Many prominent and otherwise admired people in this country live off fear. They promote it widely in official communiqués and through a compliant media. Sometimes the fears have a basis in reality, sometimes not. Even when they are real, those involved exaggerate them for public consumption. These practices have gone on for so long now that fear has come to dominate the public square. And this has been done and continues to be done because frightened people yearn for guidance and protection and will yield personal decision making, prerogatives, and power to elites and experts who claim to have answers for their anxieties. Accordingly, elites in government, business, and intellectual circles have for decades gathered around a range of issues to frighten the public enough to allow these elite elements to jointly wield power.
As ominous as this behavior might sound and at times is, these patterns have developed largely from the best of intentions. Whenever a problem arises – whether a matter of national security, public safety, health, whatever – elites in business, government and intellectual circles propose that a combination of the best talents from their respective areas join to find an answer. As such combinations form, their otherwise disparate elements negotiate a means to work together and, in the process, form a corporation of sorts, not a joint stock ownership arrangement but a common effort, nonetheless. Such arrangements arrive at a joint agenda to guide the nation’s answer and exercise the power to direct parts of the political economy accordingly. And as in the way for all things human, that joint agenda also serves the narrower interests of the elites involved.
There is no suggestion here of the existence of a single, sinister, dominant elite cabal. That would be the stuff of internet conspiracy theories, too many of which already circulate from both the left and the right of the political spectrum. On the contrary, the nation has developed many such corporatist combinations, each with its own area of purview, often competing for power and jealously guarding their prerogatives and control from all comers, be they other corporatist groups or the general public. Over time, great parts of the political economy have come under the control of a patchwork of these elite corporatist arrangements.
Over decades, these sorts of corporatist combinations have continually formed and reformed as the focus of public fear has shifted. During the energy crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, for example, the combination between government, fossil fuel companies, and associated intellectual interests gained great influence and power. In the process, it served the careers, incomes, and influence of all the business, government, and intellectual elites involved. More recently a similar combination has formed around energy alternatives and other green initiatives. It is the same throughout the entire political economy. The list is long.
Sometimes these arrangements do a good job of answering the nation’s need. Such combinations, after all, deserve considerable credit for winning the Second World War and the Cold War. In many cases, the formation of elite corporatist arrangements is a best way to tackle a national problem. But these arrangements also almost always have a downside. Successful or not in answering the question of the day, these elite corporatist arrangements always weave into their joint agenda service to the narrower interests of each elite participant so that each combination, whether it serves the public interest or not, invariably serves those narrow interests. Government elements gain more powerful positions with larger staffs. Business elements get tax breaks, subsides, and regulatory accommodations. Intellectual interests procure grants and seats on prestigious boards or oversight committees. Elites from each side of these arrangements find prestigious and often lucrative positions within other elements in the grouping, a practice often referred to as the “revolving door.” All the elites involved gain, whether or not the public is served. The inevitable inequities and unfair exclusions have become a common feature of these arrangements.
Possibly the starkest illustration of this tendency appeared at Donald Trump’s recent inauguration. His speech had a shining-city-on-a-hill quality, but beneath the promise of future glory were the fears requited to form corporatist arrangements, the threat of what will become of America if it continues down its former path. And to make the corporatist character that much clearer, behind Donald Trump on the platform stood the business elites who will become a part of this new arrangement -- a phalanx of technology billionaires. These people, who only recently supported a very different vision for American society, could see the new sort of corporatist arrangements in the making, and wanting influence, they had changed their political stripes and stood firm to secure their interests in and new corporatist combinations. Though the the academics, think tanks, and other intellectual elites were not also on the platform, they, too are also poised to seek influence in the new combinations.
Those on the left of the political spectrum see such corporatist arrangements and describe them in terms of a business dominance corrupting the government and intellectual sides of these combinations. A good example of this sort of thinking appears in Matt Stoller’s Goliath. Those on the right of the political spectrum describe the corporatist arrangements in terms of a regulatory dominance in which government imposes on both the academic agenda and legitimate business practices. A good example of this kind of argument appears in Philip Hamburger’s Purchasing Submission. Neither side is right. Because all three parties to these arrangements negotiate a joint agenda, no one group necessarily dominates. Business and intellectual interests help set the regulatory agenda with government, and government helps set the business practices and intellectual focus. Elites from each area exercise control jointly and serve each other accordingly.
