Factories or workhouses? Digital platforms and the re-feudalisation thesis

This article presents an alternative view of digital platforms, comparing them to workhouses. Early modern workhouses were important in the transition to industrial capitalism, preparing the surplus population resulting from the collapse of agrarian society for factory work. We ask if digital platforms do something similar in relation to the surplus population resulting from the crisis of neo-liberal capitalism. We elaborate on this parallel in the context of the contemporary re-feudalisation thesis, noting that rather than a return to pre-capitalist relations of production, re-feudalisation is recurrent in the history of capitalism. To overcome this impasse, the relations of production need to change to free up the potential of the new forces of production. We discuss if digital platforms can achieve something alike in relation to the current capitalist crisis. In particular, we suggest that platforms might be prefiguring a novel cycle of accumulation based on the internalisation of reproduction.