"Bossism," Reconsidered

The Career of a Kind-of Concept

A racially segregated train station in South Africa. From wikipedia.

Back in April last year, in a newsletter about the “Emerging Tech-Lash,” I used the term “bossism” to refer to the inchoate ideology of tech-oligarchs like Elon Musk who seemed to be beginning to flex their political muscle. Here’s what I wrote:

Something like a class-consciousness of the most reactionary section of the tech bourgeoisie now appears to be crystallizing and, with it, a concomitant set of political practices and ideologies. (Musk and Thiel formed PayPal together.) The ideology, stripped of all its mystifying decoration, is actually pretty simple and crude: it says “bosses on top.” This is the unifying thread that runs through Yarvin’s tedious peregrinations from radical libertarianism to monarchism: the authority and power of certain people is the natural order, unquestionable, good. It is, to borrow a term from the history of apartheid, baaskap—boss-ism. “I no longer think that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Thiel once wrote, calling for a kind of “technocratic rejection of politics as such,” to quote the sociologist Dylan Riley. But this vision of “freedom” is not only shared by the bosses and their paid ideologues—there is a “mass” component of the politics as well: this ideal of freedom is shared by a mob that worships the power of the oligarchs and wants its own freedom to consist in the total license to behave online without encountering moral sanction from the pestering wokes or to have personal consequences of any kind. Through the adoption of crackpot racial or IQ notions they can flatter themselves that they are part of the elect, minor shareholders in the oligarch’s baaskap.

This term “bossism” has, for better or worse, caught on a little bit. It was referred to obliquely in a column by Ross Douthat, then discussed in a Kevin Roose column in an assessment of the new culture of Silicon Valley, and a similar piece in Vice. I don’t list all these references (entirely) to brag, but to note something peculiar: Like a file being copied and compressed, each successive time it was written there seemed to be data loss, missing portions of what I had originally meant, and becoming increasingly abstract and general. Such is the nature of language and cultural circulation I suppose. I ‘m not going to jump up and down and yell, “That’s not what I meant! That’s not what I meant!” But, I do have to say it’s getting a little topsy-turvy. In Forbes, there’s now a piece entitled “In Defense Of 'Bossism': How To Be More Present As A Leader,” where the author, one Niels Martin Brochner, “Cofounder and CEO of the Copenhagen-based company Contractbook, supported by Gradient Ventures, Bessemer Venter Partners and Tiger Global:”

Musk's style caused a huge debate. Some believe there could be a "method to [his] madness." Others believe his reign is toxic and megalomaniacal.

Nevertheless, tech has become much more "bossist" in the past months. There have been layoffs across the entire industry, companies are cutting costs, and executives are trying to mobilize extra energy among their employees. This is a result of the current bearish market conditions.

I don't endorse toxic leadership, harassment, discrimination or disrespectful behavior. I'm also aware that founders with too much success and too little perspective can become narcissistic and conceited, which can cause them to be bossy in a very negative way. Still, I think there is something about bossism that, if approached nuancedly [sic], can shape a better tech industry.

So, now we already have “bossism with a human face.”

While I’m not gonna whine about being misunderstood, I will note some ironies. “Bossism” has, in the space of a year, gone from what I had meant to be a term of opprobrium to a neutral or even positive word for vague ideas about “leadership.” Suffice it to say, I was not talking about a management style but an ideology, a way of conceiving (or not-conceiving) the totality of social relations.

As you can see above, I used the term to translate the Afrikaans word baaskap, which is more often translated as “boss-hood” or boss-ship.” Baaskap is a concept from the ideology of apartheid South Africa. It referred simply to white overlordship in the economy and politics. Some proponents of apartheid wanted “total separation” between races, some paid lip service to ideas of “separate development,” and others more realistically favored “baaskap,” essentially the unbridled economic exploitation of natives and other non-whites by whites. It’s a little bit funny to see some cheery tech CEO going, “In defense of [this idea from literal apartheid],” but maybe also it’s revealing.

