I might have missed one, but I think everyone you referenced directly in this article is male. This doesn't seem like a coincidence, especially when "[thinking] about how even extreme repression is possible within a constitutional and legal order and may even require it for the regularity of its enforcement." It's old news by now but patriarchal domination somehow feels less visible than race-based segregation, even though when I think through specific examples it doesn't seem obviously less severe (while being very different). Why is that? It's more deeply ingrained in our society? Even highly patriarchal social orders are integrated at the family level?
Yes! I remember this essay. "Bossism" helps us understand the "small shareholders" as you put it, the weird nerds online who are always rooting for Elon Musk to implant chips in skulls and so on. That is, it works as critique of ideology. But I have to admit I still don't understand why these tech bosses are so suddenly motivated to get their hands dirty with politics (even as they depoliticize what they are doing). Because of neoliberalism, the world is already their oyster. It's hard to imagine any privilege that isn't *already* available to their class, both individually and collectively. What more could they want? As a Leftist, I suppose I could look at this as a positive sign, as bourgeois fear of a "new conjuncture" and all of that, but I'm not sure if I'm convinced by that narrative any more. People are sick of immiseration, but neoliberalism is still locked-in.
I wrote a while back about Stanford business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer's book Leadership B.S. (he has another called Power that is rather similar): I think he's basically giving a sketch version of the ideology of bossism in your sense. https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/the-read-jeffrey-pfeffer-leadership
Recently I saw a video of white American man saying negative things about blacks and he insisted to take distance from them. He was asking a form of apartheid definitely. I can’t find the video but I definitely find the message suspicious, as I see lately more videos about black crime released to the public. This will increase racism and divisions. I noticed that twitter shows me more on my timeline Eventhough I don’t follow those who share this.
Historiographically up-to-date and, I think, moral/politically on target. Can't resist recommending a book by a very old friend of mine (grade school, prep school, college and Brooklyn Heights) about a "boss" in the 20thC U.S. when the South African meaning of the word was unknown and "boss" meant local party monarch (Tweed) or savvy behind-the-scenes manager of a party in national elections like FDR's Mike Flynn: "In With Flynn, The Boss Behind the President."
I like this and think it's both true moral/politically, and up-to-date historiographically. A very old friend of mine, Malcolm Mackay, has written two books on the U.S. sort of "boss," when the word was common in U.S. journalism and had as yet no South-African resonance. The latest is: "In With Flynn, The Boss Behind the President"
Maybe a silly question, but one that I can't let go of - especially as I read your articles about Feb 6 1934, the 18th Brumaire, and the March on Rome.
What are the modern parallels with how the center left acted in the face of each of these coups - I'd be interested to see a throughline of liberal appeasement and what from the last century and half can be applied to things like January 6th.
What might unlock something is an alternate history, if that can be forgiven. If Bernie or any left-ish politician had beat Biden and then Trump in 2020, what changes about the center-left's approach January 6th and the months of election chaos surrounding it? Is there reason to believe that Dem leadership would have defended the result as forcefully, both on the day of and in the months after? Could the press have spun everything to "moderate" tastes, and called for a more centrist fix? Might some Dem figures have opportunistically sought appeasement, and if so what might that have looked like?
I know its hard to be concrete on the Jan 6 what-ifs, but thought it would be interesting to look at the liberal appeasers in mass democracies as a whole, then apply them to our current center-left context.
Does bossism intersect with the (very) recent micro-controversies around Mr. Beast? I'm thinking in particular of MB's tweet that expressed worry about chocolate bar displays in supermarkets, and which asked his millions of minions to tidy-up the store shelves on his behalf. When critics pushed back, legions of weird nerds defended his creepy parasocial crowdsourcing of what should be someone's job (setting up supermarket displays). Reptilian creeps like Thiel and Musk are obvious bad guys, but the ludicrously grinning face of MB might represent a different, more seemingly benevolent form of bossism.
Also probably worth mentioning that the new version of capitalism bossism - just like the one described 80-some years ago in Polanyi’s analysis of the early industrial system - has been thoroughly dependent on state largesse, subsidies, contracts, and a favourable legal and labor market management system; the pubescent, Ayn-Randian, Neo-monarchist Great Man fantasies are almost cartoonishly pristine illustrations of at least one conception of a Marxist notion of ideology - as a system of thought that functions to conceal failed practice in the ideology’s own terms.
The anti-statist megalomaniac bossism of the Musks and Thiels is itself a function of the evolution of the modern state and the decisions it has made about distributing public resources. It’s no surprise, of course, that such people are totally indifferent to and never speak about anything resembling an actual concrete problem or policy issue involved in actually managing a modern political economy - health care, education, fiscal/monetary policy, labor codes, environmental policy, housing, child care, infrastructure. What the state actually *does* - apart from providing the contracts and conditions for them to become billionaires - is relevant only insofar as it must be obscured and erased.
I see it as a matter of legitimacy: to me, 'bossism' means (to use a distinction that Terry Pratchett once made, I believe between dictators and kings) that someone with sufficient economic power _deserves_ to give orders that will be obeyed, not that they merely are able to do. It can be based variously: Magistrate Olmstead cited Genesis explicitly but Darwin implicitly when he told the striker that she were on-strike against G-d.
