The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

by Shoshana Zuboff

Durkheim’s vision was neither sterile nor naive. He recognized that things can take a dark turn and often do, resulting in what he called an “abnormal” (sometimes translated as “pathological”) division of labor that produces social distance, injustice, and discord in place of reciprocity and interdependency. In this context, Durkheim singled out the destructive effects of social inequality on the division of labor in society, especially what he viewed as the most dangerous form of inequality: extreme asymmetries of power that make “conflict itself impossible” by “refusing to admit the right of combat.” Such pathologies can be cured only by a politics that asserts the people’s right to contest, confront, and prevail in the face of unequal and illegitimate power over society. In the late nineteenth century and most of the twentieth century, that contest was led by labor and other social movements that asserted social equality through institutions such as collective bargaining and public education.