Among the weirder features of the contemporary American far right is the emergence of primal fathers – Old Testament patriarchs who want to sire not just a family, but a race. Elon Musk is the best known of these Aspirational Abrahams, although he is by no means the only one. A long Wall Street Journal report has documented Musk’s desire to beget what he calls a “legion” of children who would save humanity from demographic freefall and bear his superior genes into the far future. A Space X rocket stands ready to transport his seed beyond Earth in a process akin to inverse panspermia, the theory that organic life arrived on our planet via space dust.

Musk is currently thought to have at least fourteen children with four women, whose legal and financial affairs are partly managed by Jared Birchall, the director of his family office. “We will need to use surrogates”, Musk texted one of them, to “reach legion-level before the apocalypse.” In preparation for this scale up in operations, he has acquired a multi-residential compound in Austin, Texas.

Silicon Valley pronatalism is generally understood as eugenic – a reading that captures the desire for racial purification, but not the distinct process by which purity is pursued. The “classic” American eugenicists of the progressive era sought to banish genetic abnormality, which they saw as responsible for mental degeneracy and other social ills. By contrast, Musk and his ilk are steeped in the pseudoscience of transhumanism – less concerned with the elimination of error than the exaltation of exceptional deviance. The ideal patriach is one who breaks from the normal distribution of intelligence with his uber IQ. He seeks not just to preserve the white genetic heritage, but to resurrect it on newly-sanctified foundations. Primal fathers are revered as the founders of a new race, rather than the ancestors of an old one.

The primal father is the stuff of myth. In Totem and Taboo, Freud suggested that the primitive unconscious was inhabited by an overbearing patriarch and a horde of envious sons. The father demands exclusive property rights over all women, irrespective of age and kinship relation. His autocratic reign is only superseded when the brothers rise up, murder him, and enshrine a new regime in which women are communal property. Freud candidly acknowledged that this was bogus prehistory. There was no developmental or anthropological subtext behind the myth of the primal horde, only the crossed-out traces in the minds of his patients.

Yet this fantasy is sometimes played out in real life. This is most obvious in the case of cult leaders, who with fascinating predictability end up installing a regime of compulsory communal sex over which they hold ultimate monopoly rights. They too prefer compounds to single-family residences and, when faced with the challenge of succession, resort to fantasies of immortality and deification. Their normalisation of imminent apocalypse can be read as the cosmic translation of this fear: cult leaders find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the loss of their personal power.

It goes without saying that this ethos is distinctly at odds with the traditional family values espoused by the religious right (one reason for the rumbling discord among various strands of the MAGA coalition). Primal fathers want an extended household, not a family. They gladly transgress the conservative taboos against adultery, incest, and intergenerational sex because all members of their household have the status of servant, whatever their blood relationship.

The distinctive features of their household economy become clearer when we consider the case of Jeffrey Epstein. Like Musk, Epstein was fascinated by transhumanism and had dreams of seeding the human race with his exalted DNA. In the wake of his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from minors, he fantasised about retreating to his Zorro Ranch in New Mexico, to impregnate up to twenty women at a time. In her posthumously-published memoir Nobody’s Girl, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who at sixteen was recruited by Epstein and his then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, recounts that her abusers proposed to retain her as a surrogate for their future child, over whom she would have no custody rights. They would pay her $200,000 a month to raise the child and accompany it around the world for rendezvous with Epstein. Fearing that her child would be abused, Giuffre concocted an escape plan.

Epstein’s case is more instructive than Musk’s because it combines the two economies of sexual property that Freud discerned in the primitive unconscious – fratriarchal and patriarchal. Epstein was able to forge unshakeable bonds with his fellow predators by telling them ‘what’s mine is yours,’ and keeping the photo evidence. In this sense, he established a fratriarchal system in which young women and girls were shared among primal brothers as a form of social glue. But Epstein also wanted to retain at least some of these women as his own inalienable property. The mothers of his future children were to be off limits, sequestered behind the walls of an inaccessible compound. The Epstein household economy assigns women to one of two regimes of sexual property – with some graduating from the fratriarchal to the patriarchal as they grew older. All women and girls are the property of one man; or all women and girls are the property of all men.

