Joe Biden, in his farewell address, argued that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America.” More recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd of 10,000 in Arizona that “we are witnessing an oligarchy in America.”

Biden and Ocasio-Cortez are hardly the first to diagnose the United States as an oligarchy. Sen. Bernie Sanders has been warning about it for years. So have many others, though, recently, Sen. Elissa Slotkin has pushed back against Democrats using the word.

So, are they right? Are we an oligarchy? If so, when did we become one? And: How bad is it?

What exactly is an oligarchy, anyway?

The concept of oligarchy goes back to ancient Greek philosophy. Aristotle’s concept of oligarchy is laid out in his Politics, in which the philosopher distinguished among six possible forms of government. The best form was divine kingship: The monarch rules for the good of all. But this was unlikely. More likely was that the monarch would rule only for the monarchy, hence devolving into its deviant twin, tyranny.

Aristocracy, or rule by an enlightened elite, was a better alternative, assuming a virtuous few could be found to serve. But like kingship, aristocracy ran the risk of devolving into its ugly doppelgänger — in this case, oligarchy.

In an oligarchy, the elite few rule for their own personal enrichment, leaving everyone else worse off.

Which is similar to Biden’s definition: “…extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

And Ocasio-Cortez’s definition: “…When those with the most economic, political and technological power destroy the public good in order to enrich themselves at the price of millions of Americans.”

Some might prefer the label “plutocracy” because it more literally means “rule by the wealthy.” But effectively, the two have become synonymous in the US, where wealth all but ensures political purchase. The basic idea is consistent — a handful of very wealthy individuals use their riches to shape and influence the government on their own financial behalf.

Democracy and oligarchy can coexist because they operate on different axes, the political scientist and oligarchy scholar Jeffrey Winters told me. In short, the more power is in the hands of the very wealthy, the more oligarchic the society. But even under these conditions, if elections are free and fair and formal individual rights are secure, we are still living in a democracy.

The tension arises when the majority of voters decide they don’t like an unequal distribution of wealth and want a more equal distribution.

The tension deepens when the very wealthy — the oligarchs — use their wealth to influence political outcomes in their favor to prevent this........

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