Back in June of this year, tech entrepreneur and multi-billionaire Elon Musk tweeted that he’s actually a “socialist”. He also tweeted that 19th Century philosopher Karl Marx was a “capitalist”. Yes, you heard correctly. Hilarity subsequently ensued online in the ‘Tweet-osphere’ and among Musk observers.
Now, seeing how near-fictionally busy Musk is and has been for over two decades in founding and heading up multiple successful tech firms, perhaps he’s never formally studied political philosophy, political economy, monetary history or the like and was simply ‘thinking out loud’, as it were, in a superficial space limited to 280 characters per tweet. OR, perhaps there’s more nuance to said qualifications, Musk’s word choices, and actually deeper, longer standing philosophical meanings to such otherwise globally overused categorizations as “socialism” and “capitalism”.