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Who’s Elon Musk, actually?
I don’t have an excellent reply to that query. I’m undecided anybody does. Half the time I’m in awe of Musk and the opposite half I’m baffled by his Twitter antics. However as a cultural determine, Musk actually occupies his personal house.
He’s now the richest individual on the planet (or the second richest individual, relying on the day) and as his fame has grown, the road between the person and the parable has blurred. A few of that has to do with Musk’s present for self-mythology, and a few of it has to do together with his very actual achievements.
No matter you consider Musk, there’s no denying his affect. I imply, this can be a man who strikes markets with a single tweet. So what are we to make of that? And what are we to make of him?
A brand new podcast sequence by the Harvard historian Jill Lepore, known as The Night Rocket, tries to untangle all of this in a manner solely a historian may. It’s a deep dive into Musk, the man, but it surely’s additionally an exploration of a a lot bigger phenomenon that Musk personifies. For Lepore, Musk is the face of utmost capitalism, a capitalism rooted in science fiction tales and animated by fanciful plans to overcome house and save humanity. She calls this phenomenon “Muskism” and argues that it’s a recycled model of techno-utopianism that’s fascinating, harmful, and profoundly revealing.
I reached out to Lepore for the most recent episode of Vox Conversations. We discuss concerning the peculiar attraction of Musk, why the type of capitalism he represents has grow to be so intoxicating, and the way all of this suits into the broader historical past of know-how and capitalism.
Under is an excerpt from our dialog, edited for size and readability. As all the time, there’s way more within the full podcast, so subscribe to Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you take heed to podcasts.
Sean Illing
You’re not profiling a well-known individual simply because they’re well-known. In a manner, your podcast isn’t even about Musk, the man. You see him because the face of one thing taking place in our society that’s necessary and doubtless not nicely understood. So what’s that factor and why is Musk the car for it?
Jill Lepore
Oh, that’s fascinating. So, I’m a political historian. I’m not a biographer of the good and the well-known and the wealthy. I actually am fantastically uninterested within the historical past of celeb or the presidency, truthfully. And I wasn’t actually a lot of a Musk follower. I used to be requested to do that venture by the BBC.
After which I had to consider a solution to say one thing that I assumed might be helpful about Elon Musk, however that actually wasn’t a great-man biography or an anti-great biography. It’s not a takedown or something, both. As a political historian, I’m desirous about what Musk represents in our tradition and political preparations extra broadly.
And I feel we might do nicely to speak about “Muskism” as a type of political economic system, and we don’t, for some purpose. There’s a variety of scrambling round to consider a solution to discuss concerning the newest incarnation of capitalism, proper? Are we in late capitalism? Are we in superior capitalism? Are we in post-industrial capitalism? Are we in surveillance capitalism? Is that this platform capitalism? There’s one thing completely different, proper? That is bizarre stuff.
So I feel we should always simply give it some thought as excessive capitalism. And one other manner to consider excessive capitalism is Muskism, or I would describe it as being extra speculative than industrial. The merchandise are sometimes not really widgets, however theoretical gadgets. Now that is usually much less so with Musk’s personal corporations, as a result of he does really construct issues. But it surely’s most of all influenced by visions of the longer term that derive from science fiction. Actually, from very previous science fiction. So Muskism is de facto antiquarianism disguised as futurism.
Sean Illing
We’ll come again to the science fiction stuff later, but it surely’s attention-grabbing that you simply use the phrase “excessive capitalism.” Do you see Muskism as simply one other iteration of capitalism or as one thing much more elementary?
Jill Lepore
I feel it’s an excessive type of capitalism within the sense that it’s plutocratic. It’s one thing previous once more. There’s a variety of feudalism in Muskism. It’s like there are these lords and the remainder of us are the peasantry and our fates are of their fingers as a result of they know finest. So I don’t assume it’s a brand new financial imaginative and prescient. I really assume the concept there’s one thing deeply new and profoundly, disruptively revolutionary about Muskism is a part of the self-mystification of that worldview, proper?
Sean Illing
What does that imply?
Jill Lepore
It’s necessary to those individuals to assume that they’re doing one thing wholly new and larger and higher and extra excessive. My entire first episode of The Night Rocket is concerning the letter X. They love the letter X, proper? It’s the science fiction go-to fan letter. So every little thing is X to them. It’s excessive, it’s extraterrestrial, it’s extraordinary, it’s extravagant, it’s existential. All the pieces’s all the time existential, but it surely’s really not. These are mere mortals like the remainder of us. They put their pants on one leg at a time after which they exit they usually attempt to achieve energy and subvert extraordinary individuals’s means to manage their very own lives. That’s a variety of what capitalism is.
Sean Illing
Then why is it so necessary to determine and critique Muskism as a definite factor?
Jill Lepore
I feel individuals are fascinated by Musk. Individuals who love Musk and hate Musk are all fascinated by Musk. And it’s laborious to carry your consideration on what could be happening structurally there as a result of Musk is so flashy.
I feel he wasn’t all the time so flashy. One of many arguments I make in The Night Rocket is that he himself was fairly reworked by his infatuation, the mutual infatuation between Musk and Hollywood when he type of grew to become Iron Man within the press, proper? There have been all these shiny journal covers of attractive, good-looking, younger Elon Musk. He’s the brand new Iron Man, the real-life Iron Man, the real-life Tony Stark. So there was a glitterati second for Musk during which he grew to become type of the Kim Kardashian of CEOs, and every little thing he mentioned was fleeting and meaningless, however extraordinarily influential within the inventory market.
