At the start of 2025, Forbes magazine identified 902 billionaires in the U.S., overwhelmingly men. (April 1) While billionaires have always held influence over the machinations of the U.S. government, Donald Trump’s second election and the rise to power and influence of unelected Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, has made opposing billionaires a popular slogan at protests against Trump’s draconian federal program cuts.

Signs reading: “Abolish the billionaires” or “Abolish the billionaire class” have appeared everywhere. Last month, during a YouTube video, Senator Bernie Sanders stated, “Our government is now of, by and for the billionaires.”

But Sanders, like many liberals, is ignoring most of the history of the U.S. since its founding. President George Washington (1789–1797) was the richest man in the U.S., having grown wealthy from the trade of enslaved Africans. Whether millionaires or billionaires, the wealthiest people have always directed developments and policies of the U.S. capitalist government.

To be clear, just being a billionaire does not mean an individual is part of the capitalist ruling class. Athletes, performers, musicians and others who gained wealth through their own labor must be viewed under a different lens than capitalists like Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg who became billionaires by exploiting the labor of millions of workers. X (formerly Twitter) and Meta have increasingly turned to supporting far-right politicians like Trump and weaponizing “free speech” — for white supremacists.

History of class struggles

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto in 1848: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” 

Under capitalism, the capitalists control the means of production — factories, land, machinery and technology — while workers sell their labor power to the capitalist bosses who pay the workers less than the full value of the wealth the workers create with their labor. This difference provides the profit for the capitalists. It’s the source of the exploiters’ wealth under capitalism. 

Marx argued that the interests of the capitalists and workers are inherently antagonistic. What one wins the other loses. This leads to a constant struggle between these two classes for power and resources.

From its inception the U.S. was a “bourgeois democracy” where the state was established to protect the interests of the ruling class. Individuals representing wealthy families and major corporations were appointed to positions in presidential cabinets, making sure the government protected the capitalists’ interests.

“Expanding Empire: The Global War Drive of Big Business and the Forces That Will Stop It,” written in 1972 by Vince Copeland, a founding member of Workers World Party, expands on the capitalists’ means of control over government. (Free download at workers.org/books) 

But during times of severe crisis — especially when the very underpinnings of the bourgeois government or economy were threatened — certain wealthy individuals would assume direct roles in government. Nelson A. Rockefeller, from the wealthy Rockefeller family, was the governor of New York from 1959 to 1973, a period that included the Attica prison uprising, which he ordered to be suppressed.  He also served as U.S. vice president under President Gerald Ford from 1974 to 1977, following the resignations of  Vice President Spiro Agnew and later President Richard Nixon.  Ford himself was a member of a wealthy ruling-class family.

The election of Trump and the rise of Elon Musk to power are taking place under a U.S. capitalist crisis unlike any in recent history — capitalism at a dead end.

With the U.S. capitalist class facing yet another severe global economic crisis, these billionaires have stepped in to fully and financially back Trump, to the extent that Musk has been allowed to dictate cuts to government departments that will lead to cuts in essential social services.

Failure of globalization

The over 40 years of globalization and neoliberalism since the early 1980s was supposed to save the system. Capitalist owners of the means of production grew increasingly richer by exporting entire factories abroad. There they could more easily exploit low-wage labor throughout the Global South.

Trump claims that tariffs can somehow reverse the impact of globalization and bring jobs back to the U.S. This is another of his pipe dreams.

Many liberals who oppose the billionaire oligarchy in the U.S. call for a return to capitalist democracy. But this system has never served the majority of the population. Any basic rights for unions, workers, people of color, women and gender-oppressed people and LGBTQIA2S+ communities were won over years of struggle. Now they are the targets of Trump’s policies.

Sanders and Democratic Party liberals behind the “Hands Off” protests April 5 focused on Musk and the growing oligarchy of billionaires, calling for a return to “democracy.” They completely ignore the fact that the majority of members of Congress are millionaires, with many having financial holdings in major corporations.

Working-class and oppressed people — not just in the U.S. but around the world — face a challenge that Marx would have welcomed. Our fight is not simply against billionaires but against the capitalist class which billionaires like Musk dominate. The solution is not to go back to bourgeois democracy but to go forward to working-class, global revolution.