Uberization Political Economy: Worker Exploitation Regarding Three Forms of Work Intermediation in Platform Companies (original) (raw)
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Theory and Society, 2023
Marx conceives of capitalism as a production mode based on the exploitation of labour-power, whose productive consumption in the labour process is considered as the main source of value creation. Capitalists seek to obscure and secure workers' contribution to the production process, whereas workers strive to have their contribution fully recognized. The struggle between capitalists and workers over labourtime is thus central to capital's valorization process. Hence, capital-labour antagonism is structured over the capture and exploitation of unpaid labour-time. Building on Marx's labour value theory, as well as on some of its contemporary interpretations, I call this struggle over labour-time capture a process of 'invisibilization' of labour. I claim that this invisibilization process is still a relevant form of surplusvalue extraction in contemporary capitalism, especially in the platform economy, characterized by remote but pervasive control by algorithms. The rediscovery of this form of surplus-value extraction and its manifestation in platform labour is the main contribution of this study. To corroborate this contribution, I compare the case of platform labour with that of textile-clothing, where value production is more clearly based on the classical forms of surplus-value extraction (i.e., absolute and relative). This comparison helps to cast a new light on the nexus between work-process transformations and surplus-value creation, which is the core of the Marxian labour theory of value, and which-I argue-is crucial to understanding contemporary capitalist developments.
Digital Labour in the Platform Economy: The Case of Facebook
The aim of the paper is to analyse the features of the digital labour connected with the so-called platform economy. Many platform-based business models rely on a new composition of capital capable of capturing personal information and transforming it into big data. Starting with the example of the Facebook business model, we explain the valorisation process at the core of platform capitalism, stressing the relevance of digital labour, to clarify the crucial distinction between labour and work. Our analysis differs from Fuchs and Sevignani's thesis about digital work and digital labour and seems consistent with the idea that Facebook extracts a rent from the information produced by the free labour of its users.
Uberization of labor and capitalist accumulation
First papel of a greater research. The development of the productive forces appropriated by capital, combined with the context of changes on sociocultural relations that encompasses the spheres of production and consumption, has enabled the rise of the phenomenon of uberization of labor, a term derived from the way the company Uber is organized. This phenomenon is usually associated with the business of so-called sharing economy, and it opens the debate to the specificities of the structuring categories of capitalist accumulation that encompass online labor relations. This article lays the theoretical basis to advocate for the following argument: the uberization of labor represents a particular capitalist accumulation, by producing a new form of mediation of the subsumption of the worker, which takes on the responsibility for the main means of production in the productive activity. Based on the Marxian theoretical contribution, a critical analysis about the phenomenon of uberization is presented, which is intrinsically related to the innovative forms of management, while it also acts to intensify the work precariousness.
Capital and Labour in Times of "Floating Signifiers". The (False) Debate on the "New Economy" in the Uber Case. Economia&Lavoro, 2018, II, pp. 63-73-, 2018
This article sets out to examine how recent transformation technologies have modified society and social patterns. The new approach, the “new economy” model, hinges upon a new paradigm of relationships between “users” in the digital economy, based on the independent contractor status. This article focuses on the working relationships in the Uber case and on the working conditions of its “riders”, who are nevertheless workers. Moreover, the analysis wants to go in depth into their legal qualification, their working conditions, and the level of control exerted by the platform. The aim is to verify whether “independent” relationships between “actors” are part of the “4.0 revolution” and of the opportunities it reportedly offers in terms of wealth, or whether they are rather a legal way to escape labour law standards and regulation. These arguments could lead to the conclusion that the practice implemented in the case examined is fraudulent. They could also entail that the approaches aimed at reshaping the traditional paradigms of labour in the new economy are not acceptable, at least in the Uber case, as this article attempts to demonstrate.
Digital Platforms and the Transformations in the Division of Labor
This chapter analyses the labor transformations linked to the platform economy from a sociological perspective, applying one of the categories best established in the literature, namely the division of labor. The first section describes the main characteristics of digital platforms, with particular attention to lean digital work platforms. The three subsequent sections interpret the transformations linked to the spread of digital platforms, based on the concept of socioeconomic formation of labor propounded by Miriam Glucksmann and articulated in division of labor in the strict sense, total social organization of labor, and instituted economic processes. The final section summarizes the main tensions that emerges between: job searching via open and inclusive platforms and forms of labor organization that create strongly polarized markets; different platform models, ranging from the most extractive types of market to collaborative economy models, which are also related to urban governance; forms of prosumerism linked to the activation and involvement of the consumer and the (self-)exploitation of free labor; and also to a new kind of value extraction from the data produced unconsciously by the platform users.
Work and Consumption in Digital Capitalism: From Commodity Abstraction to 'Eidetisation
2018
The digital sphere can be studied as one of the most mature materialisations of the process of abstraction that accompanies capitalism. It is also a framework where subjectivity internalises the abstract form of commodities even further. In this sense, the Internet is the home of an abstract nature that is linked to a particular reification process that characterises post-Fordist production and consumption. This process can be named “eidetisation”. My basic assumption is that the process of reification is being intensified with the digitalisation of the capitalist system. I will begin discussing the concept of reification as a specific form of alienation, stressing that the reification of society changes and intensifies in as much as capitalist production and consumption evolve. Then I will consider the process of abstraction as one of the main elements of reification. Finally, I will try to identify some distinctive traits within the process of “eidetisation”.
Towards a political economy of platform-mediated work
Studies in Political Economy, 2020
Platform-mediated work, characterized as digital intermediation between workers and buyers of labour service, most famously exemplified by Uber, reveals how the transformation of the forces of production is reshaping relations of production. Using a political economy approach, this article takes us behind market exchanges between workers, platform operators, and clients to examine who extracts surplus value from workers, and how. It identifies two distinct models based on whether labour is performed locally on the ground or through the cloud.
The Process of Valorization in the Platform Capitalism
Springer eBooks, 2024
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).
To exploit and dispossess: The twofold logic of platform capitalism
Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, 2021
This paper addresses the relation between capital and digital labour in the context of so-called platform capitalism. Based on the taxonomy proposed by A. Casillion-demand labour, crowdwork or microwork, and social media labour-I argue that the concept of exploitation is not sufficient to fully account for the logic of platform capitalism, as it only makes up one of its dimensions. The other central dimension is that which targets data capture, which I call, using Harvey's term, 'dispossession'. Far from proposing a fixed delimitation of the concept of labour, I argue that the two dimensions operate together and, in many cases, it is difficult to isolate them, but they do demand the invention of different political strategies.
Uberization of labor and Marx’s Capital
Revista Katálysis, 2021
In the last decade, we saw the expansion of digital platforms and decentralized and freelance labor relations in the global capitalist economy. This combination has been called Gig Economy and its specific labor relation Uberization. This process is directly link to the intensification of work, working day expansion, low remuneration, absence of labor rights and amplification of indirect control over the labor process. Although this phenomenon appears as something new, considering Marx's analysis of piece-wage in Capital, it's possible to see the very features and consequences of Uberization. The remuneration, be it by hour or piece/gigs, no alters the essential nature of labor relations in capitalism. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to identify that Marx's Capital already anticipated this tendency of capitalist economy and traced the main consequences of Uberization of labor.