The Process of Valorization in the Platform Capitalism (original) (raw)

In this essay, I use two different words to express the concept of productive human activity. The first is the Latin term 'labor', whose etymology means 'pain', 'punishment', 'torture', 'suffering'. The second one is the term 'opus', again from Latin, which means creative activity that unleashes the human being's capacity for doing and thinking. The concept of 'labor' is assimilable to the Marxian concept of 'abstract labour', it is the human activity that produces 'exchange value' and is the pivot around which capitalistic wealth creation evolves. By contrast, the concept of 'opus' is assimilable to the Marxian concept of 'concrete labour', able to produce 'use value' for the immediate satisfaction of human needs and dreams. In the capitalist system of production, 'labour' is remunerated and codified since it is considered 'productive', while 'opus' in most cases is free (unpaid) activity, not capable of generating wealth for the economic system (surplus value). Therefore, when referring to capitalist production, only the term 'labour' is used. Conversely, the term 'opus' together with the term 'otium' does not imply capitalist activity. The central theme of contemporary capitalism, which, according to some scholars, can be defined as bio-cognitive capitalism, 1 is precisely the attempt to overcome this dichotomy, deconstructing the capital-labour relationship as we have known it since the industrial and French revolution of the late eighteenth century until today. 1 The debate on the analysis of the valorisation and accumulation processes of capitalism in the new millennium is very wide-ranging and has given rise to different definitions: digital capitalism, platform capitalism, financial capitalism, cognitive capitalism, bio-cognitive capitalism. The term bio-cognitive capitalism is, in the writer's opinion, the most comprehensive as it takes into account the role of life, social relations and knowledge as relevant inputs for wealth creation. This process of valorisation today tends increasingly to be structured through an organisation of platforms and thus gives rise to platform capitalism. For more details, see Fumagalli (2018a).