How algorithms are reshaping the exploitation of labour-power: insights into the process of labour invisibilization in the platform economy

What is it about?

The ways in which algorithms allocate tasks and monitor platform workers’ performance are conducive to the creation and expansion of unremunerated labour-time, whose execution is nevertheless essential to access and complete the (paid) tasks for which platforms ‘employ’ workers (Franke et al., 2023). The process of platform workers’ labour invisibilization thus captures unpaid labour-time that these workers are compelled to ‘donate’ to platforms to carry out their work. The peculiarity of this process in platform labour is its pervasive and highly effective character, triggered by the introduction of algorithms as a factor of workforce exploitation

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Why is it important?

This study helps to cast a new light on the nexus between work-process transformations and surplus-value creation, which is the core of the Marxian labour theory of value, and which – I argue – is crucial to understanding contemporary capitalist developments.