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Just because you own the tool you use -- be it a hammer, a screwdriver, or a car -- doesn't mean you own the means of production except in the very narrowest se

by b5 8y ago

Just because you own the tool you use -- be it a hammer, a screwdriver, or a car -- doesn't mean you own the means of production except in the very narrowest sense. The tools you use are worthless if there's no work to do with them, or nobody willing to pay you for that work. "The means of production" in the gig economy is the marketplaces and apps. They parcel out the work to people to carry out using the tools they have at their disposal -- a car, a bike, a toolkit, whatever. It's established, much like a factory is, to break up the work into discrete steps to be carried out by people who are largely replaceable. In this case the app is just the replacement for the top-hatted capitalist factory owner. AirBNB hosts are slightly different since they more closely resemble petit bourgeois smallholders and innkeepers rather than members of the proletariat.

Illniyar 8y ago
Actually I would argue that a marketplace is not part of the "means of production", at least not in any sense that Marx meant. In a similar way that if a blacksmith (or a farmer) made something and went to the market square to sell it, he isn't a Proletariat just because he doesn't own the market square (which by the way, some would require rent to use). Most gig-economy workers operate in multiple platforms (at least when possible) - drivers are on both Lyft and Uber, AirBnB apartments are also rented directly or through other platforms. It's not the fact that the sellers don't own the marketplace that leads to exploitation, it's the fact that the marketplace exploits it's monopoly to extort too much freedom away from the drivers. I visited Ukraine a few weeks ago and drivers in the dominant ride-hailing app (Uklon I think) can refuse a ride if the pay is too low - this opens kind of a bid system. While the experience was terrible as a user it does change the dynamics completely.

by b5 8y ago

Illniyar 8y ago

Actually I would argue that a marketplace is not part of the "means of production", at least not in any sense that Marx meant. In a similar way that if a blacksmith (or a farmer) made something and went to the market square to sell it, he isn't a Proletariat just because he doesn't own the market square (which by the way, some would require rent to use). Most gig-economy workers operate in multiple platforms (at least when possible) - drivers are on both Lyft and Uber, AirBnB apartments are also rented directly or through other platforms. It's not the fact that the sellers don't own the marketplace that leads to exploitation, it's the fact that the marketplace exploits it's monopoly to extort too much freedom away from the drivers. I visited Ukraine a few weeks ago and drivers in the dominant ride-hailing app (Uklon I think) can refuse a ride if the pay is too low - this opens kind of a bid system. While the experience was terrible as a user it does change the dynamics completely.