There is a book that supposedly explains to some extent everything that goes on in his head. Elon Musk, and together in the world of Twitter, lately. No, they are not the last harvest, from the bread that arrived on the shelves of bookstores. It was published back in 1941 under the title “Managerial Revolution: What’s Happening in the World”. It was published in Greek by Kalvos, translated by Takis Kondylis, under the title “Revolution of Managers”. Its author was the American political thinker James Burnham (1905–1987), who began his career as a Trotskyist before moving politically to the conservative American right.

In this 1941 book, Burnham spoke of the end of capitalism and the decline of the capitalists, whose fall should lead to the rise of another ruling “class”: the “manager class”.

Eight decades after this book was first published, we now know that Burnham was wrong in many of his predictions. It is also noted that he predicted, among other things, the victory of Nazi Germany in World War II…

However, despite the failure of these predictions, Burnham’s job was to find followers in the ranks of the conservative right and in the world of technology, as Zach Beecham points out in his article for the Vox website.

“Burnham’s early thought has experienced a renaissance in recent years in the most unexpected places: among the right-wing titans of Silicon Valley and conservative political thinkers,” Beecham continues, arguing that the reason for this “renaissance” is mostly “cultural.”

Burnham’s contemporary followers see “managers” as a separate social class who advance their own agendas as part of an ongoing war of principles and values (culture war). According to this narrative, active “managers”, in positions of power they hold in the media, Hollywood, universities, and technology and big tech, are promoting not traditional conservative values, but the “awakening” rhetoric of an “awakened” culture that is now a red flag (and a politically “convenient”, propagandistically “useful” enemy) for conservatives around the world, from Viktor Orban’s Hungary to Trump’s US and De Sandis.

In this context, politically and economically powerful people such as Trump, for example, present themselves as “anti-system”, “marginal”, “offended”, or “victims”. And this is on the grounds that they, that is, the owners of large companies and the heads of centers of power, no longer exercise that “cultural hegemony” that “should” be determined by position, power, economic surface. Instead, according to this narrative, “cultural hegemony” is now exercised by others: “the managerial class,” to borrow a phrase from the work of James Burnham.

In this context, the first thing that multibillionaire Elon Musk did when he bought Twitter was to run into the “directors” and managers of the company, many of whom he fired. This step can, of course, be interpreted from a purely economic or administrative point of view. However, in such terms, many of Elon Musk’s latest tweets can in no way be interpreted… who attacked what he calls the “awakening virus”, who called for the prosecution of the White House’s chief epidemiologist Anthony Fauci, who is now “flirting” with clearly conspiracy tendencies QAnon type circles.