Platforms have the Power… and People can take it

Forth volume of the series I Quaderni di Into the Black Box. It is possible to read and download the full text here.

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Platform Capitalism is not a thing, but a social relation mediated by data elaboration. Paraphrasing the famous definition of Capital did by Karl Marx, we claim that it cannot be fully understood todays’ capitalism if data are not considered in their overbearing role. Indeed, the extractive power of capitalism is today not just conveyed on the «Territories of Extraction» of raw material, to recall an important book published just in 2020 by Martìn Arboleda titled Planetary Mine. As Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson argued, «today we do not just mine coal, nickel, and other raw materials; we also mine data. Moreover, the forms of extraction implicit in data mining and other extractive activities that prey on human sociality are ever more at the edge of capital’s expanding frontiers» (2019). Since capitalism has been “electrionified”, then “digitalized” and finally “platformized”, data have become a source of economic and political power: “the social relation mediated by data elaboration” is today leaded by Big Tech such as Amazon that should be conceived as an economic, social, and political actor holding a power with no precedent in capitalism history.

Since 1990s we lived a process of digitalization that after economic crisis of 2007/08 substantiated into what Nick Srnicek labelled as “Platform Capitalism”. In the following pages scholars approaching the topic from different parts of the World will contribute to inquiry this paradigm. Starting from «the promise of simplicity» that on-demand economy offers (see Hlongwa), authors don’t miss to focus «on the interconnections between e-commerce, financial, and logistics operations» (see Filippetto and Harracà) behind the implementation of digital technologies. This means to consider the infrastructural role of platforms (Berfelde) or the business model that lies behind firms such Amazon (Rispoli), as well as to investigate platform labour since – as Fagioli states – «work organisation is a central issue in reflections on platform capitalism». Thus, in conclusion of the book, we propose “a manifesto for struggling within and against platform capitalism” where we try to sum up in eleven theses not only the main features that characterize platform capitalism today but also the traces for its overcoming. Somehow, then, this book contributes to the debate around platform capitalism and its great expansion in the last years furtherly accelerated after Covid-19. Although literature on digital economy and platform capitalism expanded exponentially since 2007/08’s subprime economic crisis, less attention has been deserved to analyse its origins. We think that properly contextualizing the roots of platform capitalism (or Capitalism 4.0 as we defined it[1]) offers the opportunity to overwhelm the era of “post” (“post-Modernity” or “post-Fordism” more specifically), finally defining the era we are living. Indeed, with this book we would like to furtherly stress that we now properly live in the “platform society” (Van Dijk, Poell, De Waal 2019) or in what we could define as a “platform era” (see, Cuppini, Frapporti, Mezzadra, Pirone 2023), remarking the specific features of contemporary age without any nostalgia or absolutization of the past. As a matter of fact, it is difficult to deny the pervasive dimension of the “platformization” of society in multiple terms: firstly, in term of the hegemonic business model; secondly, considering the infrastructural role of platforms such the GAFAM ones; thirdly, watching at the political role that nowadays platforms perform; fourthly, inspecting the multiple forms of struggles prompted by platform workers; fifthly, studying platform’s tangible role in urban transformations. Even though platform capitalism is not a label to describe contemporary capitalism as a whole since literature started at least twenty years ago to talk in terms of “Varieties of Capitalism” (Hall and Soskice 2001, Peck and Theodore 2007), it seems undeniable that platforms represent a frontier for Capital valorisation’ processes. On the other hand, platform capitalism contains a summary of the multiple proveniences that characterized Capital’ evolution in the last sixty years which are particularly relevant to be investigated.