In different phrases, he’s a determine that’s laborious to concentrate to in a sustained or structural manner due to the character of his public presence, which may be very Twitter-driven, a really flashy, staged, PR-event-driven presence. So the subsequent launch of the subsequent SpaceX rocket, we get a glimpse of Elon Musk. He makes all of the headlines in each paper. And there’s two issues to be mentioned about him after which he disappears once more.
So how do you maintain on to that, proper? It’s like attempting to carry on when somebody pours a glass of water in your fingers and it’s simply pouring by means of your fingers. There was a quantity of water within the glass and now it’s evaporated. How are we supposed to search out that means in that?
I assumed it might be helpful to type of pull again once more, as a political historian who thinks lots concerning the relationship between politics and know-how, and attempt to assume systematically about the place Musk’s concepts come from. The self-mystification of him is that each thought simply pops out of his head. He’s a visionary. And I don’t imply to say that he isn’t a captivating individual with a lot of concepts, however I’m saying that almost all of his concepts are recycled.
Sean Illing
Earlier than moving into the origins of a few of these concepts, I need to linger on Musk’s fame a bit of longer. Why do you assume he’s grow to be such a transcendent cultural determine? It may’ve gone one other manner. Is it about him and the way he’s packaged and bought himself, or is there one thing about us, one thing on the demand facet, that made him the right face of all this?
Jill Lepore
I feel it’s each. I do assume it was a public relations technique of Tesla early on. When Musk assumed management of the corporate, they determined that as a substitute of promoting, which Tesla actually doesn’t do, they might promote the product by selling the thought of Elon Musk. After which the thought of Elon Musk must be a really specific life story, not in contrast to the marketing campaign biographies of political figures, proper? Andrew Jackson ushers within the age of the frequent man; he rose from poverty to the White Home. James Garfield, from the log cabin to the White Home. Invoice Clinton, the boy from Hope, proper? So it actually depends on a well-recognized political packaging.
The packaging of Elon Musk was that he was a boy surprise. He had a imaginative and prescient to vary the world as a baby, that this was influenced by studying The Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy when he was a younger teen.
It’s a political biography in that sense, but it surely’s one thing greater than that, as a result of it has actual cult-y high quality to it. He’s a messiah determine, and that’s actually how Tesla presents him. And he embraces that function. I’ve by no means met Elon Musk. I can’t talk about him personally, however I feel he enjoys the general public battlefield. He enjoys mocking individuals on-line. He will be very humorous. Folks love his humor. He has a type of laddishness.
I imply, the man runs by means of marriages and ladies and has youngsters with a variety of completely different individuals, and that’s interesting. He has a large social media presence and I feel there’s a starvation for following somebody who’s irreverent and humorous and highly effective. I feel his followership actually exploded when Trump was banned from Twitter. He’s not Trump. I imply, it’s a very false comparability to make, however I feel he appeals to individuals on-line in an identical manner, proper?
Sean Illing
Yeah, they’re clearly very completely different, however one connective thread, and that is one thing you type of argue within the podcast, is that the recognition of Elon’s concepts, whether or not we’re speaking about colonizing house or cryptocurrency or no matter, is a symptom of a broken society, a society that’s misplaced religion in its establishments.
Jill Lepore
I’m undecided I ever put it that manner within the podcast, however let me take the query at its face. Musk is a really achieved engineer. He’s not a straw man determine. He’s an actual individual with actual concepts who leads two main corporations which have each undertaken extraordinary engineering feats. Tesla actually does get an enormous quantity of credit score for the revival of the electrical car, an almost destroyed trade, proper? SpaceX is doing extraordinary issues. And if it weren’t for my sense of the type of malign understory there, I’d be tremendous thrilled and enthusiastic about it. It’s fairly extraordinary.
However is the attraction a perform of a broken society? Nicely, I assume the instance that I might give is: whether or not or not human beings on this planet ought to construct colonies on Mars or on the moon is definitely a query that all of us have a stake in. And the presumption that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the 2 wealthiest individuals on the earth, get to determine the extraterrestrial destiny of humankind is a bizarrely regressive notion.
Chances are you’ll or might not have accredited of the Apollo mission to go to the moon within the Sixties, however you had a say in that. It was a authorities program the place individuals engaged in political protest over it. Lots of people objected to the Apollo program, on the grounds that it was a misuse of public funds at a time when these funds might be higher deployed implementing the Civil Rights Act and the equality necessities of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I imply, the day earlier than the launch in 1969 of the Apollo 13, civil rights activists have been on the Area Heart protesting.
There’s a complete lengthy custom of democratic deliberation over our missions in house, however we’ve forgotten that custom. Even the press will cowl William Shatner going to house in a Blue Origin rocket and speak about Jeff Bezos’s childhood goals coming true and it’s like, isn’t that great?
After which perhaps there’s a goofy satirical model of that the place there’s a joke about it on Saturday Evening Dwell or one thing, however there’s no sustained examination. I imply, to be honest, there’s loads of quarters of the web the place absolutely there may be sustained examination, however on the entire, are we having an enormous public debate about whether or not a personal citizen ought to construct a base on the moon simply because he has the cash to do it? We haven’t had that dialog.
To listen to the remainder of the dialog, click on right here, and make sure to subscribe to Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you take heed to podcasts.
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