Dwight Eisenhower recognized many of the ills associated with self-dealing corporatist combinations decades ago. In January 1961 at the end of his second term, his farewell address to the nation warned of the dangers of corporatist arrangements. He focused on what he called the “military-industrial complex.” He captured the essence of the problem with these words:
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Likely in describing this particular “complex” Eisenhower was making a broader point about political-economic trends. Other aspects of the speech suggest that he was. Whatever the retiring president was thinking at the time, similar such arrangements were already well advanced in the United States even as he spoke. Business, government, intellectual groupings had long since formed around energy, transportation, pharmaceuticals, autos, and other areas. Since, they have grown up around green energy, the environment, education, drug enforcement, and much else that controls daily life in this country.
A growing public resistance to the inequities and exclusions implicit in these arrangements goes far to explain the ugly rancor that has come to dominate public life. Whatever the substance of any particular dispute – be it about incarceration, drug legalization, abortion, women’s sports, the list goes on -- a battle for and against corporatist control almost always lies beneath the surface, making compromise all but impossible. This power struggle also explains why so many of today’s disputes fail to fit into conventional left-right, Democrat-Republican frameworks. More than anything else, this public resentment of elite failures to focus on public concerns and elite privilege also explains the public’s loss of trust in institutions that once commanded respect, even a measure of reverence.
Polling neatly summarizes how far things have gone. A recent Gallup poll showed, for instance, that American confidence in higher education has fallen steeply. Merely 36 percent of respondents reported having either a “great deal” or “quite a lot of confidence” in universities and colleges. That figure is down from 57 percent as recently as 2015 and even higher figures in earlier years. A Washington Post-ABC poll found that a mere 39 percent of American adults believe that the police are properly trained, down 15 percentage points from the first such survey taken not that long ago in 2014. The once widely revered Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) presently carries as much public disapproval as approval, a vast change form only five years ago when 52 percent of respondents to a national poll reported a positive view and only 18 percent a negative one. Another Pew poll records that only 16 percent of Americans have confidence that Washington generally will “do what is right all the time or most of the time,” down from over 30 percent in 2005 and 54 percent in 2001. Even confidence in the Supreme Court has seen a decline. In 2010, Gallup reported that 36 percent of American had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the institution. In 2023, that figure had fallen to 27 percent. The story is the same across all institutions.
Years ago, when the Great Depression, the Second World War and the Cold War engendered existential fears among Americans, the public readily accepted elite leadership in corporatist arrangements. In more recent decades, however, the public has become less tolerant of the ills these arrangements bring. There is a greater awareness of the inequities and exclusions implicit in corporatist arrangements. Elite failures have undermined corporatist claims that their leadership will provide answers to the nation’s problems. Mostly, this increased public restiveness stems from the relative absence of great existential threats, such as depression and war, and hence an absence of enough public fear to prompt people to easily yield their own decision making and prerogatives to these elite groupings.
The battle lines in this power struggle for and against corporatist power have become increasingly clear since the turn of the century. Resistance to corporatist arrangements has emerged from disparate quarters that otherwise seem to have little in common with each other. Early on in this growing resistance, Occupy Wall Street and like movements from the left sought to destroy globalization and rid politics of money’s influence. On the right, the Tea Party movement sought similar changes along with demands that Washington end its catering to interest groups, including those of banks and big business. When these resistance movements emerged, the media understandably but incorrectly leaped at distinctions of left and right political orientations. But if the styles and manners of these groups have been different as has been the rhetoric they used, they have shared a common desire to oppose the elite corporatist arrangements they believed were stealing their freedom of action, their personal ambitions, and their tax money.
This same motivation is why the supporters of the socialist Bernie Sanders saw the disruptor Trump as an alternative and why Trump supporters saw a viable outlet in a very different sort of disruptor Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In 2016, for instance, many frustrated Bernie Sanders supporters claimed to have voted for Donald Trump. In a similar reflection of this underlying matter, Trump in 2016 and since has won majorities in many districts that had previously voted overwhelmingly for Obama. and did so again in 2020 and 2024. The same resentments find a reflection in how Trump donors also gave to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr before he dropped out of the race.
Facing an increasingly restive public, elite corporatists have used a series of supposed crises to promote fear and so claim their former legitimacy as national problem solvers. Climate change, though no doubt real, has had its uses in the fight. Similarly, again quite aside from the truth of the matter, these elites have also elevated concepts such as “systemic racism,” “white supremacy,” and other identity issues to create an environment in which each identity group is encouraged to fear the others and presumably look to corporatist elites as their only effective defense from everyone else.
