Labour in the Global Digital Economy
June 17, 2015
Written by Mike Quille
Capitalism has used new technologies to fuel an intensified wave of commodification, but faces contradictions too, argues Mike Quille, reviewing Huws, Labour in the Global Digital Economy
Ursula Huws, Labour in the Global Digital Economy (Monthly Review Press, 2014), 208pp.
You are almost certainly reading this review on a computer screen, on a mobile device, tablet, laptop or PC. It’s probably one of many, many things you’ll read onscreen today. Some of your uses of new technology will be for leisure, recreation and education, and some will be work-related. The information, communication and technology industry (ICT) is all around us, almost like air or water.
The impact of the ICT industry on our daily lives has been sudden, massive and unprecedented. In a similar way to coal, oil, and electricity, the ICT industry is not only huge itself, but impacts on all other industries and services. And this impact on the world of work and life generally, which is less than fifty years old, arguably has been far more sudden and profound and far reaching than previous technological revolutions. It raises urgent questions of how we apply Marxist concepts to understanding what is happening, so that we can envision liberating alternatives and work towards them. What is work like in digital economies? How has capitalism adapted to and shaped the new technologies? How do we think about work, consumption and class in the digital age?
In her new book, Ursula Huws seeks to equip us to think through some of the implications of the digitization of labour, so as to help us shape answers to these questions. It builds on a previous book of hers called The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World (Monthly Review Press, 2003), which like this book is a collection of essays prefaced by an introduction setting out the central thesis….
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