offers more than a narrative of January 6. It provides a framework for understanding the breakdown of American democracy and the class forces driving it.
Part Three: The Second Term and the Open Dictatorship of the Oligarchy
Part Three chronicles the second Trump administration and presents it as the moment when the oligarchy assumed direct command of the state. The book shows that the first term’s authoritarian tendencies not only intensified but also became systematised. What had previously been preparatory measures became the foundation of a new form of rule. The administration operated on the premise that democratic norms were obstacles to be circumvented and that preserving oligarchic wealth required using state power in its most coercive form.
One defining feature of the second term was the declaration of a state of exception. Drawn from the theory of authoritarian rule, this concept refers to a situation in which the executive claims the right to suspend legal constraints in the name of national security or public order. The book shows that this declaration did not respond to any genuine emergency. It was a political instrument used to concentrate power in the presidency and create a legal environment in which repression could occur without accountability. The state of exception became the framework through which the administration justified its actions, from domestic deployments to foreign interventions.
The book documents the deployment of ICE paramilitaries and federal troops into American cities. These forces were used not to protect the population but to intimidate it. Their presence in urban centres signalled a shift from traditional policing to militarised occupation. The administration relied on these units to suppress protests, break strikes, and enforce executive directives. The use of paramilitary forces against civilians revealed the extent to which the state had been transformed into an instrument of oligarchic rule.
The killings carried out by federal agents, including the atrocities in Minneapolis in January 2026, are presented as emblematic of this transformation. The book treats these events not as isolated abuses but as expressions of a political strategy that relied on terror to maintain control. The violence in Minneapolis demonstrated the willingness of the administration to use lethal force against the population and the inability of existing institutions to restrain it. The response of the political establishment, which sought to minimise or justify the killings, further exposed the complicity of both parties in the erosion of democratic rights.
The second term also saw the illegal invasion of Venezuela. This action was justified through familiar rhetoric about restoring order and promoting democracy, but the book shows that its real purpose was to secure strategic and economic interests. The invasion marked a new stage in American imperialism, one in which military aggression was carried out without even the pretence of congressional oversight. The war against Iran, launched on February 28, 2026, followed the same pattern. It was an act of aggression driven by geopolitical calculations and carried out solely under the executive’s authority.
Part Three presents these developments as the anatomy of an authoritarian regime serving capitalist interests. It shows that the second Trump administration did not merely violate democratic norms. It replaced them with a system of rule designed to protect the oligarchy’s wealth and power through repression, militarism, and the dismantling of constitutional constraints.
Accomplices and Enablers: Republicans, Democrats, and the Pseudo‑Left
The book’s most politically significant sections focus not on Trump himself but on the forces that made his rise possible. Trump did not ascend to power through personal magnetism or ideological coherence. A ruling class saw him as a useful instrument, and political institutions that had long abandoned democratic principles elevated him. The book therefore turns its attention to the Republicans, the Democrats, and the pseudo-left, showing how each played an indispensable role in the breakdown of American democracy.
The Republicans are presented as willing accomplices. They embraced Trump as the vehicle for oligarchic rule and recognised that his contempt for democratic norms aligned with their own strategic interests. The party leadership understood that Trump’s authoritarian tendencies could be harnessed to implement policies that enriched the financial elite, expanded military power, and dismantled regulatory constraints. The book shows that Republican support for Trump was not reluctant or tactical. It was enthusiastic and rooted in a shared class outlook. Trump did not cause the party’s transformation into an openly reactionary force. It predated him and made his rise possible.
The book portrays the Democrats as indispensable enablers. The book argues that the Democratic Party is ruthless against opponents on its left but impotent against Trump because it shares his commitment to defending capitalist wealth and American imperialism. The record is damning. After the 2016 election, Barack Obama described the contest as a scrimmage between members of the same team, revealing how both parties operate within a shared ideological framework. Two days after the events of January 6, Joe Biden declared that the country needed a strong Republican Party, even though that party had just attempted to overturn an election. The January 6 committee spent eighteen months reducing a broad conspiracy to the crimes of one man, thereby shielding the network of officials, financiers, and political operatives who orchestrated the plot. The Biden administration served as an interregnum devoted to securing bipartisan support for war in Ukraine and for policies that contributed to the suffering of civilians in Gaza. These actions show that the Democrats’ primary concern was not defending democratic institutions but preserving the stability of the two-party system and protecting the interests of the ruling class.
The book also examines the role of the pseudo-left. Figures such as Bernie Sanders denounced the billionaire class in rhetoric but ultimately reinforced the Democratic Party’s authority. Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and later offered to work with Trump, signalling his willingness to subordinate social opposition to the needs of the political establishment. Jacobin, the magazine associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, avoided the coup almost entirely. Its silence reflected a political orientation that prioritised access to the Democratic Party over any serious confrontation with the forces threatening democratic rights. The pseudo-left is presented as a political tendency that channels social anger back into bourgeois political structures and prevents the emergence of an independent working-class movement.
By analysing these forces together, the book shows that Trumpism was not an isolated phenomenon. It expressed a political system in which both major parties and their ideological satellites had abandoned any commitment to democratic principles. The Republicans acted as the architects of authoritarian rule. The Democrats provided the cover that allowed it to develop—the pseudo-left neutralised opposition from below. Trump benefited from this alignment, but the forces that sustained him were far larger and far more dangerous than any individual.
