In their new book, 'Muskism', historians Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff argue that Elon Musk represents more than just a controversial billionaire; he is a symptom of a new economic model. Dubbed 'Muskism', this model is presented as the 21st-century successor to Fordism, the 20th-century system of mass production and consumption. Unlike Fordism, however, Muskism does not aim to distribute rewards widely, but instead promises 'sovereignty through technology'—a fantasy of self-reliance that, in practice, increases dependence on Musk's own infrastructure.
The authors trace this thread of dependence across Musk's empire, from SpaceX, which accounts for 95% of US orbital launches, to Tesla's walled garden of electric vehicles and batteries, and to X and Grok, which promised free speech but consolidated Musk's far-right agenda. A chapter on his 130-day stint as a 'special government employee' under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) reveals how his attempt to treat government as a codebase to be debugged clashed with the realities of a state supporting millions of lives.
Slobodian and Tarnoff also explore the origins of Muskism in Musk's upbringing in apartheid South Africa, where his grandfather, a devotee of the Technocracy movement, instilled a faith in engineering as governance and a fortress mentality. The book argues convincingly that apartheid South Africa was the nursery of Muskism, and that its logic of state-tech symbiosis, algorithmic governance, and racialised exclusion could persist even without Musk.
While the book sometimes struggles to pivot from biography to structural analysis, it offers a well-researched account of how so many resources have become concentrated in one man's hands, and how this will shape the future long after he is gone. Even those weary of Musk's media dominance will find 'Muskism' compelling.