We want to quickly report some of them starting from the so-called Logistics Revolution. According to a consolidated literature (Allen 1997, Bonacich and Wilson 2008; Cowen 2014) between the Sixties and the Seventies occurred a “revolution” in the logistics sector that drastically changed how capitalism globally performed. Logistics Revolution concerns three big changes within or due to innovation in logistics. First one is the change in the management sector. The very core of the logistics revolution can be explained as Deborah Cowen does: «cost minimization had been replaced with a model that emphasized value added» (Cowen 2014, p. 34). “Circulatory time” of commodities was no more something that burden on the process of plus-value achievement by capitalist: something that – recalling Marx again – should be reduced «close to zero». Rather, from the Sixties on, logistics became draw by a business logic and rationality, thanks to a systemic approach. Until the introduction of such new approach «physical distribution was concerned exclusively with the movement of finished products» (ivi, p. 35). After the Logistics Revolution, attention was focused upon the total action «rather than upon its individual components» (Ibid). Somehow, from the Sixties on distribution and circulation was understood as an element of the production. Second perspective concern technological transformation, which can be emphatically summarized by the development of “containerization”. Container is probably one of the big innovations of the Twentieth century. Despite it firstly appeared in the US in 1928 (see Levinson 2006), the first massive use of containers happened during the Vietnam War in the Sixties. For the commercial use «the first Atlantic crossing by a container ship [was] in 1966» (Cowen 2014, p. 57). Basically, since the “second phase of globalization” burst «goods need to be moved quickly and accurately, at low cost and over great distance» (Bonacich and Wilson 2008, p. 14): the container answers to this purpose thanks to the intramodality it allows. In other words, the idea behind the Logistic Revolution realized through containerization was that «the flow from sale to ordering to production to shipping and to the next sale should occur in one smooth motion (ivi, p. 15). Thirdly, Logistics Revolution contributed to the dismantling of Fordist factory hegemony affecting workers’ political power. To sum up this perspective we could recall the sixth thesis of the “Manifesto of Critical Logistics” we published few years ago: «Therefore the “logistics (counter)revolution” is not just a technical innovation but a political reaction to class insubordination of Fordist workers and to de-colonization processes, forestalling and really building the neoliberal era. It is not coincidence that today’s logistics industry is a world where countless class conflicts are arising inside the more general growing paradigm of struggles in circulation»[2].

After innovation in logistics, in the 80s another “revolution” occurred, this time in the field of retail: Wal-Mart became the new paradigmatic brand of economy roaring «out of an isolated corner of the rural South to become the vanguard of a retail revolution that has transformed the nature of US employment, sent US manufacturing abroad, and redefined the very meaning of globalization» (Lichtenstein 2009, 4). Thanks to Logistics Revolution, retailer power drastically increased. Retailers started telling to «manufactures what consumers were actually buying and therefore what the manufactures should produce, when they should produce it, and, sometimes at what price» (Bonacich and Wilson 2008, p. 6). In some measure, Retail Revolution represents the beginning of the the just in time to the point era, which is a sort of mantra for contemporary capitalists. Before Amazon, Alibaba etc, a paradigmatic example was Wal-Mart, which partially gained (economic) power mining data from their clients. As Bonacich and Wilson put it: «the collection of POS data put power into the hands of the giant retailers. They knew consumers were buying, which prices were most effectively maximizing sales, which products were gaining and losing popularity, and how buying patterns were differing demographically and regionally» (ivi, p. 7-8).

After the neoliberal politics of Regan and Thatcher, the global network society of the 90s (Castelles 2010) witnessed a deep change in the market with the advent of a “Dot-com Revolution” (Becker 2006) bringing actors such as Amazon at the central stage. Furthermore, in 2000 firstly appeared the label of “Digital Capitalism” in a book by Dan Schiller, a historian of information and communications. Within the book, Schiller travelled through internet transformations that from the military realm brought to a deep change in capitalism thanks to the new web spaces. In the wake of digital, in the same years and for the first times appeared labels like sharing economy too. Such labels loosely derived from the so-called Californian Ideology, in which an optimistic, technology-driven future was depicted as a combination between «the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies» (Barbrook and Cameron, 1995). Sharing economy appeared in the first 2000s as «the very core of the most advanced economy» (Benkler 2004) even though it soon revealed its clear capitalist nature. Thus, Dot-com Revolution and Digital Capitalism jointly concurred to shape the new millennium economy that mixed up analogical and digital world like never before. For the first time, the new frontiers of Capital valorisation were pushed beyond the mere analogical sphere.

