Elon Musk Is America’s Cecil Rhodes

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Argument An expert’s point of view on a current event. Elon Musk Is America’s Cecil Rhodes It’s not the first time that liberal capitalism has retreated—and predatory capitalists have filled the void. de-Gruyter-Caroline-foreign-policy-columnist6 Caroline de Gruyter By Caroline de Gruyter , a columnist at Foreign Policy and a Europe correspondent for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad . A caricature titled “The Rhodes Colossus” depicts the imperialist Cecil Rhodes standing on a map of Africa. A caricature titled “The Rhodes Colossus” depicts the imperialist Cecil Rhodes standing on a map of Africa. Hulton Archive/Getty Images) My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In Economics United States Caroline de Gruyter February 7, 2025, 11:50 AM Comment icon View Comments ( 0 ) Once you have seen it, you cannot unsee it anymore: a cartoon of the British businessman Cecil Rhodes, published in the Dec. 10, 1892, edition of Punch magazine. The cartoon, drawn by Edward Linley Sambourne, is called “The Rhodes Colossus.” It depicts Rhodes, a late 19th-century diamond-mining magnate in South Africa who used his fortune to help the British expand their empire, as a giant in a colonial outfit towering over Africa, a gun slung over his shoulder, with one booted foot firmly planted in Cairo and the other in Cape Town. He holds a telegraph line in his hands. In a phase of accelerated, furious imperialism at the end of the 19th century, when European powers raced to conquer much of Africa, Rhodes planned to build a rail and telegraph line from Cape Town to Cairo, connecting all British African colonies like beads on a string. You cannot unsee the cartoon, because today, in our time, Elon Musk is to U.S. President Donald Trump more or less what Rhodes was to the British Empire in his day: an oligarch with far-reaching powers and liberties bestowed on him by the state to help it grab as much of the world’s land, waterways, resources, and labor as it can before someone else does. Once you have seen it, you cannot unsee it anymore: a cartoon of the British businessman Cecil Rhodes, published in the Dec. 10, 1892, edition of Punch magazine. The cartoon, drawn by Edward Linley Sambourne, is called “The Rhodes Colossus.” It depicts Rhodes, a late 19th-century diamond-mining magnate in South Africa who used his fortune to help the British expand their empire, as a giant in a colonial outfit towering over Africa, a gun slung over his shoulder, with one booted foot firmly planted in Cairo and the other in Cape Town. He holds a telegraph line in his hands. In a phase of accelerated, furious imperialism at the end of the 19th century, when European powers raced to conquer much of Africa, Rhodes planned to build a rail and telegraph line from Cape Town to Cairo, connecting all British African colonies like beads on a string. You cannot unsee the cartoon, because today, in our time, Elon Musk is to U.S. President Donald Trump more or less what Rhodes was to the British Empire in his day: an oligarch with far-reaching powers and liberties bestowed on him by the state to help it grab as much of the world’s land, waterways, resources, and labor as it can before someone else does. Trending Articles What History Teaches Us About Today’s Foreign-Policy Woes Wisdom from decades past for a world of permanent crisis. Powered By Advertisement What History Teaches Us About Today’s Foreign-Policy Woes X In 1906, in an introduction to the translated writings of the influential American Navy officer Alfred Mahan, a French philosophy professor named Jean Izoulet described the mood back then as follows: “Indeed, the Earth is round; it is a domain, an island in space. (…) More and more people live on this limited territory. Supply is limited, while demand is infinite. According to the law of supply and demand, the price of a meter of land on this small celestial body, if I may call it that, is rising rapidly. Groups of people will fight over territory, over a place under the sun.” Musk could have said something similar. The zeitgeist that Izoulet describes is similar to ours. He and Rhodes, like all of us today, lived at a time when liberal capitalism was transitioning into what might be called predatory capitalism. In a liberal capitalist system, competition is a key element. It is about people and companies creating things they exchange or sell to each other. The idea is that there is plenty of space for everyone. Everyone, in theory at least, should be able to get a little piece of the pie. In the world of liberal capitalism, moreover, there are rules that apply to all. Predatory capitalism is the stage that can follow, when the feeling of abundance gives way to an acute sense of scarcity, and when exchange changes into conquest. At least, this has already happened twice before in history—in the 17th and 18th centuries, and at the end of the 19th century—and now it seems to be happening again, according to a remarkably lucid book just published by French economist Arnaud Orain: Le monde confisqué; Essai sur le capitalisme de la finitude (XVIe-XXIe siècle) . Orain, a professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, sheds an interesting light on the significance of Trump’s election. He does this by focusing on, and describing in detail, those two earlier periods in history when predatory capitalism raised its head after long phases of much milder liberal capitalism. The book, which has not yet been translated into English, also connects many of the characteristics of the second Trump presidency with things happening in those two periods, placing them in a broader context. This context is