Platforms remain bound to capitalist competition and profitability despite anti-capitalist rhetoric

Evidence

For all the rhetoric of having overcome capitalism and of transitioning to a new mode of production – a rhetoric inherent in the postindustrial thesis of the 1960s, in the ideas of ‘new economy’ disciples in the 1990s, and in the radical and conservative paeans to the sharing economy of today – we still remain bound to a system of competition and profitability. Platforms offer new forms of competition and control, but in the end profitability is the great arbiter of success. — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 93

Categorization

• XREF: This frames platforms within a Marxist framework, the rival framework to Zuboff’s surveillance-capitalism thesis; also echoes Srnicek’s rejection of ‘sharing economy’ rhetoric found throughout the chapter. — connects to: Financiers’ imagined communities remain nationally bound despite global market rhetoric. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 428; Mobilizing through commercial platforms simultaneously strengthens the order being opposed — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 587; Information-owning firms remain capitalist despite not owning means of production. — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 42 (+8 more)

Related

• Competition among platforms produces four systemic tendencies in the economy (similarity 0.83)
• The shift to platforms concentrates ownership rather than ending it (similarity 0.82)
• Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies (similarity 0.82)
• Publicly owned platforms could rival corporate platform control. (similarity 0.82)
• Platform competition shifts from price to data as the competitive criterion (similarity 0.82)
• Mobilizing through commercial platforms simultaneously strengthens the order being opposed (similarity 0.81)
• Platform companies converge into similar forms as they compete for the same data. (similarity 0.80)
• Information-owning firms remain capitalist despite not owning means of production. (similarity 0.80)
• Lean platform economies are an outlet for surplus capital, not capitalism’s revival (similarity 0.80)
• Industrial platforms extract data to cement monopolies over global manufacturing (similarity 0.80)
• Sharing-economy platforms fuse data extraction with labor at unprecedented scale (similarity 0.80)
• Cooperative platforms cannot compete with entrenched data monopolies (similarity 0.79)
• Platforms are the principal infrastructure through which capitalist data appropriation is normalized (similarity 0.79)
• Network effects embed monopoly tendencies directly into platform structure (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Capitalism’s fundamental drivers have not changed despite the information economy #corroborates (0.85)
• The digital economy functions as legitimating hegemonic ideology for capitalism #expands (0.78) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 16
• Platform competition shifts from price to data as the competitive criterion #expands (0.75) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 81
• Publicly owned platforms could rival corporate platform control. #qualifies (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 1201
• Capitalism co-opts opposition and must be escaped rather than confronted #corroborates (0.72) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 468