In a theocratic State that legitimacy would come from knowledge of an holy book or a religious initiation, and much the same in a Bolshevik one, in a racist State being judged 'pure' would be a prerequisite, in an aristocratic State birth as well.
In *Wages of Whiteness*, David Roediger claims that antebellum working-class White Americans attempted to evade having a "master" by using the Dutch word for master: "baas." Not surprising that some of these dudes want to be a master.
It seems worth doing more work on the underlying conditions that destabilized the status quo here. Is what made the bosses want to get their hand dirty is that there is an advantage in it, whereas industrialists saw less advantage once there were stable rules of the game? Why waste time on that when you could increase capital? But if we're in a new robber baron era with no modus vivendi between the bosses and the state is there a possible gain to be had in re-establishing terms? Did you write something on this or am I misremembering?
Totally unrelated but it's so interesting that everyone seems to need an ideology. Why is that? Why not just go 'I love money, I love winning!' The bosses self concept requires so much more. They see themselves as emperors. They even sometimes imagine they will live forever. And nobody is going to remember them in not too many years, and they are definitely going to die. Does Bossism include all that? I hope you won't abandon this idea, and will expand it. It's SO useful. It's got a lot of potential.
How much are the Afrikaner figureheads of baaskap steeped in Nietzsche? I wouldn't be shocked at all if Thiel was; he'd be the first guy I suspect to use ubermensch in casual conversation and say "It me."
Nietzsche spent his middle age and up until his mental breakdown developing a morality of power (esp. master and slave morality and how they are dialectically linked).
I wonder if the Afrikaners are formed by Nietzsche the way adolescents findf their way to libertarianism by way of Ayn Rand.
Not sure if you've seen this already but a prop in the BAM adaptation of "Sydney Brustein's Window" featuring Oscar Isaac had a reference to Bossism - a campaign poster saying "Wipeout Bossism. Vote for Reform" . You can see the shot of the poster in this NYT review https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/27/theater/the-sign-in-sidney-brusteins-window-bam-review.html. Not sure if it was a contemporaneous thing(play is set in the 70s) or you have a subscriber/fan in the production. Thought you might be interested!
Are you familiar with the Thiel/Musk courtiers like Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Curtis Yarvin (who I feel like you have written about before)? If so, do you have any set opinions about rationalist and rationalist adjacent worldviews? Specifically if they fit into American fascism or bossism.
I might have missed one, but I think everyone you referenced directly in this article is male. This doesn't seem like a coincidence, especially when "[thinking] about how even extreme repression is possible within a constitutional and legal order and may even require it for the regularity of its enforcement." It's old news by now but patriarchal domination somehow feels less visible than race-based segregation, even though when I think through specific examples it doesn't seem obviously less severe (while being very different). Why is that? It's more deeply ingrained in our society? Even highly patriarchal social orders are integrated at the family level?
Yes! I remember this essay. "Bossism" helps us understand the "small shareholders" as you put it, the weird nerds online who are always rooting for Elon Musk to implant chips in skulls and so on. That is, it works as critique of ideology. But I have to admit I still don't understand why these tech bosses are so suddenly motivated to get their hands dirty with politics (even as they depoliticize what they are doing). Because of neoliberalism, the world is already their oyster. It's hard to imagine any privilege that isn't *already* available to their class, both individually and collectively. What more could they want? As a Leftist, I suppose I could look at this as a positive sign, as bourgeois fear of a "new conjuncture" and all of that, but I'm not sure if I'm convinced by that narrative any more. People are sick of immiseration, but neoliberalism is still locked-in.
I wrote a while back about Stanford business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer's book Leadership B.S. (he has another called Power that is rather similar): I think he's basically giving a sketch version of the ideology of bossism in your sense. https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/the-read-jeffrey-pfeffer-leadership
Recently I saw a video of white American man saying negative things about blacks and he insisted to take distance from them. He was asking a form of apartheid definitely. I can’t find the video but I definitely find the message suspicious, as I see lately more videos about black crime released to the public. This will increase racism and divisions. I noticed that twitter shows me more on my timeline Eventhough I don’t follow those who share this.
Historiographically up-to-date and, I think, moral/politically on target. Can't resist recommending a book by a very old friend of mine (grade school, prep school, college and Brooklyn Heights) about a "boss" in the 20thC U.S. when the South African meaning of the word was unknown and "boss" meant local party monarch (Tweed) or savvy behind-the-scenes manager of a party in national elections like FDR's Mike Flynn: "In With Flynn, The Boss Behind the President."
I like this and think it's both true moral/politically, and up-to-date historiographically. A very old friend of mine, Malcolm Mackay, has written two books on the U.S. sort of "boss," when the word was common in U.S. journalism and had as yet no South-African resonance. The latest is: "In With Flynn, The Boss Behind the President"
For the mailbag:
Maybe a silly question, but one that I can't let go of - especially as I read your articles about Feb 6 1934, the 18th Brumaire, and the March on Rome.
