tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society

The Transformative Potential of Platform Cooperativism: The Case of CoopCycle

Vangelis Papadimitropoulos — 2024-01-04

The paper sets out to dissolve a contrast between traditional coop sectoral enclosure, on the one hand, and platform coop diversity, on the other hand, which often resonates with precariousness, marginalisation, fragmentation, whitewashing and corporatisation. To tackle traditional and platform coop discordance, the paper draws on the model of open cooperativism introduced by Vasilis Kostakis and Michel Bauwens, passed through the lens of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory of hegemony, to weave a narrative that seeks to unite and broaden the scope of the cooperative sector. In doing so, the paper reviews CoopCycle as an illustrative case study of platform cooperativism. CoopCycle is a global federation of bike delivery coops that deploy the digital commons to install workplace democracy in the bike delivery sector. The paper aims at contributing to the understanding of platform cooperativism, all the while embedding the model of platform cooperativism into the counter-hegemony of open cooperativism aiming to challenge the current hegemony of neoliberalism. The main argument here is that the model of open cooperativism bears comparative advantages vis-à-vis closed proprietary socio-economic models.

Development of Media Technologies as “New Media” from the Perspective of a Critique of the Political Economy of the Media

Manfred Knoche — 2024-02-06

This paper analyses the emergence and development of new media technologies based on the approach of the Critique of the Political Economy of the Media.
First, a critical overview of approaches to the genesis and diffusion of technologies is given. Second, the connection between media technologies and capital accumulation is discussed. Third, the role of media technologies in capitalism as a means of investment, production, distribution, and consumption is analysed. Fourth, the connection between innovation, commodity aesthetics, and planned obsolescence is discussed. Fifth, the antagonistic character of the media system’s convergence, universalisation and diversification is shown. The article shows that technological development is not autonomous but depends on and is shaped by the development of capitalist society. In capitalism, factors such as capital accumulation strategies, crises, competition, advertising and marketing, market research, the state’s economic, technology and media policies, and science and engineering influence the emergence and development of new media technologies.

Acknowledgement: This article was first published as book chapter: Manfred Knoche. 2005. Entwicklung von Medientechnologien als „Neue Medien“ aus der Perspektive einer Kritik der politischen Ökonomie der Medien. In Alte Medien – neue Medien: Theorieperspektiven, Medienprofile, Einsatzfelder. Festschrift für Jan Tonnemacher, edited by Klaus Arnold and Christoph Neuberger, 40-62. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Translated and published with permission by SNCSC.

An Uncritiqued Frontier of Social Media: The Social Media Subscription Model

Paul Geyer — 2024-02-13

Even after Elon Musk announced Twitter Blue, subscription services such as Snapchat+, YouTube Premium and Meta Verified, remain an uncritiqued aspect of social media. Within this article, subscription services on social media take centre stage. This article focuses on three key points: First, subscription services have remained uncritiqued because of the blind spot created by the emphasis on data collection. Second, the Social Media Subscription Model (SMSM) now asserts social media as part of a mixed model (Fuchs 2020, 134) instead of only being considered as an advertising model. Third, applying the classical Marxian twist of capitalism as self-negating, the SMSM is also a structural response to a contradiction of "peak data", meaning how does social media sustain itself if commodifies all data? Stressing the necessity of viewing the SMSM and social media as part of a Mixed Model.

Errand Runners of Digital Platform Capitalism: The Errand Economy as a Contribution to the Discussion on the Gig Economy

İsa Demir — 2024-02-27

This article describes a new concept called the errand economy. It examines the dark side of the platform economy and the gig economy and makes a valuable contribution to the field. The concepts, especially for liberal scholars, hide the negative impact of platform capitalism on production relationships and the working class by emphasising digital technologies and piecework. The errand economy, however, especially highlights the degradation of labour, regardless of its qualifications, alongside processes such as flexibilisation, precarisation, and informalisation. That is because, under the conditions of the errand economy, platforms treat all types of work as cheap, worthless and degraded errands. The main mission of the platform economy is to end employment by using the discourse of flexibility and entrepreneurship and to transform all employees into errand workers by classifying them as self-employed. For this reason, the article proposes to use the concept of the errand economy together with the platform economy, which refers to digital infrastructures, and the gig economy, which emphasises the piecework.

