A weekly newsletter from a socialist perspective on economics, inequality, and the late capitalist dystopia that is Silicon Valley.
Personal news
My book has a subtitle! Abolish Silicon Valley: How To Liberate Technology From Capitalism coming to a bookstore near you sometime in 2020, courtesy of Repeater Books.
I initially had much more dramatic subtitles in mind, including âgreed and disruption in the ruins of late capitalismâ, but Repeater gently steered me away from that. The new subtitle is eminently more sensible, in hindsight.
Fragments round-up
How to avoid the misappropriation of unions (day 83): An illustrated guide for those concerned that they're too privileged to join a union.
Lyft is the best capitalism has to offer (day 84): Boots Riley's 2018 film 'Sorry To Bother You' is not just a piece of speculative fiction - it depicts a dystopian future that's already here.
Tech startup valuations are dumb, part 1 (day 85): McDonald's $300m purchase of Dynamic Yield captures how startup valuations have become increasingly unmoored from any desirable reality.
Rent-seeking as a service (day 86): The geniuses of Silicon Valley have become the thing they fear the most: tax collectors.
The rise of the Instagram influencer (day 87): And what it says about our economic system.
The envy of the failed entrepreneur (day 88): One easy trick to counter criticism of a social system: by dismissing the critics as being motivated by jealousy, rather than reason.
Art should be free (day 89): Free art is not something that can be achieved in the here-and-now, but the demand makes a political statement about the kind of world we want to live in.
Recommended content
đ° Means TV: âan anti-capitalist on-demand digital streaming platform launching in late 2019â (Netflix for the left!). Sorely needed imo. Some coverage in The Intercept, and an interview with the founders (who worked on AOCâs campaign video) in Jacobin.
đAntifada episode featuring Kim Stanley Robinson: Also featuring Will Menaker of Chapo Trap House. I loved Robinsonâs insights on sci-fi, utopian imaginaries, and socialism. As one of the hosts mentions on the show, itâs amazing how much Robinsonâs work in speculating futures is deeply entwined with a rigorous understanding of political economy and society today, influenced by teachers like Fredric Jameson and Ursula K Le Guin. (I havenât actually read any of his fiction yet, but itâs high on my list now.) Robinson also makes some thoughtful comments on why we shouldnât be too attached to âsocialismâ as a nameââif we get a good political economy, maybe itâll need a new nameââor even to the entirety of the ideaââ[we should consider] destranding the toolkit [to find] the defining characteristics of socialism: which ones are crucial and necessary, which are accidental and historical. How do we apply the former to the current moment weâre already in? Because we donât get to have a fresh start.â
đ Forget Your Middle-Class Dreams: Alex Press for Jacobin responds to that Kickstarter anti-union memo (see also: this fragment). This stellar piece is an exhortation for white-collar workers to choose the side of their fellow workers, drawing on Erik Olin Wrightâs concept of âcontradictory class locationâ and a pamphlet created by a 1930âs left wing group: "Noting white-collar workersâ immiseration â âThere are teachers in the bread lines, engineers patching the sheet-iron sheds in the âHoovervillesââ â the pamphlet articulated a dividing line for this group. Their choice was âbetween serving either as the cultural lieutenants of the capitalist class or as allies and fellow travelers of the working class.â There are two sides, it argued. Pick one." This paragraph sums up the piece nicely: âBuilding power for blue- (and pink-) collar workers requires building working-class power everywhere. Unionizing one workplace makes it easier to unionize another. It builds up unionsâ coffers. It strengthens a culture of unionism, something desperately in need of a comeback when union membership in the United States stands at a lowly 10.7 percent. Plus, at their best, unions are vehicles for building working-class power as a class, rather than just interest groups looking out for their membersâ interests â weâre far from that vision of unionism, but we wonât get anywhere near it without rebuilding the labor movement. We need more unions, not less.â
đ Workers for Workers: contingent workers at Facebook share their stories anonymously. These stories brutally illustrate the harsh reality of life on the bottom end of Silicon Valleyâs two-tier employment system. As this post by âCamilaâ says: âI didnât understand what it meant to be a contingent worker until my first day at Facebook. During orientation, they repeatedly emphasized that we werenât âactualâ Facebook employees. I was told by my contracting agency, after asking for clarification multiple times, that I was âcontract-to-hireâ. They phrased it as going from a contracting position to a full-time position after a 3 month period, like a probation period. I thought that if I really kicked ass at my role for 3 months, then I would have it made as a full-time employee of Facebook.â The post ends with: âI am done dealing with Facebook's two-faced behavior, talking big words about the good of the global community while crushing tens of thousands of contingent workers across the very same globe under its heel.â The site has 3 stories so far, and itâs worth keeping an eye on if youâre interested in labour conditions in the tech industry.