What are the modern parallels with how the center left acted in the face of each of these coups - I'd be interested to see a throughline of liberal appeasement and what from the last century and half can be applied to things like January 6th.
What might unlock something is an alternate history, if that can be forgiven. If Bernie or any left-ish politician had beat Biden and then Trump in 2020, what changes about the center-left's approach January 6th and the months of election chaos surrounding it? Is there reason to believe that Dem leadership would have defended the result as forcefully, both on the day of and in the months after? Could the press have spun everything to "moderate" tastes, and called for a more centrist fix? Might some Dem figures have opportunistically sought appeasement, and if so what might that have looked like?
I know its hard to be concrete on the Jan 6 what-ifs, but thought it would be interesting to look at the liberal appeasers in mass democracies as a whole, then apply them to our current center-left context.
Does bossism intersect with the (very) recent micro-controversies around Mr. Beast? I'm thinking in particular of MB's tweet that expressed worry about chocolate bar displays in supermarkets, and which asked his millions of minions to tidy-up the store shelves on his behalf. When critics pushed back, legions of weird nerds defended his creepy parasocial crowdsourcing of what should be someone's job (setting up supermarket displays). Reptilian creeps like Thiel and Musk are obvious bad guys, but the ludicrously grinning face of MB might represent a different, more seemingly benevolent form of bossism.
Also probably worth mentioning that the new version of capitalism bossism - just like the one described 80-some years ago in Polanyi’s analysis of the early industrial system - has been thoroughly dependent on state largesse, subsidies, contracts, and a favourable legal and labor market management system; the pubescent, Ayn-Randian, Neo-monarchist Great Man fantasies are almost cartoonishly pristine illustrations of at least one conception of a Marxist notion of ideology - as a system of thought that functions to conceal failed practice in the ideology’s own terms.
The anti-statist megalomaniac bossism of the Musks and Thiels is itself a function of the evolution of the modern state and the decisions it has made about distributing public resources. It’s no surprise, of course, that such people are totally indifferent to and never speak about anything resembling an actual concrete problem or policy issue involved in actually managing a modern political economy - health care, education, fiscal/monetary policy, labor codes, environmental policy, housing, child care, infrastructure. What the state actually *does* - apart from providing the contracts and conditions for them to become billionaires - is relevant only insofar as it must be obscured and erased.
I see it as a matter of legitimacy: to me, 'bossism' means (to use a distinction that Terry Pratchett once made, I believe between dictators and kings) that someone with sufficient economic power _deserves_ to give orders that will be obeyed, not that they merely are able to do. It can be based variously: Magistrate Olmstead cited Genesis explicitly but Darwin implicitly when he told the striker that she were on-strike against G-d.
In a theocratic State that legitimacy would come from knowledge of an holy book or a religious initiation, and much the same in a Bolshevik one, in a racist State being judged 'pure' would be a prerequisite, in an aristocratic State birth as well.
In *Wages of Whiteness*, David Roediger claims that antebellum working-class White Americans attempted to evade having a "master" by using the Dutch word for master: "baas." Not surprising that some of these dudes want to be a master.
It seems worth doing more work on the underlying conditions that destabilized the status quo here. Is what made the bosses want to get their hand dirty is that there is an advantage in it, whereas industrialists saw less advantage once there were stable rules of the game? Why waste time on that when you could increase capital? But if we're in a new robber baron era with no modus vivendi between the bosses and the state is there a possible gain to be had in re-establishing terms? Did you write something on this or am I misremembering?
Totally unrelated but it's so interesting that everyone seems to need an ideology. Why is that? Why not just go 'I love money, I love winning!' The bosses self concept requires so much more. They see themselves as emperors. They even sometimes imagine they will live forever. And nobody is going to remember them in not too many years, and they are definitely going to die. Does Bossism include all that? I hope you won't abandon this idea, and will expand it. It's SO useful. It's got a lot of potential.
How much are the Afrikaner figureheads of baaskap steeped in Nietzsche? I wouldn't be shocked at all if Thiel was; he'd be the first guy I suspect to use ubermensch in casual conversation and say "It me."
Nietzsche spent his middle age and up until his mental breakdown developing a morality of power (esp. master and slave morality and how they are dialectically linked).
I wonder if the Afrikaners are formed by Nietzsche the way adolescents findf their way to libertarianism by way of Ayn Rand.
Not sure if you've seen this already but a prop in the BAM adaptation of "Sydney Brustein's Window" featuring Oscar Isaac had a reference to Bossism - a campaign poster saying "Wipeout Bossism. Vote for Reform" . You can see the shot of the poster in this NYT review https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/27/theater/the-sign-in-sidney-brusteins-window-bam-review.html. Not sure if it was a contemporaneous thing(play is set in the 70s) or you have a subscriber/fan in the production. Thought you might be interested!
Are you familiar with the Thiel/Musk courtiers like Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Curtis Yarvin (who I feel like you have written about before)? If so, do you have any set opinions about rationalist and rationalist adjacent worldviews? Specifically if they fit into American fascism or bossism.