Growth in digital capitalism
Philipp Staab
born in 1983, was a research associate at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research between 2008 and 2016. After completing his doctorate, he led the projects „Der entbundene Bürger“ and „Der digitale Kapitalismus“ within the research group „Zukunftsproduktion“. From 2016 to 2017, he was a research associate at the Institute for the History and Future of Labour. Staab is currently a research associate at the Chair of Macrosociology at the University of Kassel, a permanent fellow at the Institute for the History and Future of Labour (IGZA) and a visiting researcher at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB).
Main areas of work: Changes in the world of work, economic sociology, digitalisation, social security and social inequality.
The digitalisation of work and the economy is currently on everyone's lips. Some associate the disruptive power of digital innovations with the hope of a new source of unlimited growth. Others fear massive job losses and a radical increase in social inequality. Philipp Staab offers a differentiated analysis of the leading companies in Silicon Valley, which are propagating a specific economic model worldwide. He describes its historical genesis, sheds light on the ideology of digital capitalism and contrasts this with the economic imperatives of the digital economy. The author describes the corporate policy of Google, Apple, Amazon and co. as an economic programme aimed at working through a breaking point in the current economic system. Since the end of Fordism, the development of consumption in the highly developed economies of the OECD world has not been able to keep pace with productivity increases in the economy. Digital capitalism is an attempt to eradicate the systematic weakness of demand in the current economic system by rationalising the consumption apparatus. In doing so, however, it creates contradictions that further exacerbate the problem it is trying to solve. Today's digital capitalism is characterised by a consumption dilemma that could turn the growth potential of digitalisation into its opposite. The promises of digital capitalism could soon turn out to be false promises.
Moderation Robert Misik, Author and journalist