MUSKISM

A searching look into Elon Musk’s quest to rule the universe.

Henry Ford didn’t coin the term Fordism, but he and his workers lived it. In the same way, write historian Slobodian and technologist Tarnoff, Musk “is not just a man but the avatar of a worldview: Muskism.” Whereas Fordism was an all-boats-rising form of modernizing, though, Muskism is a doctrine of wealth for the few and political and economic domination: SpaceX in space, X and Grok online, Starlink on every phone. As Slobodian and Tarnoff note, Musk may present himself as a libertarian, but his power comes from his interlinkages with the state: Without government contracts, there wouldn’t be his space launches or satellites, and Musk wouldn’t be on the path of becoming the world’s first trillionaire. Musk’s odd assortment of doctrines, by the authors’ account, have deep roots: He grew up privileged in apartheid South Africa, views the Darwinian world as an arena “of autonomy for some and exclusion for others,” and takes a fabulist, self-appointed-hero approach to commerce and culture. The authors, writing from the left, hold that Musk is representative of Silicon Valley at large in being itself an apartheid state of sorts, a font of inequality and a champion of “the principle of reactionary technocracy.” While their dive isn’t as deep as Michael Steinberger’s in The Philosopher in the Valley, the two books are of a piece in warning that such a technocracy can turn fascist on a dime, and backed by a robot army at that. Meanwhile, in a chilling coda, Slobodian and Tarnoff consider a future scenario of racial segregation, of women consigned to produce no fewer than 2.1 children apiece, and of the environment sacrificed to the demands of critical infrastructure “at the expense of a livable planet.”

Dystopian isn’t a strong enough word for the technocratic future the authors prophesy in this bleak but urgent book.