Are robots taking away our jobs? Those who ask this question have misunderstood digitalisation – it is not an industrial revolution by other means. Sabine Pfeiffer searches for the actual novelties brought about by digitalisation and digital capitalism. In her analysis, she juxtaposes Marx's concept of productive force with the idea of distributive force. From the platform economy to artificial intelligence, Pfeiffer shows that digital capitalism is less about the efficient production of value, but rather about its fast, risk-free, and permanently secured realisation on the markets. The examination of this dynamic and its consequences also leads to the question of how destructive the distributive forces of digital capitalism might be.
Author(s): Sabine Pfeiffer
Series: X-Texts On Culture And Society
Edition: 1
Publisher: Transcript Verlag
Year: 2022
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 283
Tags: Capitalism; Economic Sociology; Economy
Cover
Content
1. Introduction
1.1 The central hypothesis—in bad neighbourhood?
1.2 Digital capitalism and value
1.3 Productive forces and the market
1.4 Three distributive forces and their development
1.5 lllustrations and destructions
2. Digital Capitalism Revisited—again?
2.1 Dan Schiller and the emergence of digital capitalism
2.2 Dynamic—Transformation—Actors
2.3 Immateriality—Labour—Value
2.4 Scarcity—Superabundance—Crisis
2.5 Much said—any questions answered?
3. The First Blind Spot Value in Digital Capitalism
3.1 Mazzucato or the rediscovery of value
3.2 Whoever speaks of value …
3.3 Continuing the search for the new
4. Transformation and the Productive Forces
4.1 Polanyi’s Great Transformation
4.2 Marx’s development of the productive forces
4.3 The productive forces and digital capitalism: reductionism and misunderstandings
5. The second blind spot The realisation of value in (digital) capitalism
5.1 Expansion and the market
5.2 Consumption and society
5.3 Communication and crisis
6. The Distributive Forces and (Digital) Capitalism What is New?
6.1 The distributive force ‘advertising and marketing’
6.2 The distributive force ‘transport and warehousing’
6.3 The distributive force ‘control and prediction’
6.4 How the distributive forces combine with digitalisation
7. The Distributive Forces and (Digital) Capitalism Some Clarifications
7.1 Distinction: relations of distribution versus circulation
7.2 Transformation or casting off the skin: the disruption of the productive forces?
7.3 The development of productive and distributive forces— conceived as one
8. The Distributive Forces in Digital Capitalism Some Empirical Illustrations
8.1 GAFAM and the platform economy
8.2 Catalysts for value realisation
8.3 The distributive forces and merchant capital 4.0
9. Digitalisation Distributive Force or Destructive Force?
Bibliography
List of Figures
