book:Palo Alto, A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, Malcolm Harris
If I am being entirely honest, I can't do Malcolm Harris' Palo Alto justice in a review. The book clocks in at about 726 pages from the start of the introduction to the end of the afterword. As stated on the back, its a whirlwind tour "over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism" in Silicon Valley. There is a lot of ground to cover, and Harris spends time ensuring the local history gets woven into the fabric of world history. After all, they're not detached ... history changes the Valley, and the Valley has exported its gig-economies, its grindsets, its "lean" contractor-dependent business models, its "move fast and break things" and "ask for forgiveness, not permission" individualistic philosophy worldwide.
With careful forceps, Harris presses in to the tangle and excises individuals not as drivers of history, as per Great Man Theory, but as "slack-limbed puppets who have nailed their hands to ... historical forces. Butterflies pinning themselves to the most opportune spots in the glass display box." Exploiters who saw the privilege involved in subsuming their being into capitalism, colonialism. And he reads the rhymes — of the popular villains being puppets and fall guys, following the demands of an organized collective of capitalist buddies. In doing so, Harris shines a spotlight on the engineers of our circumstances who tend to get away with it (in a sense) more than their peers...
Leland Stanford, who as a hobbyist horse breeder developed the ethos of pushing young foals to their limit to weed out the weak as soon as possible ...
When you get several yearlings to trot quarters in 0:40, and two-year-olds to show you a 2:20 gait, you must not be surprised if some tendon snaps.
Leslie Macleod, on Stanford's racehorse breeding and rearing.
If he goes wrong at two years old he will be a cheaper failure than if he goes wrong at ten years old.
Charles Marvin, on why Stanford's horse-rearing involved such cruelty.
Lewis Terman, David Starr Jordan, and William Shockley, pioneering the eugenics-field of "bionomics", extending Stanford's horse-business-philosophy to the classroom.
Herbert Hoover, pioneer of the business model of the USA distributing foreign aid in a way that makes others reliant on them, that bolsters anticommunists, that starves leftists. "The miracles of finance could turn stinginess into heroism."
The abundant racism of many unions, aligning with the bosses against the "threat" of nonwhite workers. The vigilante white-supremacist "justice" that nonwhite folks legally could not defend themselves from, that has continued in its multifarious ways and is still present.
The fact that the Silicon Valley suburbs exploded in wealth from the engineering jobs related to weapons manufacturing and research.
Peter Thiel, whose grandparents were aligned with the Nazis and who was enriched by South Africa's Apartheid, who desires what his ancestors had, who has funded Palantir, SpaceX, and others, the war on "political correctness", and JD Vance, Trump, Ted Cruz, name after name, "essentially [Thiel's] employees". The book was published in 2022. The trajectory it traces tracks directly to the 2024 USA presidential election.
The thing hauling itself out of the USian suburbs "a metal-plated vengeance fantasy, reflecting the mentality of a bullied child..." motivated by a perceived fall from grace as these figures lose the privileges they gained by subjugating the poor, the non-white, "a structure of personal resentment collected on a thread of historical resentment like sugar crystals on a dangled string."
To the new round of capital-drenched rocket-boys, the earth is but a launchpad for interstellar capitalism. It's analogous to their view of humanity as a starting point for a better, faster, and longer-lasting post-humanity... People tasked with the historical role of exhausting the earth have to be able to convince themselves of something similar; otherwise they would stop. That would free up spots for people who won't.
& as opponents to these extensions-of-capitalism, Harris names and celebrates the people who have fought back. I can't hope to name them all, but I must not let them go unmentioned. Harris spends effort to ensure they do not. Silicon Valley is a place haunted by past cruelty and exploitation, and over the decades there have been people seeking to soothe history's festering wounds.
The book begins and ends with the Ohlone. Harris morphs the suburb of Palo Alto as an engine driving the world down its destructive path. To stop the machine, he says: Land Back. "It is American Indigenous internationalists who have been most eager to assume the burden [of healing]" ... the colonial tendrils must withdraw. "Palo Alto" , or "Silicon Valley" , or "The USA" cannot be changed, they will not be changed, that much has been proven ... so they must be ripped free of the land. Former Muwekma tribal chair Rosemary Cambra saw developers moving to dig up a gravesite and so hit consulting archaeologist William Roop over the head with a shovel.
No matter what the feds say, there is only so long you can decline to recognize someone who is hitting you with a shovel.
this review has been endorsed by the neighbor's cat, Rocky.
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