President Biden served corporatist interests by actively promoting this convenient narrative. His efforts were most on display when he chose to “inspire” the graduates of the historically black Howard University by harping on the mortal danger they faced from “white supremacy.” FBI Directors James Comey and Christopher Wray did the same. A lack of evidence in daily life and in the extensive government statistics mattered little. The object was to frighten people into seeking the supposedly enlightened protection offered by corporatist elites and their arrangements. Similarly, elites demanded lockdowns to cope with Covid but then, as if the virus could distinguish, endorsed the George Floyd riots. The contradiction emerged because each position served a different corporatist fear narrative. More recently, wars in Europe and in the Middle East, grave as they are, have done similar service for corporatist elite purposes. Some of this has worked, but generally none of these crises has produced levels of public fear sufficient to win unquestioned support for corporatist arrangements.
This inability to instill widespread fear in the American public has led corporatist elites to argue the merits of their claims less than to suppress and otherwise discredit even oblique forms of resistance to them. Thus, when parents objected to sexually explicit books in grade- and middle-school libraries, elites saw in the anger of these parents a way to serve the elite narrative of a bigoted society dangerous to otherwise marginalized groups. No one argued for the books. Instead, these parents were demonized and for a while described as racists, homophobes, transphobes, and even terrorists. When one of the leading groups in this otherwise rather narrowly focused parent agenda, Moms for Liberty, gained members rapidly, it was described by corporatist media as “far right,” a convenient way to move it beyond the pale of consideration. In a similar way, the FBI zealously raised suspicions of traditional Catholics and those who flew Revolutionary war flags as terrorist or terrorist adjacent. Similarly, Homeland Security training materials warned its agents of religious, middle-aged, rural women as “radicalization suspects,” less because they were inherently anti-social than because such thinking created yet another image of a nation chockablock with ignorant bigots.
There can be little doubt that Trump’s election is part of the anti-corporatist rebellion. Whatever Trump’s reality, he has shown himself masterful at tapping this wide-spread public distrust and resentment and presenting himself as the answer to it. Some of his plans may indeed address public concerns. Trump’s deregulation efforts would seem to have great power to disrupt corporatist interests. The less government intrudes on business decisions the less urgency business has to negotiate with counterparts in government or that either party has to rely on intellectual interests to further their negotiating power. Much of the rest of Trump’s agenda, however, is as likely to build corporatist structures as to dismantle them.
His attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), for instence, may marginally reduce the federal workforce and does undermine the racist-America narrative used by corporatist elites, but otherwise the attacks on DEI hardly impinge on the huge money and power considerations that motivate business and intellectual interests to cooperate with government on setting a joint agenda. Similarly, the much-discussed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) might streamline processes and rid the budget of extraneous aspects but not alter the basic questions of control and power that draw elite elements into corporatist arrangements. Meanwhile, the new administration’s peace-through-strength initiative can only enlarge the quintessential corporatist arrangement, the military-industrial complex. At the same time, tariffs and territorial expansions will present huge potential business opportunities (and for some, disadvantages) that will draw elements from that community into negotiations with the parts of government involved in each of these areas.
If Trump’s initiatives will disappoint supporters who expected him to disassemble corporatist control and power, the battle for direction and control nonetheless seems set to go on anyway, indefinitely in fact, with victory out of the reach of either side. Public skepticism about corporatist arrangements hardly seems likely to dissipate any time soon. Indeed, failure by Trump will only inflame it. Efforts to dismantle corporatist power will however have a hard time prevailing. Corporatist elites retain control all the major levers of power and have an endless series of problems and fears they can build up to claim public acquiescence to their perquisites, power, and control.
If the prospect of an endless fight seems daunting in an already polarized and exhausted America, it is nonetheless preferable to a complete victory for one side or the other. A quiet acceptance of corporatist dominance might bring civic peace, but it would entail an acceptance of many of the inequities implicit in these arrangements. Alternatively, a complete overthrow of elite corporatist arrangements would deny the nation the approach’s expertise and connections that, whatever the vices they bring, have also helped deal with a number of important public issues. An ongoing contest, though it will contribute to continued polarization in national debates and disputes, will give the nation the benefit of the problem-solving abilities implicit in the expertise and connections offered by elite corporatists but still contain a check of sorts on the unavoidable abuses and inequities implicit in these arrangements.
Strife filled as such a check-countercheck approach would be, it gains a further recommendation from James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and other founding fathers when they framed the Constitution. As Madison made clear in The Federalist Number 10, such ongoing conflicts of interest have great value as a way to avoid the ills of having one interest, what the founders called “factions,” gain power enough to impose its views and will on the rest of the country. A variety of powerful interests endlessly contesting with each other, Madson claimed, will guard against “any one party being able to [. . .] oppress the others.”
As Madison and his fellows saw, the strife, if uncomfortable as well as exhausting, is preferable to the extreme hierarchy implicit in unfettered elite corporatist dominance or the absence of direction and expertise implicit in its dismantling. The endless contest is the price citizens pay for living in a republic of both order and individual liberty. It is a reminder that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.