Theorising Digital Dispossession: An Enquiry into the Datafication of Accumulation by Dispossession

Aishik Saha — 2024-03-14

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of work and labour was being deeply pondered upon. The demarcations that emerged out of this juncture led to a bifurcation of labour into ‘essential workers’, who are pushed into precarity from the threat of disease and contractual uncertainty in employment, and those who ‘work from home’. While geo-spatial segregation of these distinctions is contingent upon the specific relation of the nature of work with datafication, we are impelled to ponder upon the role that the accumulation of surplus value plays in this process. More specifically we must ask, what role does digital labour play in the datafication and datafied reorganization of work and workplaces? The inadequateness of data colonialism as a theoretical tool that accounts for the historical-materialist and dialectical roots of extraction and accumulation of user data requires a retheorization of the process. In this paper, I shall examine the ontological inadequacies of the metaphors of colonialism, and its extractivist logic, being transposed and mapped onto the studies of datafication. Following this I shall explore ‘digital dispossession’ as a convergence of Digital Capitalism and the neoliberal reorganization of digitized social labour, alongside its necropolitical implications. Drawing upon David Harvey’s theorization of ‘Accumulation by Dispossession’, I argue for a classical Marxist interpretation of datafication as a new reorganization of capitalist accumulation that acts and appropriates surplus generated by prosumers through the unpaid and discursive digital labour performed on digital platforms.

Shifting Neoliberalism in US Telecommunications Policy: A Critical Reading of Chicago School Roads

Sydney L Forde — 2024-05-06

Popular narratives characterising neoliberal economic orthodoxy hold that all forms of government intervention are counter-productive to free markets. Conservatives who claim to embody such liberalism often trace opposition to government interventions to two founding Chicago School economists, Friedrich August von Hayek and Milton Friedman. Through close examinations of the seminal works from Hayek and Friedman, this paper complicates the relationship between the “free-market” neoliberal economic imaginaries derived from both economists’ seminal books as “utopian neoliberalism”, and modern commercial-focused telecommunications policies premised on the active construction of industry serving conditions as “political neoliberalism”. In examining the CONNECT Act aimed at banning the municipal deployment of broadband services in every state across America, this analysis demonstrates significant differences between “utopian” and “political” articulations of neoliberalism, with the latter appearing to ground language and justifications in the former, while simultaneously contradicting baseline principles of such. The seemingly baseless motivations behind the contradictory logics of political neoliberalism are critically assessed and the role of corporate domination of the US telecommunications sector as a guiding philosophy for neoliberal policymakers is discussed.

Critical Political Economy of Culture and Communication: An Interview with Graham Murdock

Graham Murdock — 2024-02-14

This paper presents an interview with Graham Murdock. It was conducted by Thomas Allmer and Christian Fuchs for tripleC. In it, Graham Murdock reflects on the field of Critical Political Economy of Culture and Communication, his contributions to and work in this field of studies, the role of Karl Marx in this field, Stuart Hall, Critical Political Economy and Cultural Studies, Raymond Williams, the climate crisis and the environmental movement, Materialism, New Materialisms, Postmodernism, Pierre Bourdieu, the future of society, culture, and the media. The topics the interview covers are structured into three parts: 1. Critical Political Economy, 2. Critical Political Economy and Cultural Studies, 3. Questions of Materialism.

The present text is based on an interview with Christian Fuchs and Thomas Allmer conducted during my visit to Paderborn to present a guest lecture. It includes additional material indicating sources and clarifying and elaborating on key points. The lecture, Critical Inquiry and Climate Catastrophe: Digital Media and the Battle for Sustainability, was given as part of the lecture series Critical Theories and Analyses of Digital Capitalism at Paderborn University on October 17, 2023.

Graham Murdock’s talk can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuYUuqvj6AM

Vincent Mosco’s Critical-Humanist Political Economy of Communication

Christian Fuchs — 2024-03-20

Vincent Mosco (1948-2024) grounded and advanced the approach of the Political Economy of Communication (PEC). This paper discusses some aspects of his Critical-Humanist approach to the Political Economy of Communication: It engages with the foundations of Vincent Mosco’s thought; the roles that labour and communication play in it; his focus on Karl Marx and Marxian scholarship, culture, ideology critique, the digital sublime, democracy, the media, and the public good. Vincent Mosco’s life and work will be remembered. His approach will shape future generations of activist-scholars.

