A classe trabalhadora no capitalismo pandémico: rumo à uberização do trabalho? Ricardo Antunes

Author of several books, including: • Uberization, Digital Work and Industry 4.0 (ed., Boitempo); • Coronavirus: Work Under Crossfire, published by Boitempo/Brazil and also published in Italy and Austria (forthcoming); • The Privilege of Servitude (Boitempo/Brazil, in Italy and published in a special edition in Galicia); • The Meanings of Work (Boitempo/Brazil, also published in Argentina, USA, England/Netherlands, Italy, Portugal and India); • Farewell to Work? (Cortez/Brazil, also published in Galicia, Argentina, Netherlands/England, Italy, Spain, Venezuela and Colombia), among other books. He coordinates the World of Work collection (Boitempo) and Work and Emancipation (Expressão Popular) and collaborates with various magazines worldwide. He was a Visiting Professor at Ca’ Foscari University (Venice/Italy); Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex (England) and Visiting Scholar at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). He has given lectures, courses, and conferences in several countries (Americas, Europe, and Asia). He is a guest professor at the Florestan Fernandes School of the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil and has taught courses and given conferences in various unions, labor federations, social movements, and left-wing parties in Brazil, Latin America, the USA, Europe, and Asia. The working class in pandemic capitalism: towards the uberization of work? Our conference will present some of the main destructive trends that have intensified during the coronavirus pandemic, which I have been calling pandemic capitalism. This is because, in addition to the destruction of nature, the social metabolism system of capital intensified, during the pandemic, new laboratories for experimentation with work, of which "uberization" or "platformization" is exemplary. Work, which originated as a value (vital activity), is increasingly converted into (de)value, aiming at the generation of surplus value. The results are evident: long working hours, more exploitation and spoliation, in addition to the destruction of labor rights, all under the guise of command by algorithms, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), etc. As a consequence of this structural framework, I will present two theses: 1) Platform capitalism, driven by the informational-digital universe, recovers past forms of labor exploitation that resemble the protoform of capitalism in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. 2) If these destructive trends are not stopped, in addition to the devastation of nature and humanity, we will enter a new era of de-anthropomorphization of 2) If these destructive trends are not stopped, in addition to the devastation of nature and humanity, we will enter a new era of de-anthropomorphization of work, given the increasing elimination of living labor, replaced by the new machinery that expands in the new digital factory, which will have profound quantitative and qualitative consequences for the world of work.