The Social Opposition and the Question of Leadership
Against this record of capitulation from the political establishment, the book documents a continuous and determined opposition from below. It begins with the mass protests that erupted on Trump’s first day in office, demonstrations that revealed a broad social revulsion toward authoritarianism and inequality. It continues through the multiracial uprising that followed the murder of George Floyd, an eruption of anger that exposed the brutality of the American state and the depth of social injustice. The book then turns to the No Kings demonstrations of 2025 and 2026, the largest single-day protests in American history, in which millions rejected attempts to impose monarchical or dictatorial rule. These movements were spontaneous, diverse, and often politically inchoate, but they expressed a profound social reality. The objective basis for a mass socialist movement exists. What is missing is conscious revolutionary leadership.
The programme advanced by the volume is therefore clear and uncompromising. It calls for forming rank-and-file committees independent of the union bureaucracy, which has long served as an instrument of corporate management and a barrier to genuine working-class struggle. It insists on the working class’s political independence from both capitalist parties, rejecting the illusion that the Democratic Party can serve as a vehicle for social reform or democratic renewal. It advocates the international unification of workers in the struggle against war and fascism on a socialist programme, recognising that the crisis of American democracy is inseparable from the global crisis of capitalism and cannot be resolved within national boundaries.
The book situates this programme within a broader historical framework. It appears on the eve of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution, a moment that invites reflection on the democratic principles that shaped the nation’s origins. The volume argues that a ruling class openly contemptuous of 1776’s egalitarian ideals now governs the country. The commitment to popular sovereignty, equality, and resistance to tyranny that animated the first American Revolution has been replaced by a political order defined by oligarchic wealth, militarism, and authoritarianism.
The book connects this contempt to the WSWS’s polemic against the New York Times’ 1619 Project. That project sought to recast the American Revolution and the Civil War as episodes in an eternal racial conflict, stripping them of their democratic content and obscuring their significance as revolutionary struggles. The volume argues that such interpretations serve the interests of a ruling class that wishes to sever the working class from its own revolutionary heritage. By reducing the past to racial antagonism, the 1619 Project denies the possibility of universal emancipation and undermines the historical foundations of a socialist movement.
The democratic principles of the first two American revolutions can be defended and extended only by a third. The book insists that the working class must conquer political power and reorganise economic life on socialist foundations. This is not a rhetorical flourish but a historical conclusion drawn from the contradictions of contemporary capitalism. The concentration of wealth, the militarisation of society, the erosion of democratic institutions, and the descent into perpetual war have created conditions in which democratic rights cannot survive without a fundamental transformation of the social order. The working class must complete the unfinished tasks of American history by establishing a society based on equality, rational planning, and collective ownership.
The book closes with a fictional Letter from Afar by Abraham Lincoln. This device allows the authors to draw a direct line between the moral and political struggles of the nineteenth century and those of the present. In the letter, Lincoln argues that capitalism today is as intolerable as slavery was in his time. He insists that Trump is a symptom, not the disease, and that the real enemy is a social system that produces inequality, violence, and authoritarianism. The letter reminds us that the fight for democracy has always required revolutionary action and that the working class must assume the role once played by the abolitionists and the soldiers of the Union Army.
The book’s conclusion is stark and unambiguous. Humanity faces a choice between fascism and socialism. Reforms, appeals to civility, and reliance on existing political institutions cannot resolve the crisis of American democracy. It requires a conscious working-class movement, armed with a socialist programme and guided by historical understanding. Oligarchy is essential reading for every worker and young person seeking to understand how American democracy reached this point and what must be done to prevent catastrophe. It calls for action and warns that today’s choices will determine the future.
Bibliography
North, David, ed. Oligarchy: Trump and the Breakdown of American Democracy. Mehring Books, 2026.
North, David. “Foreword.” In Oligarchy: Trump and the Breakdown of American Democracy. Mehring Books, 2026.
London, Eric. “The Social Origins of the January 6 Conspiracy.” Lecture delivered August 2021. World Socialist Web Site.
International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site. Articles, statements, and analyses published between 2015 and 2026. World Socialist Web Site. https://www.wsws.org
World Socialist Web Site. Coverage of the 2020 election crisis, the January 6 coup attempt, and the second Trump administration. https://www.wsws.org
World Socialist Web Site. “The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Falsification of History.” Series of articles and critiques, 2019–2020.
North, David. The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History. Mehring Books, 2021.
North, David. The Crisis of American Democracy: The Political and Social Roots of the Breakdown. Mehring Books, 2024.
Mehring Books. Publications on American politics, imperialism, and the crisis of capitalism, 2015–2026. https://mehring.com
Federal Reserve Data. Wealth distribution statistics for American billionaires and the bottom half of the population, 2024–2026.
Public campaign finance records. Documentation of political contributions by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, and Jeff Bezos, 2023–2024.
United States Department of Defence. Public statements and records relating to military operations in Venezuela and Iran, 2025–2026.
United States Department of Homeland Security. Public records concerning ICE deployments and federal paramilitary actions, 2025–2026.
Historical sources on the American Revolution and Civil War—primary documents from 1776 and 1861, including speeches, letters, and constitutional debates.
Lincoln, Abraham. “Letter from Afar.” Fictional reconstruction in Oligarchy: Trump and the Breakdown of American Democracy. Mehring Books, 2026.
