Philipp Staab
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Work in digital capitalism
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Chapter 5 examines the consequences of proprietary markets for labour. Two points in particular are stressed: first, market-owning companies use their power to extract value from the economy and especially from the supply side of proprietary markets. Producers within these systems come to depend more and more on the market-like meta-platforms, which can then increase the proportion they extract. As a consequence, the share taken by the meta-platforms for market participation is missing on the external provider’s revenue income side and cannot be distributed in wages. Digital capitalism’s accumulation model is thus a driver of social inequality. Second, the chapter uses material case studies and the broader literature to demonstrate how algorithmic management methods are applied to expand control and exploitation in the digital labour process. The digital tracking, performance rating, scoring technologies and information asymmetries employed for labour control are captured as filiations of the control strategies developed for proprietary markets. The chapter elaborates their dissemination through new business models and in particular the ‘gig economy’, through corporate software and through wearable technologies in manufacturing. While the bottom line is that the new means of control are again drivers of social inequality, day-to-day resistance strategies and the limitations of digital control are also discussed.

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