While a lot of people are now gloating how Trump is destroying the economy, it’s important to keep in mind that economic crashes can serve as a strategic tool for the oligarchs to consolidate power. They will use the resulting chaos as an opportunity to restructure society in their favor. There is a calculated logic here of using destruction as a tool for entrenching elite dominance.

The key idea is to expand the reserve army of labor by engineering mass unemployment and flooding the labor market with desperate workers. Availability of surplus labor suppresses wages, erodes workplace rights, and dismantles collective bargaining power. This forces workers into accepting worse conditions allowing the rich to maximize their profits. The 2008 financial crisis serves as a recent example where mass layoffs and austerity measures significantly weakened labor power.

Rising cost of living also forces people to let go of their assets such as homes and businesses as workers and small businesses start defaulting on their debt. Oligarchs, insulated by their massive capital reserves, swoop in to acquire these assets at a fraction of the cost. David Harvey referred to this process as accumulation by dispossession. During the 2008 housing crash, private equity firms like Blackstone purchased over 200,000 foreclosed homes, converting them into a rental empire. Similarly, during Covid, billionaire wealth surged by $4 trillion while millions faced eviction and bankruptcy.

Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine provides a solid analysis of how disasters are inevitably weaponized to privatize public goods, slash taxes for the wealthy, and dismantle regulations. As an example, the bailouts in 2008 prioritized banks over homeowners further entrenching “too big to fail” institutions. Similarly, corporate lobbyists pushed for liability shields and austerity during Covid. Such policies consolidate oligarchic control, ensuring future crises disproportionately benefit the elites.

Finally, political volatility during a crisis can be leveraged to promote right-wing populists, and justify increasingly draconian measures such as measures forcing striking workers back to work. Just as fascist politics gained momentum during The Great Depression, modern oligarch funded politicians and media weaponize xenophobia and anti-labor rhetoric to fragment working-class solidarity.

The important part to keep in mind is that the oligarchs are able to easily weather the crisis by moving their vulnerable assets into offshore tax havens, getting to state bailouts, and so on. Their wealth will not suffer during the collapse. Bezos saw his wealth grow by $75 billion during Covid lockdowns, while the working majority was pushed further to the margins. Likewise, quantitative easing after 2008 crash inflated asset prices, enriching shareholders while wages remained stagnant. Each time a crisis happens, the oligarchs only emerge stronger with and with deeper control of the restructured economy. The collapse that’s currently being engineered through the trade war is an an opportunity for the rich to reset the system in their favor.