A video version of some aspects of this paper that Christian Fuchs presented at an online event that remembered Vincent Mosco's works can be watched here.

Special Issue: Critical Perspectives on Digital Capitalism: Theories and Praxis, edited by Thomas Allmer, Sevda Can Arslan and Christian Fuchs (FULL ISSUE FOR DOWNLOAD)

Thomas Allmer — 2024-05-01

Thomas Allmer, Sevda Can Arslan and Christian Fuchs, eds. 2024. Critical Perspectives on Digital Capitalism: Theories and Praxis. Special Issue of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 22 (1): 140-433.

tripleC’s special issue on “Critical Perspectives on Digital Capitalism: Theories and Praxis” presents 14 papers and an introduction that contribute to establishing foundations of critical theories and the philosophy of praxis in the light of digital capitalism. In Marxist theory, a theoretical and analytical strand has emerged that is focused on the roles that knowledge, communication, media, digital media, and digital communication play in and beyond capitalism. This special issue is a contribution to this type of Marxian analysis and theory construction.

Critical Perspectives on Digital Capitalism: Theories and Praxis. Introduction to the Special Issue

Christian Fuchs — 2024-04-22

Digital capitalism matters. Digital capitalism shapes our lives. Digital capitalism needs to be better understood. We need critical theories of digital capitalism. We need to better understand praxes that challenge digital capitalism and aim at fostering digital democracy and digital socialism. tripleC’s special issue on “Critical Perspectives on Digital Capitalism: Theories and Praxis” wants to contribute to establishing foundations of critical theories and the philosophy of praxis in the light of digital capitalism. This article introduces the topic and provides an overview of the special issue.

Critical Theory Foundations of Digital Capitalism: A Critical Political Economy Perspective

Christian Fuchs — 2024-04-22

The overall task of this paper is to outline some foundations of a critical theory of digital capitalism. The approach of the Critique of Political Economy is taken as the starting point for theorising (digital) capitalism.

First, the paper discusses selected classical definitions of capitalism. Theories of digital capitalism must build on definitions and theories of capitalism. If capitalism is not only an economic order but a societal formation, the analysis of capitalism is the analysis of economic exploitation and non-economic domination phenomena and their interaction. Theories of digital capitalism should also address the question of how class, racism, and patriarchy are related in the context of digitalisation.

Second, the author introduces a notion of digital capitalism that is based on Marx’s approach of the Critique of Political Economy.

Third, the paper engages with one influential contemporary approach to theorising capitalism, Nancy Fraser’s Cannibal Capitalism. The author discusses what we can learn from Fraser’s approach to theorising digital capitalism.

Fourth, the author discusses existing understandings of digital capitalism that can be found in the academic literature. These definitions are compared to the understanding advanced in this article.

Fifth, the paper discusses the relationship of the notion of digital capitalism from a Critical Political Economy perspective in comparison to the notions of the network society/informational capitalism (Manuel Castells), surveillance capitalism (Shoshana Zuboff), and platform capitalism (Nick Srnicek).

Sixth, the paper reflects on the relationship between digital capitalism and violence as we live in a (digital) age where a new World War is all but uncertain.

Finally, some conclusions are drawn.

The Neofeudalising Tendency of Communicative Capitalism

Jodi Dean — 2024-04-26

Communicative capitalism is becoming neofeudal. From network effects, to plaformisation, and the rise of a service-based economy, the tendencies of networked communications are neofeudalising.

