Why are platform riders part of the 21st century proletariat?
Abstract
Our main objective is to explain the expansion of « self-employed workers» during digital era of late capitalism. Using firsthand information collected among the so called « riders of platform », we test the next hypothesis: The intermittent nature of the relation of production around the activity of distribution of merchandises by « riders of platform », which mystify the salary relation, reproduce formal and real subsumption of labor to capital. This fact denies the characterization of riders as « independent entrepreneurs », and confirms their definition as part of the working class condition, fluctuating in an intermittent way among employment and unemployment. In such way, the expansion of « self-employed workers » shows, not the end of the working class condition, but the new forms of proletarianization and capitalists relations of production nowadays.
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