The tech entrepreneur has endorsed a vision of monolithic totalitarianism overseen by machiavellian machines – and one that is neither entirely utopian or anarchist

So, Elon Musk has claimed he is a “utopian anarchist” in a way he claims is best described by the late science fiction author Iain M Banks. Which leads to one very relevant question: has Musk actually read any of Banks’s books? In a series of novels, the Scottish author explored “the Culture”: a post-scarcity, hedonistic society where you could create your own drugs in your own body, change gender at will and where freedom was the highest and noblest sign of a civilisation.

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But there is a darker side to the Culture. The playground of pleasures is overseen by vast intelligent machines that, on whim sometimes, make their own decisions about what is best for their pet beings. In each novel, the Culture faces an enemy that does not agree with their values. The Culture objects to the Idirans’ religion, and the Affront’s monstrous brutality. For the Chelgrians, the Culture caused a caste war, then covered it up; for the Gzilt, they wanted them not to “sublime”, or transcend the known universe. Worse than that, we have the frequently mentioned “Special Circumstances”: a group who are frequently involved in the Culture’s machinations. They intervene, they assassinate, they hide. Special Circumstances is a tiny variation on the old question for politics students: how far can a liberal society go in defence of liberalism?

The cold answer in these novels is: to any extent. When I interviewed Banks, just before his untimely death in 2013 at the age of 59, we talked about why the Culture did not sublime like other species. He was adamantine: the Culture would stay until everything else in the universe was like them. Not exactly utopian, not exactly anarchist.

So it is worrying that a tech entrepreneur thinks that a totalitarian, interventionist monolith is a role model. If there is an afterlife, Banks must be laughing his cotton socks off.