Digitalisation Today as the Capitalist Appropriation of People’s Mental Labour

Friedrich Krotz — 2024-04-26

This paper deals with the question of how the process of digitalisation on the technical basis of the computer can be described in Marxist categories and what consequences are foreseeable as a result. To this end, the first section shows, based on a historical analysis of the emergence of the computer, that this apparatus was invented as an instrument of a division of human mental labour and thus complementary to the division of physical labour. It is therefore necessary to analyse computers and digitalisation in their relation to human beings and human labour. In the second section, the central ideology of digitalisation is elaborated, which is supposed to make the current form of digitalisation appear meaningful for people and society: The anthropomorphisation of the computer, which was said to be increasingly able to think, speak, and learn like humans, to become more and more intelligent, and to be able to do everything better than humans once the technical singularity had been reached. This claim, which has been propagated again and again, is contradicted on various levels. The computer operates on about two dozen simple mathematical, logical, and technical commands and can do nothing but run one programme at a time, developed and entered by programmers on the basis of behavioural or physical data. This sometimes produces amazing results because the computer can work quickly and systematically as well as reliably. But in contrast to humans, it faces the world as a behaviouristic machine that can neither understand meaning nor reflect its own or human behaviour. The computer also ”sees” and ”hears” its environment only on a physical basis and it ”thinks” at best on a statistical basis if the programme tells it to do so. The apparatus can therefore simulate mechanical machines, but in interaction with humans its actions and reactions are, as any machine, not socially oriented, but dependent on whether humans interpret them as meaningful und useful.

The third section elaborates on the complementarity of mental and physical divisions of labour. This would be a central theme of a critical Marxism for an analysis of digitalisation today, which understands the previous capitalism from the division of physical labour. Even though there are some theoreticians who have contributed to this, so far there is no comprehensive theory of it.

Therefore, section 4 wants to contribute to such a theory by collecting empirical observations in an interpretive way regarding the related questions. In this way, it becomes clear how the division of people's intellectual labour made possible by the computer is being dealt with today: Capitalism is reorganising more and more areas of human life such as mobility, social relations, education, medicine, etc. through the use of the computer. As a result, first and foremost the business fields of the digital economy are expanding. Moreover, capitalism no longer has to limit itself to controlling the field of production but is increasingly intervening in the whole symbolic world of people. Consequently, according to the thesis, we are heading for an expanded capitalism that will increasingly restrict and reduce both democracy and people's self-realisation. Section 5 emphasises once again that a different digitalisation is also possible, one that serves humanity and not capitalism. Further, some summarising and comments are added there.

Capital is Dead. Long Live Capital! A Political Marxist Analysis of Digital Capitalism and Infrastructure

Maïa Pal — 2024-04-26

There is a growing literature suggesting that the digital economy is taking us out of capitalism. While this manifests most notably as a diagnosis of ‘digital feudalism’ or ‘techno-feudalism’, a differing voice is McKenzie Wark, who suggests we have entered an entirely new mode of production altogether: ‘vectoralism’. This paper historicises and theorises our current conjuncture in relation to the potential multiplicity of modes of production, and the materiality and imperialism of telecommunication infrastructures. We approve of Wark's development of new concepts, rather than turning to ahistorical regurgitations like ‘neo-feudalism’. However, we argue that the mode of production lens is not adequate to trace what we consider as more granular changes and that it risks packaging old wine in new bottles. For example, Wark's vectoral claims remain grounded in infrastructures such as undersea cables that are used by corporations and states as strategies of legal and economic imperialism reminiscent of the 19th century world order. Instead of examining this topic through a mode of production lens, we contend that these phenomena are better traced through a processual (rather than functional) and socially determined (rather than economically determined) method of historical materialism. In this regard, we adopt an approach closer to that of E. P. Thompson and Political Marxists, such as Brenner and Wood. To support our argument, we turn to both wider Marxist theory on the mode of production, which we then anchor in empirical works from contemporary critical infrastructure and communication studies.

Building the Future? Software Workers’ Imaginaries of Technology

Helene Thaa — 2024-04-26

This article investigates an actor’s perspective on digital capitalism. We study software workers’ orientations towards their work by focusing on the social use value they attribute to it. The concept of use value allows us to examine the contradictions software workers might experience in digital capitalism. Drawing on the literature on the control of software workers and the New Spirit of Digital Capitalism, we identify hindrances to the workers’ claims of a social use value and explore the imaginaries of technology which might form the basis for a critique or legitimation of digital capitalism. We find that software workers hold strong claims of a societal use value towards their work. While their ethos of good technology forms a strong foundation to critique hindrances they perceive in creating useful technology, imaginaries of technology as an autonomous force might delegitimise the workers’ claims.

