Modern false consciousness stems from control over learning, not class position

Evidence

In this way instrumentarian power produces endlessly accruing knowledge for surveillance capitalists and endlessly diminishing freedom for us as it continuously renews surveillance capitalism’s domination of the division of learning in society. False consciousness is no longer produced by the hidden facts of class and their relation to production but rather by the hidden facts of instrumentarian power’s command over the division of learning in society as it usurps the rights to answer the essential questions: Who knows? Who decides? Who decides who decides? Power was once identified with the ownership of the means of production, but it is now identified with ownership of the means of behavioral modification that is Big Other. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1204

Categorization

• XREF: Directly revisits the Marxist false-consciousness concept from the book’s earlier critique-of-postmodernism strands; reframing means of production to means of behavioral modification parallels the reader’s surveillance-economy reading purpose. — connects to: Learning reduces uncertainty that is what motivated deference to humans — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 1294; Control deprivation triggers compensatory superstitious and conspiratorial thinking. — Dmitrij Agroskin and Eva Jonas, Controlling death by defending…, 23
• DEFINE: Defines how instrumentarian power relocates the locus of domination from production to the division of learning.
• DEEPTHINKING: Compresses the book’s entire thesis into a single reformulation of false consciousness and power — the move from ‘means of production’ to ‘means of behavioral modification’ is dense enough to sit with.

Broader Connections

• Learning reduces uncertainty that is what motivated deference to humans #complicates (0.75) — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 1294