đ âOrganize or Dieâ: Kooper Caraway Ushers in a New Labor Movement: An article by Rebecca Zweig for The Nation, profiling the 28-year-old president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO. Some great takeaways about why organising is such an urgent task for younger generations (âBy the time weâd hypothetically be old enough to collect Social Security, we wonât be able to breathe the air or drink the water, and nothing will grow from the ground. We know that itâs organize or die.â) and the importance of internationalism (âThe largest corporations and the richest folks in the world donât recognize borders and neither should the unions. If we implement a working-class solidarity that runs across all borders, thereâs nowhere for the corporations to go.â).
đ A Design for Life: How Platforms Are Weaving Their Way Into the Fabric of Capitalism: James Meadway (former economics advisor to John McDonnell) writes for Novara Media about this weekâs Apple announcements, contextualising them within the new direction of travel for global capitalism. (This is a topic Iâll be writing more about in the future, too: the fact that Apple, not content with declining growth for hardware sales, is encroaching on more virtual ways of making money tells us something about the latest stage of capitalism.) As Meadway writes: âAs profits become harder to find through the textbook route of investment and the creation of new markets (whether for goods or services), capitalism in general is turning towards various forms of rent-seeking. Itâs significantly easier to enforce property rights on what has been created elsewhere, and demand tribute for access, than it is go through the costly and risky business of creating new value yourself.â
đ Evaluating scholarship, or why I wonât be teaching Shoshana Zuboffâs The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: An interesting critique of Zuboffâs book on surveillance capitalism from an academic perspective, by Blayne Haggarty of Brock University. Haggarty draws on Evgeny Morozovâs critical review of Zuboffâs work for The Baffler, which came out earlier this month and which I am ashamed to say I still havenât read (itâs really long!). The argument boils down to the fact that Zuboff 1) does not cite work she should have; and 2) maintains a limited analytical framework that places too much emphasis on âsurveillanceâ and not enough on âcapitalismâ. Iâm not really in the world of academia anymore (and will hopefully never be again), so 1) isnât my biggest concern, but Iâm sympathetic to 2). h/t to Daniel Joseph for sharing this link.
đ Catalyst Vol 2 No 4: Not exactly a book, but the latest issue of Catalyst has some really good stuff. I really liked Suzy Leeâs âThe Case for Open Bordersâ. Nicole Aschoffâs review of GĂ©rard DumĂ©nil and Dominique LĂ©vyâs recent book on managerial capitalism was interesting, though I donât know that I agree with her dismissal of the potential of highly-paid professionals: âWhy would someone making half a million dollars a year side with someone making thirty thousand? A shared belief in meritocracy?â But isnât the whole point of politics that oneâs political views are not wholly determined by material conditions? Itâs obviously not easy to build that kind of solidarity between vastly different types of workers, and it might not even be necessary in the long run, but that doesnât mean itâs impossible. The burgeoning tech worker movementâwhich, yes, does include people making half a million dollarsâis a potential force to the contrary. We canât know in advance what techniques and strategies will work, so we might as well try anything that will push us in the right direction.