Platform Capitalism / Edition 1

by Nick Srnicek

Overview

What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of platform capitalism .

This book critically examines these new business forms, tracing their genesis from the long downturn of the 1970s to the boom and bust of the 1990s and the aftershocks of the 2008 crisis. It shows how the fundamental foundations of the economy are rapidly being carved up among a small number of monopolistic platforms, and how the platform introduces new tendencies within capitalism that pose significant challenges to any vision of a post-capitalist future. This book will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the most powerful tech companies of our time are transforming the global economy."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509504862
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	12/27/2016
Series:	Theory Redux
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Nick Srnicek is a lecturer in international politics at City, University of London, and co-author of the influential Accelerate Manifesto .

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

1 The Long Downturn 9

2 Platform Capitalism 36

3 Great Platform Wars 93

Notes 130

References 141