MASSIVE LABOR COOPERATION IN ANDROID DEVELOPMENT: A CHANGE OR AN EXPANSION OF CAPITALIST LABOR?

Resumo

The productive forces development in the capitalist production model demanded intensive uses of information and communication technologies. This condition promotes the formation of new ways of labor organization and collaborates for mass cooperation process emergence in the production of digital goods. The research object was the development of the Android project, led by Google. The research was conducted following the Critical Epistemology of Concrete - CEC and following the theoretical body of the Political Economy of Power. The descriptions of the CEC research method were the basis for treatment information collected by documentary analyses, nonparticipating observations, and applied interviews. The study indicated that the labor on massive cooperation does not surpass the generator labor of surplus-value appropriate by capital, even promoting significant changes in the Marxist category Cooperation. Also, the development of capitalism continues incorporating technological elements in the labor organization and masking fundamental aspects to ensure control over the work and the extraction of surplus-value, even if apparently the labor had become more “free”. Finally, the research has shown that the classic Marxist categories are still contemporary and function to understand the reality moves in organizations.

The productive forces development in the capitalist production model demanded intensive uses of information and communication technologies. This condition promotes the formation of new ways of labor organization and collaborates for mass cooperation process emergence in the production of digital goods. The research object was the development of the Android project, led by Google. The research was conducted following the Critical Epistemology of Concrete - CEC and following the theoretical body of the Political Economy of Power. The descriptions of the CEC research method were the basis for treatment information collected by documentary analyses, nonparticipating observations, and applied interviews. The study indicated that the labor on massive cooperation does not surpass the generator labor of surplus-value appropriate by capital, even promoting significant changes in the Marxist category Cooperation. Also, the development of capitalism continues incorporating technological elements in the labor organization and masking fundamental aspects to ensure control over the work and the extraction of surplus-value, even if apparently the labor had become more “free”. Finally, the research has shown that the classic Marxist categories are still contemporary and function to understand the reality moves in organizations.