#BankruptElon

All the other oligarchs should be rooting for it

Our global Ruling Class holds their place due to claims upon natural resources and physical means of production. Objects.

They buy commodified labor to put these objects into motion and produce new objects, again laying claim to the full exchange value of those objects.

Outside a rubric of individual (Bourgeois) ownership, none of these claims can stand. The absence of a governing institution with near-universal hegemony among the members of a society weakens these claims. If we don’t subscribe to the rule of law because we do not find it fair and just, the ownership claims supported by such a legal system will be threatened.

The nation-state is the political body that holds a monopoly on legitimate violence in a territory. — Max Weber.

Should the state’s legitimacy wither, so will it.

We have a Ruling Class that has established a monopoly over the United States itself, and there are members of it who are starving and stripping the nation-state. Their playbook was written in the Lewis Powell Memo, modified via the John Birch Society and the Reagan administration’s influence, repackaged via the Heritage Foundation (Powell was a founder), and advanced as Project 2025 which Donald Trump still hasn’t read.

The play for plausible deniability extending beyond implementation of the policies themselves is Trumpian oversell.

The other main player in this attack on state social supports is the Wealthiest Man in the World™, Elon Musk, who has made the turn from aspiring humanitarian to supervillain as his claims to ownership grow larger.

Musk’s value, however, is not in cash. It is in the valuation of the corporations he lays claim to. But these corporations (Tesla especially) are overvalued in part because of the largest shareholder’s status as the Wealthiest Man in the World™. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of a sort—people put more value than they would otherwise because they know they are stupid, the market is unpredictable, and this guy seems to be doing really well.

To the degree capitalism may be democratic, popularity can pay.

But the opposite applies, as well. Boycotts can be effective—though participants must also be likely customers, to make the shut-down work. What if you cannot afford even the least-expensive manufactured item Musk sells? It’s the red “Tessler” that Trump promised to “buy” during their infomercial on the White House lawn.

I am never buying a “Swastikar,” not because I love petroleum, but because they are truly outside the price range I would ever spend on a car. So my boycott means nothing.

Did anyone else notice that MAGA’s derision of all vehicles electric disappeared somewhere around the time Musk started appearing on stage with Trump? Usually the puppeteer is hidden—do you know the one time they are not? In a ventriloquist act. The trick is the puppet appears to be speaking, when in fact it is spoken for.

Musk owns Trump. Bringing his spawn back to the White House for the infomercial was full proof to my eyes. The last time we saw Old Trump and the kid from The Omen in a room together, the kid was giving her¹ what-for about who the real President is. Shush your mouth, you big dummy.

At the time I noted that Trump probably banned the kid from the Oval Office—but not the lawn!

The twenty minutes of hard-selling (weren’t there laws against pushing products from public office, once?) was for a “good” reason: Despite propaganda to the contrary, Naziism is an unpopular philosophy. Those who hold power in capitalist economies still appreciate the threat it poses to the liberal democratic praxes their business models rely upon.

Like George W. Bush standing on an aircraft carrier flight deck with the words MISSION ACCOMPLISHED emblazoned behind him, Musk’s celebration of The Triumph of the Will was way premature. Bush did it to sell a long war, by claiming the war was so short it was already over; it is conceivable Musk has the same intentions. Regardless, he branded himself a Nazi, which makes all he owns subject to his personal philosophy.

Sartre critiqued anti-Semitism by noting the ways in which anti-Semites imbue objects with a Judaic essence—that a bridge designed by a Jew is a “Jewish bridge.” In matters infrastructural and public, this claim is ridiculous. Under capitalist production imagining a commodity to be forever imbued with the qualities of the laborers who produced it ignores alienation. Labor may not lay claim to the commodities it produces, when it has sold its labor-power in the process to Capital.

In other words—all the products produced through corporations belong to the owning class.

The value of the individual owner is the value of the claims they may make. When products require ongoing subscriptions for operation, the owner always retains partial ownership. Computers were the first technology to regularly employ licensing agreements and the Windows operating system has always been a rental. Today, folks who “buy” movies and other streaming data from corporations might find what they thought they bought, they only rented, and only for as long as the corporation itself chose to license the data.

As this model becomes more prevalent, the role of the consumer will become more significant than the role of the citizen, in the ability to affect the powerful.

But for now, while we are still wading through the evisceration of state social supports, resistance takes a particular form. Petition elected officials, sure. But don’t expect them to do anything. They cannot, by design. Powell understood the structure of the federal government—this is the weak spot. All that was needed was a dominant party that decided to scrap much of the state itself, so as to leave a power vacuum for “industry” to establish private controls over societal needs.

This is what is happening.

So resistance is going to have to happen in the realm in which the Ruling Class derives its power—the private realm. No matter the era, resistance appears as crime, so worry not about such classification. While non-criminal resistance is possible, where it proves effective it will be rapidly criminalized. Any forms of resistance that have carried over through prior eras (demonstrations, petitions, public art) have shown they do not directly challenge the Ruling Class, which is why they are still permitted (though expect these, too, to be increasingly criminalized).

Elon Musk holds his power through the value of Tesla cars. His other holdings are leveraged by loans guaranteed via Tesla stock. Should Tesla’s value drop below the established margin, the calls on the loans will come in.

So how do the people who cannot afford to own stock or buy a Tesla resist?

Vandalizing the Tesla brand will devalue the products.
Devaluing the products will devalue the company.
Devaluing the company will devalue the owner.

There are multiple ways to vandalize the Tesla brand; they are not solely physical, though physical vandalism has become direct action. This is where other authors will throw in disclaimers, but no matter what I say, I have already called your attention to the relationship between controlling commodities and controlling people. I assure you that will be considered a greater offense than suggesting sticking swastikas on cars.

Is there an effective way to disempower Musk, besides vandalism? If you know of one, please share.

What the other oligarchs should be rooting for, however, is that the People succeed in taking Musk out of the picture. It would prove their faith in the “Invisible Hand.” They would be able to claim meritocracy is indeed possible, when the Wealthiest Man in the World™ can be delivered to pauperism for exposing himself as morally weak. It would be a great victory for Capital should the People eradicate but one billionaire. It would buy them perhaps another forty years of unbridled exploitation of American workers.

They won’t, of course. Despite decrying identity politics, the Bourgeois know well who their members are, and they will defend them to their own deaths.

#BankruptElon

1. Unless and until Donald Trump rescinds the Executive Order establishing biological sex at conception, her proper, Republican pronouns remain she/her.