Eventually, after the 2008 economic crisis, Platform Capitalism (Srnicek 2016) burst onto the scene: a tremendous set of platforms «have penetrated the heart of societies» (Van Dijk, Poell, De Waal 2019, p. 2), quickly defining new ways of consumption as well as new figures of workers (Huws, 2014). Platforms like Airbnb, Uber (and then) Deliveroo, Glovo, Tencent, Rappi etc., came up beside other platforms such Amazon, Google or Facebook. Web was increasingly infrastructurized and platforms gained political power (after the economical one) through web control. In the digital space – an artificial space shaped through code, physical cables places in oceans, under the ground etc. – platforms are becoming hegemonic. Furthermore, work “platformization” reaches another level. Platforms have brought us to a «Jurassic form of labour» (Scholz, 2016) in a new kind of economy (the “sharing economy”) that is all but apparently emerged «almost out of nowhere» (Huws, 2017). Rather, all the features of Platforms Capitalism (both in terms of business and in terms of labour) appear a linear development of the “evolution” of economic system out of the 20th century. We guess, the Covid-19 pandemic sharply shows this.

These four steps brought to the “Platform Era”. We would like to recall at least few aspects that seems particularly intriguing to properly grasps some of its aspects.

First one is the impact on labour. With the spread of platforms, workplaces and work modalities are changing, as well as the distinction between working-time and life-time is blurring: Fagioli’ chapter focusses exactly on some of these aspects. With platform businesses, labour does not disappear but, thanks to the extractive capacity of platforms, is extended and parcelled out. Urban areas as the “new terrain” of labour process as well as forms of self-entrepreneurialism like “playbour” or ranking systems are crucial features to be considered in order to understand platform labour dimensions. The rhetoric of a “gig work” fostered by platforms came precisely from the «promise of simplicity» described by Hlongwa in his chapter.

Second point to highlight is the role of platforms as urban infrastructures. Rabea Berfelde in her chapter brilliantly shows the urban infrastructural role played by Airbnb. Although in most of the literature (such as Srnicek, Van Dijck et al. Etc) platforms like Airbnb are considered “secondary (service) platforms” and so differently from the GAFAM, we wonder if all such platforms can be interpreted in an infrastructural sense too for at least two reasons: on one hand, they infrastructurize “digital space” precisely as the GAFAM ones; on the other hand, they are embedded into “contemporary governance” concurring to frame the “Stack” that govern today social life (see Bratton 2015). In her chapter, Rispoli shows the advantages that platforms like Amazon gain in being on an infrastructural position in multiple terms. Quoting Rispoli: «building an infrastructural core is the factor that allowed the Big Fives (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google Alphabet) to construct their ecosystems and to guarantee their prominence within the market, lowering the prices, not only favoured the network effects, but also the enhancement of exploitation of workers – at various stages of production, distribution, and circulation» (see infra).

Eventually we would like to stress how urban has become a value-added space. With the focus on MercadoLibre’s (MeLi) operations, Filippetto and Harracà offer a plastic demonstration.  Since cities are the terrain of platform valorisation, platforms themselves are keen to influence city government, doing so through their enormous access to data. With such platforms conditioning city policies, scholars start to talk about «data driven governmentality» referring to the way smart city are governed (Vanolo 2014). As an example, we could recall the Lisbon case, whose municipality adopted a series of protocols with micro-mobility service companies (such as Uber) to co-create new urban planning. However, these agreements soon fell apart due to the scarcity of data shared by the companies, which turned directly to the national government: it seems a further demonstration on the power of platform to choose even the most suitable level of administration to deal with.

Last chapter of the book is the «Manifesto for struggling within and against Platform Capitalism». As a proper Manifesto we try to travers two different layer: on descriptive and one propositional. On one hand, we address eleven topics tangled by platforms that we «see as the characteristics – and contradictions – of the new era». Power, Infrastructure, Finance, Metropolis 4.0, Algorithmic subjectivities etc. are all features that characterize contemporary “platformized society” and the transformation brought by it. On the other hand we try to address this question: «what alternatives do the contradictions of these transformations give us?». The peculiarities of “platform society” are tackled within the Manifesto with the precise aim to glimpse the traces of a possible different future «towards a world of plenty for all!».

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[1] Cfr. Into the Black Box (ed. By), Capitalismo 4.0. Genealogie della rivoluzione digitale. Roma, Meltemi.

[2] http://www.intotheblackbox.com/manifesto/critical-logistics-a-manifesto/