Control Science by Henry Snow, published by Verso, traces the genealogy of worker control techniques from seventeenth-century Caribbean plantations to contemporary Amazon warehouses. Snow argues that ruling classes have continuously developed new technologies and ideological justifications for domination—from Petty and Locke’s conception of humans as selfish machines requiring external control, through Bentham’s Panopticon, to post-WWII corporate propaganda and algorithmic management. The book examines how these control mechanisms, initially perfected in factories, expanded into governance, economics, and personal life. By blending intellectual, economic, and labor history, Snow demonstrates that contemporary assumptions about work and human nature are historically constructed rather than natural, positioning the work within critical theory traditions examining power, surveillance, and capitalist rationalization. Relevant to post-punk cultural criticism’s engagement with control systems and institutional critique.
Original article published on Verso Books — AI-generated summary.
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