Chained to the App: German Bike Couriers Riding into Digital Capitalism

Jasmin Schreyer — 2024-04-26

In the digital age of platformization and digital capitalism, this study demonstrates the significant role of institutionalized relationships in influencing autonomy-control dynamics within platform companies. By contrasting multinational food delivery corporations with local cooperative courier services in Germany, we find that algorithmic management centralizes control in commercial platforms, thereby limiting worker autonomy. In contrast, cooperative models prioritize communication, trust, and self-determination. These findings underscore that works councils and collective representation of interests serve as countervailing powers in commercial platforms, actively advocating for worker protections. In summary, this study highlights the pivotal role of institutionalized relationships in shaping the evolving landscape of work, emphasizing their significance in achieving a more equitable and humane work environment.

Involution, No Revolution: Technocapitalism and Intern Labour

Anthony Fung — 2024-04-26

The global economic downturn due to the pandemic has resulted in shrinking the digital market in big economies such as the USA and China. After the pandemic, many of the major tech and internet-based companies had to take action to reverse their declining balance sheets and look for ways to financially rebound. Illustrated in this paper is how these tech firms in China could further advance their economy by minimising their paid manpower by working with/under the education system and inventing new temporary intern positions as semi-(im)material labour to expand their workforce. Based on our ethnographic work and interviews with interns, we elucidate the case of a Chinese tech intern, which exemplifies what we refer to as involution. Involution is a process by which the new generation is induced to accept a much more precarious economy as a result of nominal pay, yet can nevertheless survive, meet their daily needs and dwell in big cities, rather than engaging a radical change or revolution.

Tracing Class and Capital in Critical AI Research

Petter Ericson — 2024-04-26

This article explores the rapidly developing field of Critical AI Studies and its relation to issues of class and capitalism through a hybrid approach based on distant reading of a newly collected corpus of 300 full-text scientific articles, the creation of which is itself a first attempt at properly delineating the field. We find that words related to issues of class are predominantly but not exclusively confined to a set of studies that make up their own distinct subfield of Critical AI Studies, in contrast to, e.g., issues of race and gender, which are more broadly present in the corpus.

Writing Back Against Amazon’s Empire: Science Fiction, Corporate Storytelling, and the Dignity of the Workers’ Word

Max Haiven — 2024-04-26

Since its founding in 1994 as an online bookstore, Amazon has “revolutionised” not only the market for literature but also expanded aggressively and transformatively in sectors including consumer retail, film and television, groceries, logistics, robotics, surveillance, AI, and web services. This growth and expansion is grounded in the firm’s internal and outward-facing rhetoric about its leading contribution to a brighter future, a narrative deeply inspired by the genre of science or speculative fiction (SF). But Amazon’s utopian vision is largely experienced as a dystopia by most of its rank-and-file workers, who labour under exploitative conditions of surveillance, robotization, and relentless managerial control. Hence our team inaugurated the Worker as Futurist project to support rank-and-file Amazon workers to read/watch SF stories to collectively understand their employer and its world, and also to write short, SF stories about “the world after Amazon.” In this preliminary report on the project, we explain the inspirations for the project and reflect on some of what we have learned from the participants, as well as some implications for the futures of platform workers generally.

Digital Commons for the Ecological Transition: Ethics, Praxis and Policies

Sébastien Shulz — 2024-04-26

The article seeks to understand how the digital commons movement addresses ecological issues, how its actors incorporate them into their ethics and praxis, and the challenges they face in scaling up to become a viable ecological alternative to digital capitalism. Building on three case studies, we show that the digital commons currently face three major limitations: reliance on unsustainable Big Tech products, inability or unwillingness to scale up, and negligible political support. Based on two Policy Labs we conducted with actors of the digital commons movement, we conclude by outlining proposals to overcome these limits by adopting E.O. Wright’s anti-capitalist strategies framework.

Understanding Racism in Digital Capitalism. Racialisation and De-Racialisation in Platform Economies, Infrastructural Racism and Algorithmic Opacity

Stefania Animento — 2024-04-26

Recent literature has argued that digital technologies reinforce existent inequalities along race, class and gender. However, the relationship between digital capitalism and racism is yet to be explored in depth. How does digitalisation rework social relations and social cooperation to produce new forms of racialised hierarchisation and differentiation? The article is based on an international project on platform labour spanning seven European cities. It focuses on the sector of ride-hailing in Berlin and analyses the interactions between processes of platformisation and (de-)racialisation. Finally, it shows how racism becomes infrastructural when platforms organise its circulation.

