The starting point of the research presented in this book is defined by the simple fact that the platform economy, however one conceptualizes it, has been a part of the capitalist landscape for more than two decades. This empirical reality can be approached from different theoretical traditions and levels of inquiry. Our principal goal is to show that this relatively new reality of contemporary capitalism can become intelligible within the Marxian theoretical framework, and that, in turn, the Marxian approach is responsive enough to include insights from other theoretical traditions and schools of thought. We start from a rather abstract level of Marxian theory of value and social forms in order to proceed to the more concrete features of actually existing platform capitalism. Starting from the presentation of the inner workings of the Marxian research programme is important for several reasons. Most importantly, delineating key assumptions brings more epistemic clarity. Furthermore, certain strands of post-Marxism, most notably Postoperaismo and proponents of the cognitive capitalism hypothesis, have formulated their understanding of the so-called knowledge economy on the assumption that Marxian value theory, in its most prominent aspects, is obsolete.

We will have more to say about the issues raised by Postoperaismo and related approaches in Chapter 4, but for now it will suffice to show that the key notions and concepts of the Marxian theory can be used to explain the rise and functioning of platform capitalism. This epistemic claim can be expressed in more historical terms: it implies that the rise of platform capitalism does not represent a radical break with the logic of capital accumulation that drove the capitalist development in the 19th and 20th century, notwithstanding all the disruption and breakdowns, real or imaginary. Thus, the novelty of digital platforms must be found on the more concrete level of inquiry, which overlaps and corresponds with the analysis of financialization, another phenomenon that marked the end of the post-Fordist regime of accumulation. From a Marxian perspective, the theory of money is the key for understanding the operations of financialized capitalism, for without settling the issue of the roles and functions of money in a capitalist economy financialization remains a set of loosely connected events and processes that usually appear as a parasitic burden on the back of the ‘real economy’. We will deal with some aspects of financialized platforms in Chapter 5.