Economic political analysis of surveillance policies in the context of capitalist production model

From the advent of the first factories that marked the beginning of capitalism, surveillance and monitoring practices have become integral to the capitalist mode of production for the continuation of material production. Forcefully dispossessed old peasants and new group of workers was forced to sell their labor that resulted with the emergence of wage labour which came up with various control mechanisms. In this context, both internal and external surveillance practices have been implemented to monitor labor force and to preserve the regime of property ownership. The labor regime, which have undergone through some changes with Neoliberalism, and advancements in technology have freed surveillance technologies from physical constraints that leads it to permeate every single aspect of everyday practices. Individuals, groups, and societies find themselves under surveillance by corporations, employers, and governments. Surveillance has multiple functions ranging from monitoring production process, monitoring society, collecting intelligence both domestically and internationally, providing data for personalized advertising, and supplying data for political propaganda campaigns. Mainstream surveillance studies mainly focus on a single dimension of the concept, therefore, fail to recognize the contextual relation and interactions within the surveillance. Economy politic perspective, which is the theoretical framework of this thesis, provides a comprehensive approach to inquire surveillance fully within in its context. This thesis will examine the role of surveillance policies for the survival and spread of the capitalist mode of production from various levels.