ILPC 2027

The emergence of the platform economy is posited on the development of the productive forces of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as exchangeable commodities. A materialist and value analysis of ICTs suggests that both the hardware and software layer of these commodities are the objectification of both the material and immaterial labour of the general intellect. Platform-driven companies rely on ICTs as the means of digitization to generate and exploit big data from within the circuit of capital, which suggests ICTs become productive capital, or specifically fixed capital, when interwoven with forms of material and immaterial production. However, the technical and value form of big data generated by ICTs used in different forms of production is a more complex phenomenon. Extending Marx’s research programme of historical materialism, this paper develops a theory of ‘cybernetic capitalism,’ an approach to the study of big data-driven production that examines the dialectical relation between the circuit of capital and the circuit of big data generated by its digitization. The theory is based on the premise that the historical development of cybernetics within the capitalist mode of production may be read as part of the gradual rise in the organic composition of capital during the post-Fordist era evidenced by the distribution of ICTs within the circuits of capital in various industries. The second half of the paper utilizes the method of abstraction to examine the technical and value composition of the ride-sharing platform Uber as a case example of cybernetic capitalism. A brief review of the development of ICTs in the traditional taxi industry is used to historically contextualize how the Uber platform integrates several functions into one system that embodies the technical means of real subsumption. The technical functions of the platform allow a twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week workplace which determines capital’s requirement for a specific form of deskilled, ‘on-demand’ labour that is provided no benefits, protections or job security. The platform also determines and controls all transactions, navigation, communications and activities of the labour process, which are digitized and circulated between the Uber platform, resulting in a continuous circuit of big data. By applying the theory of cybernetic capitalism, Uber’s circuit of big data is analyzed and abstracted from its circuit of capital in order to examine the dialectical relation between the two and to theorize the effects of this material-digital relation on the labour process. Based on cybernetic principles of input, output and feedback, Uber uses its circuit of big data to: (1) manage its on-demand drivers (2) control the labour process and, hence, the valorization process, (3) generate, control and maintain the circulation of a material-digital market, and (4) gradually replace on-demand drivers with autonomous vehicles through a reverse feedback process of organizational learning. The paper concludes Uber’s research and development of autonomous vehicles will raise Uber’s organic composition of capital and advance the labour process from the stage of real subsumption closer to a third and final stage of autonomous production.