The 80-year-old book that explains Elon Musk and tech’s new right-wing tilt

Burnham’s theory helps the modern right square this circle. If power is increasingly moving away from capitalists and toward the managers they employ, then it’s totally coherent for even the wealthiest people in the country to see themselves as victims of a “woke mind virus” infecting middle and upper management. This is how you get the odd spectacle of people like Musk deploring alleged censorship perpetrated by their own companies: They see their staff not as subordinates whose conduct is an internal company matter, but as rivals in the struggle for power who must be defeated.