From the post-industrial economy to platform capitalism.
Towards a critique of the immaterial based on an analysis of the service sector.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69585/2595-6892.2026.1260Keywords:
services, post-industrial economy, platform capitalism, immaterial labour, theory of valueAbstract
The transformations driven by technological, informational, and digital changes since the 1970s have had a major impact on the service sector.
This article examines how these transformations have been addressed in economic literature, seeking to identify which characteristics and perspectives have received the greatest emphasis. It finds that a
research agenda has become consolidated mainly around the technical characterization of services and the measurement of their productivity. This agenda has tended to treat the growth of the sector, the presence of
“immaterial” activities, and the expansion of cognitive labour as isolated or autonomous phenomena, explained by the properties of the activities
themselves, of commodities, or of the technologies employed. With the rise of platforms and informational goods, this limitation has deepened, bringing discussions of platform capitalism closer to those concerning the post-industrial economy in the 1970s. The article therefore argues for the relevance of consolidating a research agenda based on an understanding of the social relations of production as a means of apprehending the transformations occurring in the sector and in the economy, placing them in their historical context and relating them to the tendencies and requirements specific to the capitalist system. From this perspective, the changes identified in services reveal tendencies of contemporary capitalism, such as the growing capacity of capital to organize diverse and dispersed forms of labour, the reorganization of existing activities through platforms, and the creation of new commodities and labour processes.
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