Psychological Unity And The Power Elite's Attendance Of Trump's Inauguration

 Blog Post #3: 

The image above is of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bezos’ partner, Lauren Sanchez, and Sundar Pichai in the VIP section (New York Times, 2025) of Donald Trump’s 2025 presidential inauguration. Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk and Pichai are all well-known billionaires who rose to prominence in technology and industry. Elon Musk, for one, is the wealthiest man in the world and funded Donald Trump’s political campaign, even gaining a spot as the leader of Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been understood by many as having helped ‘buy’ the 2024 presidential election. Bezos and Zuckerberg have also complied with Trump in many ways – Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and is also the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, was able to block the Washington Post from publishing an opinion piece endorsing the Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. It was the first year since the 1970s that the Post decided not to endorse a presidential candidate. Across the political spectrum, concerns have been raised regarding the over-involvement of billionaires in Trump’s electoral victory, from donating large sums of money to the campaign, to controlling press and the type of social media content that is promoted, to indiscriminately firing federal workers. At the time of the inauguration, many members of the public expressed surprise and alarm on social media about seeing so many of the most powerful individuals in the world, who are not political actors, all together at this major political event.

The sociologist C. Wright Mills’ concept of the ‘power elite’ is incredibly useful in interpreting this image and the unity of these individuals. In his book The Power Elite, Mills describes the power elite as a network of individuals who “are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society” and are “not solitary rulers” (Mills 1956:4). In other words, the power elite is a group of individuals who are dispersed throughout major realms of American institutional life that have coincided, and make decisions that greatly impact the lives of most Americans. According to Mills, the decisions that the power elite do not make are just as important as the actions that they take. 

Mills expands on Weber’s idea of legitimate orders (Weber 1922), which are distinct realms of social life, to suggest that there are three dominant areas in which “major national power now resides” (Mills 1956:7): the economic order, the political order, and the military order. On page 8, he elaborates on how decisions made within specific orders influence other orders, and they are no longer separate, but rather “a political economy linked, in a thousand ways, with military institutions and decisions” (Mills 1956:8). For example, decisions made in the political order influence militaristic decisions and/or economic policies. Mills touches upon how power elite status gives way to a form of celebrity characterized by dominance in major social institutions (Mills 1956:11). As he continues to outline the power elite and their role in influencing our lives and the three major ‘orders’ of power in the United States, Mills provides readers methods of understanding how the power elite form their collective identity and maintain power. One mode of understanding the power elite and their formation is their shared upbringing and personal biographies. Mills’ concept of the sociological imagination is rooted in the idea that structure and biography intersect, and never is this clearer than in his description of the power elite’s sites of class formation, such as the upper-class family, which he cites as being historically the most important, but also “the proper secondary school and the metropolitan club” (Mills 1956:15). These elite institutions “select and form certain types of personality” (Mills 1956:15) that make individuals suited to be a leader in the major orders of American life. In essence, as class formation occurs through socialization and network-building within these institutions, individuals begin to embody the characteristics of the power elite, which enables them to have what Mills calls a psychological and social unity and mutual understanding of each other’s worldviews and ideas when they are in charge. Mills directly makes this connection here, arguing, “[i]n so far as the power elite is composed of men of similar origin and education… there are psychological bases for their unity [that reach] their frothier apex in the sharing of that prestige that is to be had in the world of the celebrity” (Mills 1956:19).

Mills’ concept of and analysis of the power elite is well-suited to explain the attendance of several billionaires at Donald Trump’s inauguration, as well as their vast influence across different ‘orders’ of life in the United States. The inauguration photo above, and anecdotes such as Elon’s newly appointed role in the highest governmental cabinet in America, demonstrate the ways in which members of the global power elite rely on each other and consider one another in making major decisions about governance and Americans’ lives. Trump, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg were not initially members of political life, but have been able to transfer their influence and power within the economic order to gain prominence in the political order. They have all dominated different major institutions, ones that are among the “two or three hundred giant corporations [that rule the economic order]… which together hold the keys to economic decisions” (Mills 1956:7). Additionally, all of these men have passed through elite institutions of some sort which fit Mills’ description of the different sites for “power elite” identity formation. Trump and Musk specifically were born into already prominent families in the economic order, and have long been immersed in circles of vast wealth and influence. Through these institutions and forms of socialization, they have been able to hone the qualities that, according to Mills, a successful leader and member of the power elite utilizes in their decision making. It can be argued that these men share a “psychological and social unity” akin to the one that Mills describes. Bezos’s domination of the economic order, for example, was able to influence institutions such as the Washington Post, which he owns, to shift further away from the left (in order to consider Trump and the consequences that could come to him if The Post goes directly against Trump’s administration). Elon’s ownership of X (which is a result of his domination of the economic order), and X’s subsequent promotion of far-right and pro-Trump content, arguably contributed to Trump’s victory. Mills’ understanding of the coalescence of these three major ‘orders’ of power in the US and the “power elite” that transcends the boundaries between orders can explain these billionaires’ influence on the political (and, subsequently, the military) order and attendance at this high-profile political inauguration of Donald Trump, another member of the global “power elite” whom they resonate with and share the same interests as.

Mills, C. Wright. 1956. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.

Image credit: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/business/dealbook/billionaires-trump-zuckerberg-bezos-musk.html