In defence of digital labour: The evolution, historicity, and totality of the concept of digital labour

Abstract

With the continuous expansion of its conceptual boundaries, digital labour has been criticised as an ‘empty signifier’ that no longer serves clear analytical purposes. Taking this challenge seriously, this article argues that digital labour can retain its coherence if understood through the dialectical method of totality. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, it traces the formation and evolution of the concept, arguing that, given the complexity of these developmental threads and trajectories, any conceptual reduction or narrowing must be approached with caution. Second, drawing on Marx’s historical materialism, it demonstrates that this semantic expansion is a genuine response to the transformation of digital technologies and the digital economy, rather than an arbitrary inflation. Third, drawing on Marx, Lukács, and Kosík, it develops the concept of digital labour into a category of totality and an explicit analytical procedure. This procedure distinguishes three levels of totality’s operation and traces the functional coupling through which capital integrates heterogeneous labour forms into a single valorisation structure. In sum, the concept of ‘digital labour’ is not an empty signifier but an indispensable category for grasping the structural interconnections among differentiated forms of exploitation under digital capitalism.