Neoliberal doctrine proclaimed the liberation of the market from political control but it failed to foresee that the centralization of market power which came with the liberalization of the market would increasingly embroil the market with the state.
The modern state with its claim to sovereignty is giving way to a strange, new conglomerate of state and corporate power, call it the corporate. Billionaires like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their associates are the protagonists of that turn of events. Neoliberalism, we now realize, was the last gasp of the modern state.
Where the rich used to assert political influence through sympathetic politicians, they now want to do away with the middle-man and rule by themselves for they believe that they know better than anyone else what is needed, and their experience as corporate leaders has convinced them that they also know how to execute their plans.
It remains to be seen how well Trump and associates will succeed. But the corporate is not likely to go away soon. Its tentacles are already spanning the globe. It is a small hope that every form of political organization fails in the long run. Our prospect for now is that of the emerging corporate. Or, to put it negatively, the disappearance of the modern state with all its organizational variations, including that of popular democracy.