Freud saw the primitive horde as belonging squarely in the realm of the unconscious. It only bubbled to the surface during moments of organised transgression, such as carnivals. But there is nothing mediated or subliminal about the Silicon Valley far right’s desire to reenact the conflict between primal father and primal brothers. In fact, its leading ‘philosopher’, Peter Thiel – a member of the original “PayPal Mafia” – first encountered Freud through the work of René Girard, the Christian philosopher who taught at Stanford in the 1990s.

Thiel calls himself a Girardian to this day, but his reading of Freud is sui generis. In a book-length statement of his business philosophy, Zero to One, he uses Totem and Taboo as a prism through which to analyse the political economy of a Silicon Valley founder-controlled firm. Thiel celebrates start-up founders as iconoclastic brothers, intent on overthrowing the paternal power of incumbent monopolies such as Google, Amazon, or Microsoft. The “tech bro” alliance has proven its power to disrupt, but Thiel rightly warns that the primal roles are not fixed. As soon as their father is sacrificed, the brotherhood descends into murderous competition, each son asserting his individual right to create a monopoly. “Extreme founders are not new in history,” Thiel writes, pointing to Oedipus and Romulus.

Thanks to the most recent trove of documents released by the US Department of Justice, we now know Epstein was close to the leading figures of the Silicon Valley far right. After Brexit, he exchanged emails with Thiel, celebrating the “return of tribalism” and before his death he invested millions in Thiel’s tech ventures. Epstein would have recognised himself in Thiel’s portrait of the tragic founder: he saw himself as operating ‘above the law’ and destined to make his own laws. He endlessly interrogated his victims’ childhood histories for signs of vulnerability, per Giuffre, but flinched before any enquiry into his own upbringing. Epstein, it seems, came from nowhere, an orphan son. In one artifact from the latest DOJ trove, a video interview taped by Steve Bannon, he cast himself as an outsider – “Jeffrey Epstein, just a good kid” – unencumbered by the long biographies that trail the likes of Bill Clinton or Paul Volcker.

If the mythology of the primal father maps onto the new elite’s preferred business form, it applies in another way to their domestic arrangements. The appropriate reference point here is not the nuclear family but the household economy, where production is inseparable from reproduction, and the management of business assets is coextensive with the preservation of family possessions.

The extreme wealth created since the global financial crisis has revived a form of labour that, at least in Anglo-America, had by the mid-twentieth century become increasingly rare: large-scale, long term, in-house domestic service. Consider Palm Beach, where Trump and Epstein once brushed shoulders, and which is now home to many of America’s billionaires (as well as the president’s closest allies). In the last decade, Blackstone founder and Republican megadonor Steve Schwarzman has moved in, as have Citadel’s Ken Griffin and hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones. Others, such as David Koch’s widow Julia and KKR cofounder Henry Kravis, are long-term residents. Their households are not just domiciles but major sources of employment, each drawing in dozens of permanent and seasonal workers from the poorer areas of Palm Beach County and from as far afield as New York, Ireland, South Africa and Romania.

This form of domestic service is tacitly ruled over by something akin to ‘master and servant’ laws – a form of employment that once granted masters virtual dominion over their private sphere of government and punished workers with criminal sanctions such as in-house arrest, imprisonment, or even corporal punishment. Given the origins of ‘master and servant’ laws in medieval England, it would be easy to identify this development as a return to feudalism – an increasingly popular reading of the present conjuncture, as exemplified by the recent work of Yanis Varoufakis.

The argument owes much to Marx, who implied that personal domestic service would become obsolete as feudal relations gave way to the free labour contract. But recall that, contrary to Marx’s predictions, domestic service expanded in the late-nineteenth century, not in spite of but because of the growing concentration of industrial and financial wealth. Moreover, ‘master and servant’ relations endured well into the 20th century and have made a comeback in recent decades, if not in formal legal arrangements then at least de facto.

