Elon Musk’s DOGE “revolution” is a return to tyranny

From arbitrary layoffs to intimidation tactics to targeted harassment, Elon Musk has brought the tyrannical practices of corporate America to the federal government.

"This is a revolution,” Musk told Fox News’ Bret Baier in his first interview with members of his cost-cutting team. “I think it might be the biggest revolution in the government since the original revolution."

Musk has led his legally ambiguous “Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) on a rampage across federal services—an attack that resembles the ruthless cost-cutting of private equity acquisitions or, rather, Musk’s own disastrous takeover of Twitter. 

With Trump’s fawning approval, Musk is dismantling the American constitutional system, flouting federal law to purge perceived ideological enemies from the civil service and circumventing congressional authority by cutting off appropriated federal funding, and doing so in open defiance of the courts. 

Musk doesn't just bring Silicon Valley's 'disruptor' mindset to DC — he embodies the idea that the executive, whether a CEO or a president, should be the unbridled sovereign of his domain. A boss can hire and fire at will, cancel contracts, and direct funding without any checks to his power. Now, Musk threatens to remake the federal government into a business, with the president as an all-powerful boss. 

Musk and Trump don’t just want the government to run like a business, they want to rule it like one. 

Welcome to the tyranny of the bosses.

Musk’s unrestrained, all-access scourge through the government has led pundits like Nate Silver to compare him to a ‘great man’ of history — that mythic personage whose unhindered agency pushes history forward. 

But Musk’s behavior resembles that of any corporate hatchet man. The now-infamous memo Musk sent to all federal employees demanding that they justify their job’s existence in five bullet points or face termination surely reminds most working Americans of a current or past boss: arrogant and incompetent, domineering and obstructive. A person whose authority convinces them of their right to abuse it. 

From Amazon forcing workers to urinate in bottles to Walmart penalizing employees for taking sick days, employers everywhere use and abuse their authority in the workplace to humiliate, demean, and harass workers. Like Big Tech companies use performance improvement plans to set unattainable goals to justify layoffs, Musk’s insulting memo demand is meant to force employees out—or into submission.  

Tax cuts for the rich and deregulation for corporations made Musk’s avaricious ascent possible. But the Musk mindset was borne from the executive incubator. Who else is the Silicon Valley motto, “move fast and break things,” for other than CEOs who view people as expendable and companies as their playthings?

America’s extreme wealth inequality has led to the concentration of so much power in the hands of a few grotesquely wealthy individuals that someone like Musk can buy their way into the White House, extort legislators, and persecute government employees—and their families — without consequence. But while rich assholes in government are nothing new, the attempt to override democratic safeguards in the name of corporate efficiency represents an assault on the principles of democracy itself. 

It's not efficiency that Musk pursues, but authority. Musk is reshaping the executive branch into the Chief Executive Office. 

Executive Monarchy

The emphasis on executive authority pervades MAGA’s ideology because it celebrates the unadulterated expression of ego, and MAGA is driven above all by its charismatic leader, the unrivalled narcissist, Donald Trump.

While Trump’s explicit proclamation ‘Long Live the King’ (tweeted in response to his administration’s move to shut down New York City’s congestion pricing) garnered shock from mainstream media, such regal aspirations should hardly be surprising given Trump’s businessman persona. 

The business executive occupies the top of the corporate hierarchy — or, in the case of Trump, the dynastic hierarchy — dispensing judgment as he sees fit. Trump’s signature line, ‘You’re fired!’, embodies this arrogance. The executive’s ability to hire and fire at will forms the basis of his power. Trump, Musk, MAGA heads and, even old-school conservatives all share this belief in the inviolability of the businessman’s power. Whereas the citizen is constrained by the desires, beliefs, and choices of their fellow citizens, the businessman wields unilateral power within his domain.

Like a military regiment, a business is a top-down command hierarchy reinforced through discipline. Karl Marx explains that “an industrial army of workers under the command of a capitalist requires, like a real army, officers (managers) and N.C.O.s (foremen, overseers).” Authority is absolute.

Firms exist as pockets of sovereignty for would-be kings to exercise their authority with no accountability to anyone but the market. Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that the workplace operates as an “arbitrary and unaccountable” dictatorship, in which employers exercise control of workers inside and outside of the workplace:  

[T]he default constitution of workplace governance … is a form of authoritarian, private government, in which, under employment-at-will, workers cede all their rights to their employers, except those specifically reserved for them by law.

Even with collective bargaining, workers face their bosses on an uneven playing field. Any attempt to rebalance the weight of authority within the workplace carries existential risk — the majority of Americans are only a paycheck away from disaster. Now, Musk is destroying what’s left of America’s meager social safety net, exposing working-class Americans to the full brunt of the market. Without social security, Medicaid, Medicare, labor protections, or workplace safety regulations, employers gain leverage over workers who face little choice but to accept dangerous, degrading work. 

This discrepancy in power between employer and employee allows the boss to be almost entirely unaccountable for their decisions — decisions that have a direct impact on the livelihoods of everyone employed in an enterprise. Though each individual within a firm contributes to the collective effort of the workforce, whether that be in manufacturing a car or providing customer service, the planning and direction of the firm rests in the hands of a small, unelected, and unaccountable minority.

While (most) Americans believe government should be organized along democratic principles, they don’t question why the workplace is ruled by the tyranny of the boss. Liberals who take pride in their country’s democratic heritage assume that the right of representation stops at the factory gates. 

Now, Musk is leading the charge to bring the authoritarianism of the workplace to the executive branch. Openly flouting constitutional checks, threatening recalcitrant federal judges, seizing the fiscal chokepoints of government, and impounding congressionally appropriated funds, Musk is finally turning the conservative dream of running the government like a business into a reality.

But Musk doesn’t even see the American people as customers. He sees them as employees. Subjects meant to obey and praise their leader but never to challenge them. And certainly, never tell them what to do. 

Big Business is Government Business

This is for all practical purposes, a coup against the US government and the American people. As Judge Tanya Chutkan observed in a lawsuit filed by 19 state attorneys general against DOGE’s constitutionality, Musk appears to operate with “the unchecked authority of an unelected individual,” presiding over “an entity [DOGE] that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight.” And yet, this unelected billionaire oligarch continues to wreak havoc on as he reshapes the American constitutional order in the image of the CEO. 

This is not a MAGA coup, it’s a business coup. The coterie of billionaires lined up behind Trump at his inauguration weren't only paying tribute to the self-declared “king,” they were staking their claim in the new order. Just like Musk’s Twitter layoffs gave the tech industry cover to purge their own workforces, so too has Trump’s re-ascendence emboldened them to reassert their authority over their ‘activist’ employees. And why wouldn’t they? Trump’s actions are nakedly in their interests. Some elite Democratic donors have already abandoned the party to take part in the spoils of government looting. 

Chuck Schumer’s capitulation to the GOP’s poison-pilled budget despite the Democrats’ filibuster-proof minority in the Senate shows that working-class Americans will have to look beyond the Democratic Party to protect themselves from Trump and Musk. 

And like the workplace, the best place to start is collective organizing. Only in solidarity with others can we resist the encroachment of corporate authoritarianism. Grassroots backlash like the Tesla Takedown protests has sent Musk’s Tesla stocks plummeting and his wealth with it. Public sector employees have rallied together to resist DOGE cuts. And thousands have taken to the streets to protest the unlawful kidnapping of student activist Mahmoud Khalil by America's Gestapo, ICE. 

To resist the tyranny of the bosses, solidarity remains the answer. If Musk wants to make Trump America's boss, then the American people need a union.