Labouring and Smiling: Re-Imagining Digital Colonialism in Africa, Silicon Valley Big Techs, and the Politics of Prosumer Capitalism in Nigeria

Paul A. Obi — 2024-04-26

Does Africa suffer from the paucity of epistemic inquiry on digital capitalism, mostly, spearheaded by social media platforms within the confines of the global digital economy? The growing corpus of literature points to digital colonialism and prosumer capitalism as critical components in understanding the global digital economy. Yet, postcolonial Africa lags in the negotiation of power within the political economy dynamics of digital capitalism. Thus, in an age of big data, platformisation and extraction of human life, is there a reincarnation and excavation of colonialism of old in the form of digital prosumer capitalism in the continent? Using Nigeria as a geo-economic prism, the paper reimagines digital colonialism from a critical perspective. It seeks to discharge the underlying appropriation of economic power through digital colonialism; and show how prosumer capitalism grounds its practices in Nigeria, thereby, recentring the debate on digital economic inequalities given the global digital capitalism paradigm.

Railroad Luxemburg: Rosa Luxemburg’s Theory of Infrastructure and its Consequences for a Public Service Internet

Charli Muller — 2024-04-26

Infrastructures of circulation, transportation, and communication play a central role in Luxemburg’s work in political economy as well as revolutionary strategy. This paper seeks to reconstruct and develop a theory of capitalist infrastructural expansion drawing from a variety of Luxemburg’s writings. In Accumulation of Capital, infrastructural expansion – namely of railroads – plays a central role at all stages of capitalist accumulation. Railroads act as a site of military and state investment for introducing the commodity economy to non-capitalist sectors and eventually for the “capitalist emancipation of the hinterland.” At the same time Luxemburg rejects the progressive character of these infrastructural endeavours, and she argues that they will not be a genuine “stamp of progress in an historical sense” until capitalism has been destroyed. It is no coincidence then that her political writings prominently feature figures such as railway and postal workers, who are strategically positioned to strike at the infrastructures of imperialism. A Luxemburgist theory of infrastructure has important relevance for contemporary debates around the expansion and ownership of Internet infrastructures. The past decade has been marked by various calls for new models of Internet ownership. These include The Public Service Internet Manifesto, the Democratic Socialists of America’s Internet for All Campaign, Tarnoff’s Internet for the People, Téwodros Workneh’s “Case for Telecommunications Commons in Ethiopia,” and netCommons Project’s vision for community networks. Such calls for a publicly owned and funded Internet risk reproducing some of the dynamics Luxemburg describes in her account of the history of railroads, canals, telegraphs etc. Namely, such calls parallel the state subsidising of an infrastructure that seeks out new sites of accumulation and extraction. This is not to say that such endeavours should be wholly abandoned, but must fit into a broader anti-capitalist political program, otherwise such infrastructural expansion can be seen as continuing the expansion of capitalist accumulation. Luxemburg deters us from looking for a technical fix. For this reason, Luxemburg’s political writings and her critique of the non-progressive nature of capitalism are also useful as she indicates how the destruction of capitalism can alter and redeem such large infrastructural projects.

On a Potential Paradox of a Public Service Internet

Elisabeth Korn — 2024-04-26

Digital capitalism undermines deliberative democracy. This is the diagnosis arrived at by The Public Service Media and Public Service Internet Manifesto (2021), edited by Christian Fuchs and Klaus Unterberger, and Jürgen Habermas’ A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics (2023). They condemn the commercial Internet as a deformation of the public sphere and conclude that it needs to be fundamentally restructured. Interestingly, both texts propose to restructure it after the template of broadcasting media. We seek to challenge this approach from a media-political perspective, arguing that it revives an elapsed version of democracy by rekindling the mass media paradigm to which it was bound. Both texts are implicitly based on the assumption that a technology that emerged in capitalism can be used for different, even contradictory, purposes. But what if the media structure of digital communication, irrespective of who owns or controls it, denies its democratic instrumentalisation?