Sundays beginning August 9th at 2 PM EST.

To register, sign up for the group’s mailing list here. This reading group is open to the public.

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Nothing has had a comparable social, cultural, and political-economic impact over the past decades to that of the digital revolution and the beginnings of the internet age. From its birth at the hands of the military complex as a tool of surveillance, to the rise of social media and the monopolization of online life, to the uncanny spectre of AI and the automation of intellectual labor: all that is solid has melted into the algorithmic vapors at a vertiginous pace. What does big tech mean for the present and future of capitalism? Has tech entrenched the dominance of rent-seeking at the expense of productive enterprise characteristic of neo-liberal finance capital? And if so, is there any truth to reports of neo-feudalism supplanting industry and leading to a new mode of production (along with a new super-structure atop a base of microchips and credit)? Join Class Unity as we study the economic and social juggernaut that is Silicon Valley, as without understanding the unprecedented dimensions of global capitalism in the 21^st century, the present moment with its bewildering problems lies totally in the dark. 

Session One: Introduction

• Karl Marx:
  • Capital Vol III, chapter 48: “The Trinity Formula“
  • Capital Vol III, chapter 52: “Classes”
  • [Optional] “The Fragment on Machines“

Session Two: History of Silicon Valley

• Yasha Levine: Surveillance Valley, “Part I“

Session Three: Political Economy of Platforms

• Shoshana Zuboff:
  • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: “Introduction“
  • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, chapter 3: “The Discovery of Behavioral Surplus“
  • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, chapter 8: “Rendition: From Experience to Data“
• Evgeny Morozov: “Capitalism’s New Clothes“

Session Four: Ideology of Silicon Valley

• Alex Karp: “The Technological Republic“
• Peter Thiel: Zero to One, chapter 3, 4: “The Ideology of Competition”
• Barbrook and Cameron: “The Californian Ideology“
• [Optional] Satoshi Nakamoto: “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System“
• [Optional] Marc Andreeson: “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto“

Session Five: Neofeudalism

• Ashima Mittal & Daniel Burnfin: “Feudalism 2.0?” 
• Michael Hudson: “The Road to Debt Deflation, Debt Peonage, and Neofeudalism“
• [Optional] Jodi Dean: “Same As It Ever Was”

Session Six: AI

• 3Blue1Brown: “Large Language Models Explained Briefly”
• Evgeny Morozov: “The AI We Deserve”
• Wendy Liu: “Whose Values”

Optional / Recommended:

Cedric Durand: “How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism”