Centering Abolition: Situating the Platform Economy in Racial Capitalism’s Longue Durée

• In Event: 30626 - Platform and Logistics Labor

Abstract

In today’s global economy, millions of workers labor for a whole array of futuristic sounding digital platforms – drawn in by the promise of easy cash, flexible scheduling, and freedom from the arbitrary authority of a boss. In this paper I situate the contemporary platform economy within broader histories of racial capitalism and colonialism. I focus on the abolition of slavery as a key structuring moment in the global economy and insist on a global and historical frame to help us grasp recurring features of capitalism that are manifesting in acute and urgent ways. I will make two arguments. First, that in a post-abolition context our challenge has always been to dismantle not only structures of enslavement, coercion, and force but also of desire, consent, and, in the final analysis, freedom. Second, that struggles over the boundaries of labor as a legal category are constitutive features of modernity – even while the stakes and meanings attached to “labor” are constantly shifting. I also show that focusing exclusively on either coercion or classification distracts from the myriad ways that capitalism extracts value from people.

Author

• Mishal Khan, University of California-Berkeley