Birthplace of Silicon Valley. Home to over 69,700 residents. Global center of technology and innovation.

Although the city is number 10 in Niche’s Best Suburbs to Live in California, people like Palo Alto High School alum Malcolm Harris are critical of the city’s role as the center of capitalism globally.

Harris’s new book “Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World” — published on Feb. 14 — traces back as far as Palo Alto colonialistic beginnings to examine the city’s history.

Palo Alto book

According to Harris, his book is best described by the subheading: “a history of California capitalism in the world.”

“It’s about the modern era from the second half of the 19th century to today, told through the lens of Palo Alto, California, but in a bulk context,” Harris said.

Through his book, Harris said he seeks to highlight that California’s history is shorter than many Palo Altans believe, pulling specific events from history to showcase Palo Alto’s role in capitalism.

“The history we’re talking about is not ancient history,” Harris said. “The world system under which we live is only 150 plus years old. It’s not ancient, and we should see ourselves in that context and the specific historical context, not an existential context.”

In the book, Harris states that Palo Alto leaders are responsible for the exploitation of middle-class workers, especially those of color, and thus the development of practices like eugenics. According to Harris, the capitalist mindset in Palo Alto only benefits existing millionaire leaders while giving false hope to laborers, magnifying the capitalist system.

Malcolm Harris

Harris began his writing career at Paly’s Campanile, where he was an editor-in-chief.

“The journalism education definitely helped me write for a deadline and edit,” Harris said. “I took it really seriously.”

Since graduating from Paly in 2007, Harris has published three books, the third of which is “Palo Alto,” which he said was prompted by an urge to write about the city he grew up in.

“So much of my connection to the world is mediated through Palo Alto and Palo Alto history,” Harris said. “So it [writing a book about Palo Alto] seemed like a good way to understand my place in the world.”

According to Harris, he started the book at the beginning of 2020, and although the pandemic limited Harris’s access to physical sources, it allowed him the time to indulge himself in research for hours on end.

“I would get a big stack of books and take it to the park and read a stack of books all day,” Harris said. “I had a complicated system for annotating them so I could find my notes later when I was writing particular sections.”

Utilizing his notes from these physical sources as well as archive.org, Google Books and other online resources for information such as periodicals from the 70s and 80s, Harris continued researching until he finished his final draft.

“I researched a little bit, wrote the proposal, researched more, wrote an outline and then researched more as I continued to actually start writing,” Harris said. “But I was still researching down to the final days, [and] still pulling in new information.”

Because of the continued influx of new information, the book ended up longer than he had originally pitched.

“When I sold the book, it wasn’t supposed to be this long,” Harris said. “I had to convince my editor that ‘Hey, this is going to be 700 pages long,’ which I was able to do. It was lucky [and] I’m still sort of surprised.”

Community reactions

Harris’s placement of blame on Palo Alto is disagreed with by many Palo Altans, including Ariane Erickson, whose family has been living in the city for 50 years.

“I’ve had a very positive perspective of what it’s like to grow up in Palo Alto and to raise kids in Palo Alto and to pursue a career in Palo Alto,” Erickson said. “It has its problems but overall I feel as though it’s really one of the best places in the world to live.”

Although Erickson agrees that capitalism is not perfect, she believes that Harris overlooks the well-intended businesses in Silicon Valley that seek to provide solutions to problems of the world such as climate change and unemployment.

“Clean tech in particular is something that I’m very thankful for that has been very powerful and strong here in Palo Alto and in Silicon Valley that really truly is creating solutions to climate change and other also other non-environmental problems as well,” Erickson said. “So there’s a lot of good that’s happening from the franchise that lives here.”

Erickson also acknowledges the dark history of eugenics and redlining in Palo Alto, but believes Harris overemphasizes problems caused by only a small percentage of the city’s population.

“We didn’t escape the mistakes that people made in the past,” Erickson said. “But I think that the people who live and work in and for the city now are very liberal minded and are willing and interested in creating a more equitable future for Palo Alto.”