In this short video, Zoe Sherman talks about two kinds of surveillance carried out by private actors. Neither is new; both have deepened in the COVID-19 era...

In this short video, Zoe Sherman talks about two kinds of surveillance carried out by private actors. One kind is almost inescapable and encompasses all of us but is veiled in the hopes that we won’t notice that we are being surveilled. The other kind is primarily directed at low-wage workers and is designed to intrude on its targets’ consciousness at all times. Neither is new; both have deepened in the COVID-19 era.


Zoe Sherman is an Associate Professor of Economics at Merrimack College and a member of the Dollars & Sense editorial collective. She grew up in the Bronx and has lived in Boston since 1999.

This is Left is a new d@w web series that brings together many voices from across the spectrum of left politics. With this series we hope to elevate left voices that offer progressive perspectives and analyses on how we got here, and perhaps more importantly, how we can move forward.

You can read a full transcript of this video on the website of Dollars & Sense.

Read a review of our book Understanding Marxism by Zoe Sherman. 

Zoe Sherman's Sources:

Allyn, Bobby. 2020. “Your Boss Is Watching You: Work-From-Home Boom Leads to More Surveillance.” National Public Radio May 13. 

Fischer, Sara. 2020. “Social Media Use Spikes During Pandemic.” Axios April 24. 

Forbes. “The World’s Most Valuable Brands.”

Guendelsberger, Emily. 2019. On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Shoshana Zuboff. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs.

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