Vol. 47 No. 187 (2017): Labour and Value Creation in Digital Capitalism

‘Industry 4.0’ – what may sound like the promise of a rosy future is rather a coup of employers’ associations and the federal government to reinvent Germany as an industrial location. Industry 4.0 is a highly charged, artificial term unfit to gain a more nuanced perspective on current transformation processes. PROKLA 187 seeks to take stock of current processes of restructuring by exploring empirical cases of new forms of labour organisation and management. It focuses in particular on examples with the potential to transform capitalism as we know it and which may lead to profound changes in the use of labour force with far-reaching consequences for social and trade union struggles. By going beyond a narrow focus on technological changes, PROKLA 187 attempts to provide a perspective on these rationalisation processes which are both sensitive to and critical of relations of domination.