The common narrative of these self-presentations is that freelancer platforms enable and support workers’ freedom to be their own boss and determine their work times themselves, and in doing so earn lots of money. The reality is that platform workers are very often highly exploited, precarious workers who work long hours to survive (see Fuchs 2021, chapters 11 and 12; Fuchs 2017b, chapter 10).
Platform workers are often piece-workers. They are not paid by the hour, but for each completed service, each piece of work. Karl Marx (1867) dedicates chapter 21 in Capital Volume 1 to piece-wages (see also Fuchs 2016, chapter 21). He characterises piece-work and piece-wages as the most fruitful source of reductions on wages, and of frauds committed by the capitalists” (Marx 1867, 694). Platform labour is a contemporary form of piece-labour and piece-wages in digital capitalism that aims at platform capitalists’ reduction of investment costs for maximising profits. If platforms such as Uber had to pay its drivers per hour, it might make much less profit than it does when charging a percentage share of the piece price. Platform capitalism is a dimension of digital capitalism that advances highly precarious labour.
In CWCE, Engels describes the working conditions of needlewomen, who were paid per piece. They were low-paid and conducted highly tiresome labour.
With the same cruelty, though somewhat more indirectly, the rest of the needle-women of London are exploited. The girls employed in stay-making have a hard, wearing occupation, trying to the eyes. And what wages do they get? I do not know; but this I know, that the middleman who has to give security for the material delivered, and who distributes the work among the needle-women, receives 1½d. per piece. (CWCE, 218)
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Theorists