Illusioned and Alienated: Can Gig Workers Organise Collectively?

By studying the fraudulent benefits of flexibility in ride-hailing gig economy, this article explains alienation as a condition which workers are excluded from product, estranged, and disadvantaged. Material estrangement, an objective aspect exemplified by arbitrary distribution income, capitalists’ exclusive access to data, robotic communication between Uber their drivers, has many physiological (subjective) manifestations. Dissatisfaction, powerlessness, isolation subjective expressions prominently shape prospects collective labour mobilisation both sparking hindering organisational potential. Additionally, example workers’ re-appropriation Uber’s app against how modern technologies serve not only medium expand capitalist interests, but enhance possibilities for cooperation liberation. The proposed argumentation uses Autonomist Marxist concept “social factory” meta-framework, drawing on original ethnographic interview data drivers economy.