These laws proved particularly hard to dislodge when it came to the treatment of in-house domestic servants, primarily black women: any attempt at labour organisation was met with the argument that they were family members, hence liable to be treated with the same sanctified forms of abuse as next of kin. Here we get a sense of the distinct “confusion of categories” that reigns in the household economy. While the nuclear family posits an ideal separation between home and market, personal and work life, ‘master and servant’ laws assume a complete fusion between the two spheres.

Epstein owned multiple large properties – in Palm Beach, New York, Paris and New Mexico – as well as a private island, Little Saint James. His payroll included dozens, perhaps hundreds, of in-house staff, ranging from legal advisers and bodyguards to chauffeurs, cooks, cleaners, gardeners, maintenance workers and ‘masseuses’. Visitors describe a hierarchy of attendants whose precise relationship to Epstein – intimate or commercial – was sometimes difficult to discern. Male business partners such as the lawyer Alan Dershowitz were friends and, according to the allegations of some victims, occasional participants in sexual crimes. In Relentless Pursuit, Bradley J. Edwards, a Florida attorney that represented some 20 of Epstein’s victims, suggests that a cast of official girlfriends, typically older and wealthier, formed a charmed inner circle and were sometimes complicit in the abuse. If the relationship ended on good terms, they could be promoted, joining Maxwell as full-time procurers of young girls.

The origins of Epstein’s wealth remain elusive. We know that he served as unqualified financial advisor and estate planner to billionaires such as Les Wexner (Victoria’s Secret), Leon Black (Apollo Global Management) and, according to the most recent revelations, real estate mogul Mortimer Zuckerman and heiress Ariane de Rothschild. The extraordinary fees he was paid by these people continue to defy explanation. What we do know is how Epstein used this money: as a slush fund for his business of full-time patronage. In his dealings with other elite men, he dangled the promise of financial and sexual favours. His beneficiaries might receive funding for a research unit along with an apparently risk-free visit to the Epstein residence, replete with photo documentation. In exchange, they were expected to secure his access to ever higher circles of influence.

Both financially and sexually, Epstein bound his reputation to those of his beneficiaries. Any damage to his name would inevitably tarnish theirs. For many years, this arrangement translated into virtual legal immunity. In 2008, federal prosecutors failed to press full sex-trafficking charges against him, despite testimony from thirty-six young women.

Epstein styled himself as a patron even to his young female victims. The schoolgirls he picked up in New York were promised funds to cover tuition fees to Ivy League colleges or a good word with the owner of a famous art gallery. Teens from West Palm Beach trailer parks might become professional masseuses, or at the very least full-time recruiters of other girls. (The runaway Giuffre was to receive professional training as a masseuse in the most renowned school in Thailand.) Many victims saw his patronage as a genuine economic alternative. According to the attorney Edwards, several of the victims he represented were abused as children or came from violent homes. Some were genuinely grateful to Epstein for rescuing them from lower-paid sex work.

It wasn’t just the $100 he paid for a first ‘massage’ session – Epstein also promised a career trajectory of sorts. Yet sexual patronage quickly turned into sexual indenture: while generous with his small gifts, he never delivered on the big promises.The point was to keep his victims in a state of permanent indebtedness.

Because Epstein entangled almost anyone he met in proliferating ties of obligation and dependence, the task of assigning blame is unusually fraught. All his household staff were likely complicit, at some level, in his sexual abuse. Many of them must have had direct knowledge of what was going on – the celebrity chef who greeted young women in the kitchen before they went upstairs, the chauffeurs who drove Maxwell around New York as she scouted for school girls, the house keeper who cleaned up bedrooms and bathrooms. Even Epstein’s lowliest victims could allegedly buy their way out of the worst forms of abuse by recruiting other girls. More than one has described the Epstein household economy as an elaborate pyramid scheme, in which participants were encouraged to see themselves as independent contractors – free to run their own ‘small businesses’ in modelling or art as long as they also fulfilled the master’s recruitment needs. At what point did dependent self-interest turn into complicity?