I chose this word deliberately to be a little provocative. I wanted to highlight how crude, authoritarian, and openly exploitative I believed this “new” tech ethos appeared. Another reason was to hint at what I believed is its proximity with racism and other concepts of “natural superiority,” as typified by Curtis Yarvin’s interest in Race and IQ “questions.” It was also to poke at the origin of many of its proponents in apartheid South Africa, where Musk, his ally David Sacks, were born and where Peter Thiel spent a part of his childhood, when his father was an engineer at a uranium mine. I wanted to thereby imply that perhaps some of the spirit of that particularly brutal type of capitalist exploitation rubbed off on them. Is that a cheap and unfair insinuation? Maybe, but fuck ‘em.

I have since learned much more about apartheid and probably wouldn’t have used the term now, both out of a sense of accuracy but also out of respect for the unique history of the anti-apartheid struggle. I don’t think instituting literal apartheid is a real possibility in the U.S. today, nor is it really even the conscious desire of the sort of people I’m discussing. That being said, there is a group of hard right ideologues, who think the problem of “wokeness” can be traced to the Civil Rights Acts, which they’d like to see thrown out, so perhaps not too much of a stretch to say, “Yes, well some of them actually do want a little bit of apartheid.” Beyond that, I do think we face some more insidious forms of domination, which are being made acceptable to our elites as part of the “backlash” against contemporary social movements. Notions of permanent and “natural” subordination are omnipresent on the right.

I also think it’s interesting to think about the history of apartheid in an age where right-wing authoritarian movements are again on the march. Apartheid was a reactionary reassertion of a racial order that was beginning to come undone. Although capitalism was partly responsible for the decline of that order, Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid did not seek to replace capitalism with another system so much as make sure it worked properly for certain people. Apartheid, although was enforced with violence, was first instituted within the framework of liberal democracy, albeit with a severely limited franchise. It’s helpful to look at examples like South Africa as we broaden our understanding of far-right politics beyond the imaginary of “fascist coups.” With recent attempts to stigmatize and punish LGBT people as well as the frightening consequences of criminalizing abortion, it’s worthwhile to think about how even extreme repression is possiblewithin a constitutional and legal order and may even require it for the regularity of its enforcement.

What’s also notable about both the case of baaskap and the aspirations of these oligarchs is the direct connection the two imply between a system of economic exploitation and one of political domination. Historically, in the democratic capitalist West, the ownership class “rules but does not govern,” to quote Karl Kautsky: it is content to lobby and is secure in the knowledge that the state fun will usually be managed with a sensible view as to their interests. Exploitation can exist alongside relatively free political conditions. They also could rely on competent managers and focus mostly on the investment of capital rather than the everyday running of firms. But it seems like this group of tech oligarchs believes they “have to get their hands dirty” and reassert more direct domination to ensure their continued social position. Here’s a revealing passage from Mr. Brochner:

I'm all for flat hierarchies where everyone has a say, and the best argument wins, but you need a captain at the helm in stormy weather. Nobody has the same mandate to make a quick decision when the stakes are high. Your role is not just to give orders; you are also there to show your team members they can depend on you to lead the way. The tech industry has been used to democratic laissez-faire leadership for many years, so it can feel a bit awkward. However, the pandemic revealed how much people appreciate visible leadership in times of crisis.

It’s kind of amusing how this recapitulates a pattern of capitalist development: laissez-faire and the market at the beginning, followed by the rule of monopolies and great “captains of industry.”

Another reason I would maybe not use “bossism” is that it already is used to refer era of machine politics. But I would say one virtue of the term is that it does quickly express in general terms a broadly authoritarian turn on the right, whether that is out-and-out fascism or just the realization that the market cannot be relied upon to deliver conservative social results so more direct state intervention is required. In a way, Trump himself is the ultimate totem of bossism a perfect symbolic representation of the crude idea of the “big boss who fixes everything.” So, I guess I’m beginning to talk myself back into the usefulness and relevance of term.

I’ve never particularly liked the idea either of having or being a boss, so “bossism” naturally sounded bad to me, but I guess to many people being or working for a boss sounds good to them. This also speaks perhaps to the political usefulness of calling things “fascist:” very few people would now openly say, “Yep, that’s me! I love fascism!” but apparently they are now comfortable saying they are “bossists.” As a signifier, “fascism” apparently remains undigestible: it can’t be “reclaimed” or neutralized. Even people who substantively agree with its tenets to have to still hide that fact—both from themselves and others. The last thing I wanted to do was to add to the supply of euphemisms: I was deliberately trying to be rude, even inflammatory. So, please, just try to remember about “bossism:” it’s not meant to be a good thing!

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