SIMON BARBER: Pay or drown in your people’s blood in Trump’s patrimonial state

At a Trump rally in October, Tucker Carlson, the preppy provocateur who worships at the shrine of Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban, compared Joe Biden’s America to a “hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter”. Not to worry, he went on, “dad” was coming home to give his “bad little girl” a “spanking”. 

By “dad”, need I say, he meant US President Donald Trump. Feel free at this juncture to throw up. The Latin for “dad” is “pater”. “Pater Patriae”, father of the nation, was a handle adopted by Roman emperors and their would-be reincarnation, Benito Mussolini. 

From “pater” comes “patrimonial” and with it Max Weber’s concept of the patrimonial state, the kind of state Trump is building in emulation of the “power vertical” (vertikal vlasti) erected by his murderous mentor, Vladimir Putin. 

Power in a patrimonial state, as defined by Weber, flows vertically down from the ruler through family members, patronage networks and retainers chosen above all for their loyalty, exploitable weaknesses and/or disposability. 

The relationship between ruler and ruled is transactional. He and his agents — it is nearly always “he” — do nothing for free. If you want to play, or just survive, you have to pay. For Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, that means turning the Washington Post’s editorial pages into Trumpist Pravda. 

If you’re a Republican who wants to keep elected office, what’s required is an unquestioning willingness to distribute the nation’s wealth upwards regardless of the fiscal consequences. And don’t stint on the servile flattery. Cosponsor a bill to make Trump’s birthday a national holiday or put his face on the currency or Mount Rushmore. Those are real examples. 

If you’re Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky you have to grovel and hand over large chunks of your country’s wealth so that the Trump family can build casinos in Gaz-a-Lago. Pay or drown in your people’s blood. Be afraid, Taiwan. South Korea, get yourself some nukes. 

In some parts of the world, notably the US and Western Europe, the patrimonial state gave way to what Weber called “bureaucratic rational-legal authority” in the course of the 19th century. State power came to be exercised via institutions and professional public servants implementing duly enacted laws wedded to the task, not the leader of day. 

The impersonal rule of law displaced the personal rule of a man, albeit imperfectly. Societies that have taken this path have prospered relative to those that have not. Living standards have improved thanks to modern governance. Their savings are less likely to be decimated by inflation, financial panics or crooks. Their children are more likely to receive a decent education and not die of polio. Their planes and trains are less likely to crash. And so on. 

For a testimonial to patrimonialism’s fruits, consider SA’s baleful trajectory under Jacob Zuma. The World Bank will soon decide whether to pony up a billion dollars to undo the chaos patrimonial governance has left in SA’s metros. Let’s hope Trump doesn’t interfere. Weber would recognise his mindset as feudally premodern. He is where he is by divine right, or so he professes to think. In his inaugural address he explained why an assassin’s bullet only nicked his ear. “I was saved by God to make America great again.” 

He thinks article II of the US constitution anoints him king. He has asserted that “he who saves his country does not violate any law”. Grotesquely, thanks to appointments he made in his first term, the Supreme Court may yet agree. Weber’s “bureaucratic rational-legal authority” is for Trump and his acolytes the “deep”, or “administrative”, state. Call it what you will, to them it is the enemy, out to destroy him — and, from a Christian nationalist perspective, Him. 

Elon Musk is scything through the bureaucracy on Trump’s behalf, revelling as the heads of public servants roll. The cruelty is sadistically deliberate. “We want bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Russell Vought, Trump’s budget director, was recorded saying last year. He’s getting his wish. 

For Musk it’s a splendid opportunity to boost returns on the $280m investment he made in Trump’s election. Not only is he thinning out regulators who have tried to stop him poisoning the environment, dropping rocket shards on people’s heads and shafting shareholders, he’s looking to siphon up federal billions from the vacancies he’s creating. 

If there’s any comfort to be had, it’s that the Trump racket rests on dicey foundations. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is slim. A growing number of hitherto pro-Trump conservatives, including the editorial page of Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, are starting to grumble. 

Daddy will be putting the free world in intensive care until the cops arrive with a restraining order. Assuming there are any unbought judges left to issue one. 

• Barber is a freelance journalist based in Washington.