In witness statements to police and prosecutors, victims draw attention to the uncannily familiar rapport that Epstein and Maxwell created amidst the most horrific abuse. One girl ate popcorn and watched Sex in the City with them before her assault. Maxwell, according to another witness, behaved like a cool older sister, inducting her siblings into a world of adult sophistication.

Kinship ties, unlike free market relations, evoke a form of non-contractual obligation – a bond that cannot be readily dissolved in exchange for money. The household economy extends these non-contractual obligations to workers as well as family members, erasing the core distinction between the two (although not the hierarchies within). Former victim Courtney had trouble escaping Epstein because she felt indebted to him as “friend, father figure, employer and master.” Giuffre recounts that Epstein and Maxwell acted like her parents, providing dental care and teaching table manners.

Yet at other times, Virginia was the play-mother, putting Epstein’s socks on in the morning and tucking him into bed at night. “Epstein and Maxwell solidified their power over me by offering a new sort of family,” she writes. “Epstein was the patriarch, Maxwell the matriarch, and these roles were not merely implicit. Maxwell liked to call the girls who regularly serviced Epstein her ‘children’.” The emotional ties that bound her to Epstein felt real: “not love exactly, but I think the right word is fealty.”

The debt, however, was not reversible. Epstein could sever ties with any member of his household at will, but no one, especially not his young victims, could do the same. Giuffre migrated to Australia to get away from her abuser, but remained “scared to death”. Many other women have testified that Epstein and Maxwell threatened to kill them if they attempted to escape or reported their abuse.

The Epstein household may have reached extremes of sadism, but its political economy is becoming less exceptional by the day. When a single individual disposes of more money than a government grant-awarding agency or research university, the impact on knowledge production and academic relations is profound. The same ripple effect can be seen in the service and housing sector, as billionaire compounds begin to shape the fortunes of entire urban economies. Epstein’s household enterprise was no doubt unique in its sheer organisational complexity, but the kind of personal obligation and indebtedness he inspired among dependents is now a standard feature of the billionaire household economy.

This insight helps to clarify the catalytic role that the #MeToo movement played in our current cycle of conservative backlash. It is hard to keep track of the men from across the political spectrum who in recent years have experienced sudden conversions to the Trumpist far right. When asked to explain their change of heart, they repeatedly point to anecdotes of sexual injury that seem too trivial, not to say ludicrous, to have occasioned a sense of world-historical collapse. The apparent discrepancy makes more sense when we recall that #MeToo originated in one particular sector of the film industry – the highly personalised world of the private arthouse studios. As cofounder of Miramax and the Weinstein company LLC, Harvey Weinstein was the product of a peculiar style of founder-controlled partnership in which owner-managers are afforded unchecked power over their staff and clients. The #MeToo movement represented a direct attack on their combined sexual and economic power. It is no surprise that Epstein and Weinstein were friends. Or that men from across the political spectrum reached out to Epstein for advice when dealing with sexual assault allegations in the wake of #MeToo.

Thanks to our growing insight into Epstein’s world, we have gained a clearer picture of the psychic and economic logic of the contemporary far right. Just as Epstein wanted to close off all escape routes to his female victims, Trump and his tech reactionaries want to shut down all alternatives to the household economy and turn the presidency into a founder-controlled family firm. Attacks on the administrative state, the public sector and unions, and the transformation of border control agents into a personal militia can be understood as parts of a broader programme to extend the rule of master and servant to the entire economy. Perhaps if we all become Uber drivers, Amazon third-party sellers, trade contractors to real estate moguls, or academic supplicants to billionaires then the founder will be safe from collective sacrifice?

Epstein’s victims experienced the rule of master and servant not just as economic but sexual violence. They were the first to name and resist our emergent political order.