Author Archives: Henry Snow

Henry Snow is a social and political historian of labor. Their work examines the relationship between labor as a material process, a social experience, and a political battleground. Currently they are working on two books. Enemies of Order: Labor and Power at the Atlantic Dockside, with the University of Georgia Press, connects revolution, mechanization, and abolition through the collective action of port laborers across the British Atlantic. They are also writing, with Verso Books, an intellectual and political history of labor discipline entitled Control Science: From Bentham to Bezos. It argues that economic thought has co-developed with labor discipline practices from the 17th-century to the present. Henry has contributed to Jacobin magazine and also writes a newsletter on Substack.

“Work together, eat bread together”: Stardew Valley and the Dream of the Commons

“There will come a day,” proclaims the player character’s grandfather in the popular video game Stardew Valley, “when you feel crushed by the burden of modern life . . . and your bright spirit will fade before a growing emptiness.” Several centuries before the game’s release, 17th-century English radical Gerrard Winstanley explained that the English peasant “looks upon himself as imperfect, and so is dejected in his spirit, and looks upon his fellow Creature of his own Image, as a Lord above him.” Winstanley and Grandpa propose similar solutions: farming. Modernity is the “thieving power” of the landlord and the insipid consumerism of Stardew’s Joja Corporation—an obvious Amazon analog, down to the eerie smile in its logo and the resigned but-the-prices-are-so-low loyalty its uneasy customers display. The farm, by contrast, is a place for spiritual regeneration via hard work. Grandpa sends you there to grow crops and tend animals, while Winstanley’s Digger movement began cultivating land together. (read more...)