Labour of Digital Ideology: From Capitalist to Cooperativist Platforms
Labour of Digital Ideology: From Capitalist to Cooperativist Platforms

Summary/Abstract: This article focuses on the linguistic mode of any ideology, which enables it to create meanings. The notions of “the Ideal” created by Evald Ilyenkov and “hack” by McKenzie Wark reveal the fact that humans are “ideological animals”. The digital code embodies ideology with its linguistic base yet operates inside material hardware, which shows us the interdependence between the spiritual nature of ideology and the material of the outer world. As digital becomes an integral part of daily life, it emerges as platforms that let human beings interact. Such platforms depend on economic and social circumstances, thus “capitalist platforms” commodify the interactions between users so as to aggregate them as “data”. The article employs the example of “Uber” activity in Belarus that showcases how capitalist platforms can influence the local job market and employment. Such platforms are contraposed with cooperative platforms, which suggest a different logic of common ownership and lead to democratic managing. Cooperative platforms show us how productive property of ideology in digital space is used not for the profit of shareholders, but functions as an immanent self-productive democratic system.

• Details
• Contents