Elon Musk and the Billionaires’ Club
Published in La Jornada
(Mexico) on 8 March 2025
by (link to original)
(Mexico) on 8 March 2025
by (link to original)
Translated from
by Patricia Simoni.
Edited by Michelle Bisson.
The American Liberty League was born In 1934, just after the Great Depression and within the framework of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. It was an organization of multimillionaires nicknamed the “Millionaires’ Club.”
Under different forms and different names, this network of economic elites has never ceased its intervention in U.S. politics as it tries to expand and extend its corporate power. Since the 1960s, large fortunes have invested vast resources in a dense network of foundations, lobbies and think tanks — thus constituting the cultural and programmatic underpinnings of a conservative revolution, all with the stroke of a pen.
This tendancy has accelerated since the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier to increase campaign spending in 2010. The court’s decision ushered in the era of mega-donors, an unprecedented cycle of political spending with which billionaires and corporations have influenced politics as never before.
Donald Trump's 2016 election victory marked a further twist in the oligarchization of American politics. The exponential increase in campaign spending was accompanied by the phenomenon Dylan Riley defined as “neo-Bonapartist patrimonialism,” a model with little or no distinction between public and private interests, in which Trump conducted the presidency as if it were one of his personal businesses.
Further, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, provided direct support to the most recent presidential campaign, investing enormous sums in Trump's candidacy at an estimated $300 million. Musk went as far as buying votes in key states, such as Pennsylvania, and used X, the social network he acquired in 2022, as a powerful weapon in favor of the current president. A study by professors Timothy Graham and Mark Andrejevic uncovered a structural change designed to expose users to the content Musk desired in the metrics of X's algorithm
Musk is not only the most powerful member of what is now a billionaires’ club of super-oligarchs, but also the most dangerous, not least because he has a political agenda to globalize a reactionary a reactionary worldview. The owner of X has proved he has the privilege to shape the world to suit himself, both in terms of his economic interests and his ideological leanings. Not satisfied with merely influencing U.S. elections in favor of Trump, he has made it clear that this is only the beginning.
Accordingly, Musk did not hesitate to interfere directly in German elections, using X to amplify the voices of the extreme right. He interviewed far-right candidate Alice Weidel and participated in Alternative for Germany election events, justifying his participation in the German election debate as an investor. In 2022, Musk inaugurated the largest Tesla production plant in Europe on the outskirts of Berlin, which he asserts makes it legitimate for him to influence events in the country, the largest economy on the European continent.
We cannot ignore that the AfD, in addition to its xenophobic platform of mass expulsion of migrants, defends lowered taxes, economic deregulation and a rapprochement with Russia, positions that not only agree ideologically with those of Musk, but also favor his economic interests.
Trump's reelection has elevated Musk. Not only is he the richest person in the world, but he is now one of its most politically influential figures. He has become the most visible face of the new billionaires' club, which seeks to restore a savage capitalism where the laws of the market take precedence over social rights. In short, the billionaires will try to suppress what Karl Marx called “the victories of the political economy of labor” in order to reinstate the political economy of capital.
Within the framework of a prolonged structural crisis in global capitalism, political control of state agencies offers a unique opportunity to easily finance the accumulation of capital by the ultra-rich and their corporations.
The billionaires’ club understands the enormous power inherent in its hegemony: They own the communication networks and the mechanisms through which their narcissistic alienation controls daily life for people. And they are not hesitating to fiercely engage in a genuine revolution of the most privileged.
Under different forms and different names, this network of economic elites has never ceased its intervention in U.S. politics as it tries to expand and extend its corporate power. Since the 1960s, large fortunes have invested vast resources in a dense network of foundations, lobbies and think tanks — thus constituting the cultural and programmatic underpinnings of a conservative revolution, all with the stroke of a pen.
This tendancy has accelerated since the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier to increase campaign spending in 2010. The court’s decision ushered in the era of mega-donors, an unprecedented cycle of political spending with which billionaires and corporations have influenced politics as never before.
Donald Trump's 2016 election victory marked a further twist in the oligarchization of American politics. The exponential increase in campaign spending was accompanied by the phenomenon Dylan Riley defined as “neo-Bonapartist patrimonialism,” a model with little or no distinction between public and private interests, in which Trump conducted the presidency as if it were one of his personal businesses.
Further, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, provided direct support to the most recent presidential campaign, investing enormous sums in Trump's candidacy at an estimated $300 million. Musk went as far as buying votes in key states, such as Pennsylvania, and used X, the social network he acquired in 2022, as a powerful weapon in favor of the current president. A study by professors Timothy Graham and Mark Andrejevic uncovered a structural change designed to expose users to the content Musk desired in the metrics of X's algorithm
Musk is not only the most powerful member of what is now a billionaires’ club of super-oligarchs, but also the most dangerous, not least because he has a political agenda to globalize a reactionary a reactionary worldview. The owner of X has proved he has the privilege to shape the world to suit himself, both in terms of his economic interests and his ideological leanings. Not satisfied with merely influencing U.S. elections in favor of Trump, he has made it clear that this is only the beginning.
Accordingly, Musk did not hesitate to interfere directly in German elections, using X to amplify the voices of the extreme right. He interviewed far-right candidate Alice Weidel and participated in Alternative for Germany election events, justifying his participation in the German election debate as an investor. In 2022, Musk inaugurated the largest Tesla production plant in Europe on the outskirts of Berlin, which he asserts makes it legitimate for him to influence events in the country, the largest economy on the European continent.
We cannot ignore that the AfD, in addition to its xenophobic platform of mass expulsion of migrants, defends lowered taxes, economic deregulation and a rapprochement with Russia, positions that not only agree ideologically with those of Musk, but also favor his economic interests.
Trump's reelection has elevated Musk. Not only is he the richest person in the world, but he is now one of its most politically influential figures. He has become the most visible face of the new billionaires' club, which seeks to restore a savage capitalism where the laws of the market take precedence over social rights. In short, the billionaires will try to suppress what Karl Marx called “the victories of the political economy of labor” in order to reinstate the political economy of capital.
Within the framework of a prolonged structural crisis in global capitalism, political control of state agencies offers a unique opportunity to easily finance the accumulation of capital by the ultra-rich and their corporations.
The billionaires’ club understands the enormous power inherent in its hegemony: They own the communication networks and the mechanisms through which their narcissistic alienation controls daily life for people. And they are not hesitating to fiercely engage in a genuine revolution of the most privileged.
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