Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed

A pyrotechnic examination of Elon Musk as a symptom and avatar of our postliberal age

Everyone’s got an Elon take. He’s a messiah. He’s a menace. He’s a genius. He’s a clown. The verdicts differ, but they share one theme: they treat him as an individual.

Muskism argues otherwise. Elon Musk isn’t a glitch in the system—he is the system. His worldview promises sovereignty through technology: plug in, power up, and become self-reliant. But the more you connect, the more he owns you.

If Fordism defined the capitalism of the twentieth century, Muskism may define the twenty-first. Fordism helped build the welfare state. Musk undoes it. He thrives on dependence while preaching freedom. His rockets run on subsidies; his satellites run the battlefield; his social networks train the AI that trains us.

Muskism sells itself as the future, but entrenches age-old hierarchies. It offers autonomy for some and exclusion for others. It’s libertarian but state-fed, pro-natalist but anti-immigrant, futurist but reactionary.

Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff cut through the hype and the hate to reveal what Musk really represents: a new political economy, where to be “free” means to serve a Technoking. Muskism isn’t about the man. It’s about the machine that made him—and the world he’s making next.

© 2026 Harper (Audiobook): 9780063484351

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Audiobook: 21 April 2026