What has upset the world's richest man? He finds "concerning" the fact that among the many causes Scott supports are anti-racist organisations, LGBTQ+ advocacy and support, and a range of charities and social enterprises that try and patch up the gaping rents in the USA's social fabric. This you could put down to his adoption of anti-woke motifs following his rebrand as a Donald Trump supporter and chief bank roller of his successful re-election, but his animus pre-dates his coming out for the tangerine anti-Christ. In March he suggested "super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse" are threatening the breakdown of Western civilisation with their charitable deeds. Blimey. Just another case of Musk shooting stupid from his pig ignorant hip?
No. In the last six or so years, Musk has moved from a fairly non-committal centrist figure (politically speaking) to fascist-adjacent. Some have sought this explanation in his personal history, particularly the fact one of his estranged children is trans, but since purchasing Twitter - which has become a far right propaganda machine with a sideline in news aggregation - Musk has grown increasingly enthusiastic for ideas that justify the obscenity of his wealth. For example, his support for the so-called philosophy of "long-termism". This Silicon Valley fad justifies actions taken today, such as private space programmes and the billions being thrown at AI plagiarism machines because, down the line, they will drive human evolution, spread life throughout the cosmos, and secure the future of our species for millions of years. From this standpoint, anything that arrests the glorious effort to such a gilded outcome is tantamount to denying trillions of people the chance of life. As such contemporary crises, such as climate change, joblessness, health inequalities, and so on pale against what might be. It's okay for AI and crypto mining to add to emissions because the dire consequences of global heating for billions of people in the global south is a price worth paying for Moon bases, Mars cities, and generation ships to the nearest stars - and those not yet born who are going to live there. This also means any tax on wealth, particularly tech bro wealth like Musk's, is a crime against the future.
Where his day-to-say opinions and politics are concerned, his taking up of openly racist culture war politics, the kinship he has with extreme right wing parties, and support for Trump's MAGA movement maps easily onto the long-termist garbage. They are the politics most appropriate to the unfettered pursuit of his class interests. They resonate with his being the embodiment of the greatest private accumulation of capital in history and, like many of his fellow billionaires, resent the claims others have on his fortune. This is where Musk's Department of Governmental Efficiency slots in, which in all essentials is a souped up version of the Tory approach to statecraft. I.e. Defund the state and allow it to decay so few (if any) make political demands of it. Though for Musk this is also about attacking the people he hates, such as public sector employees and the social security dependent, its consequences could force millions into the labour pool and tilt the balance of power even further in capital's favour. And there is the happy by-product of a defunded state not requiring as many taxes, which means more money for Musk's mooning.
This is the context for Musk's attack on billionaire philanthropy. If he represents capital that figuratively and actually wants to escape earthly entanglements, the likes of Scott, the Gates, and Warren Buffet are a reminder that capital can never cut itself loose. That it is embedded in a world on which it preys, and ultimately the only one that can sustain continued accumulation. Their philanthropy is relatively generous and ambitious because previous iterations of oligarchical politics has already gutted the capacity of the US state to support its people and regulate capital effectively. If Musk wants to depress the public power further, that members of his class are shelling out cash and salving their consciences is at cross purposes to the overt and absolute dominance of labour by capital that his project (and that of Trump's) is trying to accomplish. It's not about their largesse to the worthy poor making him look bad, it's more fundamental than that.
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