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Muskism
- Narrator
- Adam Grupper
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Publish Date
- 24 March 2026
- Run Time
- 5 hours 59 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
A pyrotechnic examination of Elon Musk as a symptom and avatar of our postliberal age
Who on earth is Elon Musk and what is he doing? Is he a hero, a villain, or does he swing constantly between those two poles? According to the constant media gush driven by his every act and pronouncement, Musk is best understood in personal terms. This book argues differently. Rather than seeing Musk as an individual, it sees him as an avatar of something called Muskism: a playbook for our new postliberal age.
It’s not that Musk himself holds a coherent set of beliefs; you could say his life is one long improvisation. And he’s certainly never used the word Muskism – just as, a century ago, Henry Ford never used Fordism to define his own postliberal modernity. In exploring the forces that have shaped Musk, from South Africa to Silicon Valley, Space X to DOGE, Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff outline the motifs and practices that have come to dominate our own crisis-ridden world.
Muskism, they show, speaks the language of crisis and emergency to invoke a less human future: where humans are purged from the productive process and, through social media and video games, merged with the machine. This is a worldview in which the technocrat is king; which piggybacks on the state to achieve supremacy; and in which only a select few deserve salvation. If you enter, this book warns you, you will grind and you will live in the shadow of one man – but the rewards could be priceless and the alternative might be extinction.
© Ben Tarnoff 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026
Critics Review
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A searing analysis of Elon Musk… Impressive and unrelenting, this grapples with a destructive ideology that seems poised to consume everything
Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
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A searching look into Elon Musk’s quest to rule the universe... Muskism is a doctrine of wealth for the few and political and economic domination: SpaceX in space, X and Grok online, Starlink on every phone… Dystopian isn’t a strong enough word for the technocratic future the authors prophesy in this bleak but urgent book
Kirkus
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Slobodian is an academic historian and public intellectual. I look to him for accessible but probing takes on Cold War neoliberals, the failings of globalism, and–you guessed it, a certain world-cratering slimeball in Silicon Valley. Ben Tarnoff is a leading tech writer, known for his clarion call to deprivatize the internet. So these two feel like the perfect guides to help a layman understand the Musk phenomenon
Literary Hub, “Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026”
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Muskism cuts straight to the core of the man and the moment
Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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Impeccably researched and splendidly written, Muskism introduces us to a world full of promise and fear
Branko Milanovic, author of The Great Global Transformation
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A whirlwind tour through the plans and inspirations of the world's most self-important man
Malcolm Harris, author of Palo Alto
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This book is brilliant in all the ways Elon Musk is not: unflinchingly honest, actually humorous, and deeply humane. Unlike their subject, these authors punch up, not down, and they do so with erudition and precision. A wholly original and insightful analysis that deserves to be read by the billions of people impacted by Musk’s pathological quest for power and wealth
Astra Taylor, author of The Age of Insecurity
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The bad news is that Elon Musk is the most powerful and influential man alive—the world-soul astride a Cybertruck. The good news is that Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian have written this sharp, stimulating guide not just to the man and his ideology but to the paradigm and ‘operating system’ he represents. Forget the hagiographies and conspiracy theories, this is the only book you need to understand Musk and the world he's seeking to usher in
Max Read, editor of Read Max
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Provocative, always challenging, sometimes staggering - an extraordinary portrait of our age
Rory Stewart
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As Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff argue in this fascinating and chilling book, [Musk] is selling "technosecurity" - safety through energy sulf-sufficiency, surveillance, robotics and AI - to a frightened world. His business model is to bind so tightly with the state that he makes himself indispensable... As Slobodian and Tarnoff point out, "Trying to unplug from Musk, you realise that he owns the socket
The Times
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Details
- Author
- Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff
- Narrator
- Adam Grupper
- Duration
- 5 hours 59 minutes
- Release Date
- 24 March 2026
- ISBN
- 9781837313143
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Genre
- Biography: business and industry, Biography: science, technology and medicine, Capitalism, Political ideologies and movements, Impact of science and technology on society
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin. A pyrotechnic examination of Elon Musk as a symptom and avatar of our postliberal ageWho on earth is Elon Musk and what is he doing? Is he a hero, a villain, or does he swing constantly between those two poles? According to the constant media gush driven by his every act and pronouncement, Musk is best understood in personal terms. This book argues differently. Rather than seeing Musk as an individual, it sees him as an avatar of something called Muskism: a playbook for our new postliberal age.It’s not that Musk himself holds a coherent set of beliefs; you could say his life is one long improvisation. And he’s certainly never used the word Muskism – just as, a century ago, Henry Ford never used Fordism to define his own postliberal modernity. In exploring the forces that have shaped Musk, from South Africa to Silicon Valley, Space X to DOGE, Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff outline the motifs and practices that have come to dominate our own crisis-ridden world.Muskism, they show, speaks the language of crisis and emergency to invoke a less human future: where humans are purged from the productive process and, through social media and video games, merged with the machine. This is a worldview in which the technocrat is king; which piggybacks on the state to achieve supremacy; and in which only a select few deserve salvation. If you enter, this book warns you, you will grind and you will live in the shadow of one man – but the rewards could be priceless and the alternative might be extinction.© Ben Tarnoff 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026
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