It was Russ Ackoff who pointed out the irony that while capitalist countries vaunt the superiority of their free-market economies, they skip lightly over the fact that the companies and other organisations operating within them are islands of Soviet-style hierarchy and central planning: ‘We are committed to a market economy at the national (macro) level and to a nonmarket, centrally planned, hierarchically managed (micro) economy within most corporations and other types of organisations in our economy,’ he wrote.

That there have always been corporate dictators, then, should not come as a surprise. Most companies are set up as jousts that ensure that alphas end up at the top. Some of those are benign (think John Lewis, Robert Owen, Cadbury and the Quakers), others less so (Henry Ford, ‘Chainsaw’ Al Dunlap, who once appeared on a magazine cover clutching a machine gun, not to mention Harvey Weinstein). But up till now the effects of autocratic rule, however noxious, have been felt most directly by the unfortunates working for them. 

No longer. In the digital age, their baleful influence spreads much wider than that, to impinge on democracy itself. Blame part of this on the erosion of the internal checks and balances that up till recently kept the power of corporate autocrats just about in check. The other salient factor is digital technology and the networks and platforms it has enabled, particularly but not exclusively social media. They both come together in Silicon Valley in a justifying ideology that Jerry Davis has termed ‘authoritarianism with Silicon Valley characteristics’.

Boiled down to the elevator pitch, it could be summed up as Facebook’s original ‘move fast and break things’, never mind where it leads. For a longer version, try The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, a sprawling 5,000-word collection of sayings, warnings and prophecies posted on the internet in October by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, one of the Valley’s most prominent and techno-aggressive investors.

Here’s a flavour of his worldview. ‘We believe’, he writes, ‘that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology’. But wait: we must go faster. We also ‘believe in accelerationism – the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development – to ensure the fulfillment of the Law of Accelerating Returns’. Markets rule, naturally (central planning is anathema), and nothing must hinder the functioning of the ‘techno-capital machine of markets and innovation’ that ‘never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward’. We must not be taken in by the ‘lies’ we are told to hold back this headlong progress, nor by the ‘the enemy’ that still bars the way, in the shape of ideas such as ‘existential risk’, ‘sustainability’, ‘ESG’ (something that has Andreessen and co frothing at the mouth, on a par with the Chinese Communist Party (Elon Musk has declared ESG the ‘Devil Incarnate’), ‘social responsibility’, ‘stakeholder capitalism’, ‘Precautionary Principle’, ‘trust and safety’, ‘tech ethics’, ‘risk management’, ‘the limits of growth’. You get the drift.

Of course we couldn’t live without technology, and no one would deny that we will need plenty more of it in the future. But as The Atlantic noted, notwithstanding his hat-tip to the Enlightenment, at these extremes Andreessen’s aspirations resemble religious incantation more than a rational programme. Only a fanatic could fail to notice that his rant about ‘the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences’ – is a perfect encapsulation not of the enemy but of himself and the programme of his Silicon Valley fellows. 

Unfortunately, the world that such would-be ‘technological supermen’ have been quietly working to bring about is further along the road to their desired destination than we might like. Not least because, beginning with Google and Facebook, egged on by venture capitalists such as Andreessen and Peter Thiel and meekly accepted by investors who have lapped up the dubious mythology of the visionary founder, many Silicon Valley firms have adopted dual-class voting share structures that effectively install their founders, immune to normal PLC governance constraints, as dictators in the literal sense. In 2021, notes Davis, ‘an astonishing 46 per cent of tech IPO firms had dual-class voting shares’, rendering ‘Silicon Valley … awash in dictators’. Their writ not only runs within firms, many of which ‘AI-enabled “bossware” has turned … into corporate Panopticons, enabling those at the top to monitor and control laborers in exacting detail through tentacles reaching directly into workers’ homes and cars’; but, because so much of our information and online life are mediated by the unaccountable gatekeepers of Silicon Valley, it increasingly encroaches on society as a whole, with direct implications for our democracy.

Thus, we all know about the Cambridge Analytica and other data abuses aimed at manipulating behaviour and affecting the outcome of elections. And whatever we think of Trump or other politicians, and the horror show that X has become, is it right that unregulated corporate autocrats personally possess the power to decide who benefits from freedom of speech in the public domain and who doesn’t? Or give themselves licence to indulge in divisive social engineering for their own financial or indeed political ends? Or intervene in foreign policy, as with Musk’s Starlink satellites in the fighting in Ukraine? Their combined financial, lobbying and social control potential is unprecedented, indeed allowing them to play God without fear of consequences. For Shoshana Zuboff, ‘the threats we face are even more fundamental as surveillance capitalists take command of the essential questions that define knowledge, authority, and power in our time. Who knows? Who decides? Who decides who decides?’ 

In TV series as in real life, dictatorship succession tends to be anything but smooth and willing, irrespective of formal voting structures – consider the florid exits of Logan Roy’s supposed real-life models, Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone. This matters not just to shareholders: the companies dictators run are among the most powerful actors on the world stage. Sergey Brin and Larry Page may have relinquished executive positions at Alphabet, but they still have ultimate control through their shareholdings and board seats. Jeff Bezos remains the largest single shareholder in Amazon, where he is executive chairman. Mark Zuckerberg reigns supreme as executive chairman, CEO and controlling shareholder of Meta Platforms, as does Musk at X Corp (ex-Twitter), which he owns outright, de facto as CEO and product architect of Tesla and the same at Space X, a player in world conflict spots. (As if that wasn’t enough, piqued at being thwarted of his insane $55bn pay package at Tesla by the Chancery Court of Delaware, Musk is planning to reinforce his imperial position by moving the company’s state of incorporation to a more compliant Texas.)

All of these white male corporate emperors regularly crop up on lists of the most influential as well as richest people in the world. It might be a stretch currently to think of their companies coming under direct foreign control – but it’s worth recalling that Musk has spoken to Putin and opposes US miltary aid to Ukraine, while Putin last September praised Musk as an ‘outstanding person’ and ‘a talented businessman’. It’s no stretch at all to say that whatever happens to their corporate domains in the crucial next phase of their existence, for good or ill it will affect every person on the planet.