helpful. From Trump’s territorial claims on the Panama Canal, Canada, or Greenland to his constant bullying of closely allied nations or to the greedy billionaires who helped him to get elected and now want to meddle with foreign countries in the name of the world’s most powerful state—today, all this may seem outrageous and almost unreal, but the two earlier predatory capitalist phases were characterized by the same kind of frenzy, hubris, and imperial behavior. Orain argues that liberal capitalism became a “capitalism of finitude” around 10 years ago, via an intermediary, neoliberal stage (when the rules-based order started to malfunction and partly break down). What defines the capitalism of finitude is that, suddenly, competing powers convince themselves there is not enough for everyone on Earth. So, they unleash a cutthroat rivalry. Existing rules, international treaties, and codes of conduct are furiously cast aside in order to take the world’s waterways, land, resources, data, and human labor—anything they find useful to expand their power. It is not just Trump and his digital billionaires who do this. It is also Israel, waging all-out war against Gaza and bombing Lebanese villages without any of the restraint that characterized the Israeli military in previous decades, and in total disregard of international law. It is Russia invading its neighbors because President Vladimir Putin wants the old empire back, using former Wagner Group militias to get to Africa’s minerals, and trying to expand its holdings on Spitsbergen (which belongs to Norway) and dominate the Arctic. It is China, too, creating facts on the water in the South China Sea, and being hard at work to establish semi-colonial “stations” in strategic ports and get ownership of arable land (in the book, they are called “ghostly hectares”), plantations, and mines on other continents. The list gets longer by the year. This is a zero-sum game: If you don’t get something, someone else will snatch it. Orain, the author, is not a Marxist. His tone is descriptive, not activist. He says he finds inspiration in the works of early 20th-century French historian Fernand Braudel, who once taught at the same university and famously argued , among other things, that during a liberal capitalist phase you have an “economy,” but during a predatory capitalist phase there are only “monopolies.” In such a period, everything becomes political. Land, rivers, and resources are seized. The free market becomes obsolete. Multinationals serve as the long arm of the state. Seen this way, the function of Musk’s empire for Trump is similar to that of Huawei or Cosco , the shipbuilding giant, for Chinese President Xi Jinping. It also resembles the relationship between the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) and the Dutch Republic in the 17th and 18th centuries in the first phase of the “capitalism of finitude” that Orain identifies and describes. The VOC was given a huge trade monopoly by the state: The Dutch government allowed it to build and conquer forts in many parts of the world, to negotiate and sign trade agreements, to mint coins—even to wage war. Read More U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas. What Drives Elon Musk? His wealth, political power, and support for far-right parties are setting off alarm bells. Insider | Cameron Abadi , Adam Tooze What had started during the “moderate” liberal capitalist phase with trading posts in strategic places (from Suriname to what is Indonesia today)—where European fabrics and other things were exchanged for spices, for example—turned into hard oppression and expropriation. There was no longer any (semblance of) exchange, just occupation and extraction. In the hunt for the world’s riches, the VOC had almost carte blanche. Two centuries later, after a period of relatively benign liberal capitalism during the mid-19th century, things escalated again around 1870. A murderous race ensued among European superpowers for land, waterways, raw materials, and human capital. They trounced each other, using existing or newly established companies to get the upper hand. The detailed descriptions and many citations from old books and records make clear that in such periods, the world becomes extremely unsafe for everyone. Hubris and raw power dominate everything. Those too weak to join the race risk losing out completely. Sign up for Editors’ Picks A curated selection of FP’s must-read stories. Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use and to receive email correspondence from us. You may opt out at any time. Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up You’re on the list! More ways to stay updated on global news: FP Live Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up World Brief Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up China Brief Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up South Asia Brief Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up Situation Report Enter your email Sign Up ✓ Signed Up View All Newsletters Halfway through the book, Rhodes is quoted in despair, looking at the sky at night, seeing all those stars he cannot get to: “These vast worlds that will forever be out of reach. If I could, I would annex them.” Musk, who has said he wants to “colonize the whole solar system,” is not mentioned here. No need, even. By now, the picture comes up automatically: Musk in a colonial outfit, one foot on Mars and the other on some other planet, a gun slung over the shoulder. Caroline de Gruyter is a columnist at Foreign Policy and a Europe correspondent and columnist for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad . She currently lives in Brussels. 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