And what about the Facebook user? Is s/he a slave too? S/he may spend lots of time on the platform, but can also choose to log-off, to deliberately turn off the computer and phone in order to sleep, spend some time talking to friends and family, make love, enjoy an uninterrupted walk in nature, etc. The Facebook user’s refusal of labour in the social factory is much easier to achieve than the Congolese miner’s refusal. They are both highly exploited, but only the latter is a slave. Nonetheless, all labour and all class relations have certain dimensions of slavery because they are all coerced into labour in particular ways. The exploitation of the wage-worker, the slave, the houseworker, and the Facebook worker are in certain respects different as well as in certain other respects comparable. Only the collective revolt of slaves and other workers exploited by transnational corporations, their collective refusal to labour and search for alternatives, can put an end to capitalism and slavery.
Slaves can be houseworkers and digital workers, but not all houseworkers and digital workers are slaves in the classical sense of the term. A houseworker is a slave if s/he experiences violence that makes her afraid of leaving an abusive relationship. A digital worker is a digital slave if s/he, for example, is by debt bondage forced to work as a gold farmer for a game company and can therefore not choose to leave the job.
Slaves do not have political and social rights. Wage-workers have specific social rights in respect to wages, social security, and trade union representation. Houseworkers only have limited social rights in respect to, for example, child benefits. Being a Facebook worker does not give you particular social rights and mostly very limited legal rights in respect to privacy and data protection. Whereas, the wage-worker has a contractual and legally enforceable right to be paid a wage for the performed labour, slaves, houseworkers, and Facebook workers do not have such a right, which enables their exploitation as unpaid workers. But not all of digital labour and housework are unpaid. Parts of it are conducted as contractual labour. Paid carers and cleaners are an example. These are typically low-paid types of labour, often conducted by migrants and women. The intersection of reproductive labour and wage-labour tends to have a racialised and patriarchal character.
Chapter Ten | Capitalism, Patriarchy, Slavery
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Slavery and Racism in the Age of Digital Labour