Biden foreshadows U.S. intra-elite conflict
In his farewell address this week, outgoing President Joe Biden warned of an oligarchical power taking control of the United States, and of a “tech-industrial complex” threatening to do the same.
“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… You know, [in] his farewell address, President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. … Six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well… And in a democracy, there’s another danger to the concentration of power and wealth. It erodes a sense of unity and common purpose. It causes distrust and division. Participating in our democracy becomes exhausting and even disillusioning…”
From a political perspective, Democrats are concerned by a strong and competent “anti-woke” and pro-meritocracy influence at the White House that threatens to undo decades of “woke” DEI and ESG policy progress (the roots of which emerged all the way back in the 60s).
The Obama-era community-organizing wing of the Democrat Party want nothing more than to throw Trump out of office. They already tried it once. Their big challenge is they’re unable to characterize Trump as illegitimate this time because he won both the Electoral College and popular vote. So the talk now about oligarchical powers threatening democracy is narrative-shaping. They want to use the specter of billionaire influence over the White House, which is nothing new, to foment opposition and undermine and de-legitimize the incoming Trump administration. Trump is legitimate, but he’s putting the oligarchy in charge; ergo illegitimate.
Biden’s warning on “the oligarchy” is entirely tone deaf. The real problem, as they see it, is not the influence of billionaire benefactors. It’s just that now it’s the influence from the other party’s billionaires who are reportedly embedded in the White House.
Biden here, probably unknowingly, brings up an important point: this is what’s called intra-elite conflict. This where the elites of a country factionalize into elites and counter-elites. There are two competing visions for the future of a country, and there is a zero-sum outcome, so if one faction of elites win, the other faction will necessarily lose. And this is important because historically, these intra-elite conflicts precede periods of state breakdown and civil war.
Briefly, I think we need to change how we view revolutions. The traditional view is bottom-up. You have an unruly peasant class and part of the middle-class that wants to overturn the status quo, and you get a bottom-up revolution of torches and pitchforks.
Jack Goldstone, a professor at George Mason, has done a lot of work on this and he says this traditional view of revolution is not the whole picture. Historically, it’s been too difficult for peasants and the middle-class to organize substantial military opposition. And just like we see across the history of successful insurgencies, there’s some level of external support required. For these revolutions, it’s part of the elite class that provides the funding and organization, which is what we see in the trapezoid on the right (above).
This is the Demographic-Structural view of revolution, which is quite convincing. He’s written a few books on this, showing that you see the factionalization among elites in the lead up to the English Civil War, the French Revolution, the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, and then later the Taiping Rebellion (which killed 20 million Chinese), and the Ottoman Crisis.
One of the common features is that the elites of a kingdom or a country fracture. The peasant class and middle class then line up behind their chosen side of elites and counter-elites — whichever side they believe is best for their future.
And Goldstone says this is the true cause of state breakdown and civil war. This is how civil wars really happen. And you get periods of state breakdown, obviously, which just means that governments or monarchies fail and they eventually get replaced by some other competitor.
I’m not predicting that a civil war will happen. It’s a distinct possibility, and the more you read about the history of these conflicts, I think the more you will see that the United States is going down the same path as some of these revolutions and civil wars. And I know it’s popular to poo poo the concept of a civil war, but anyone who can dismiss the possibility outright should read more history because the similarities are shocking.