The limits of the digital gig economy: a Marxist critique

This paper explores the digital gig economy, focusing on Meituan delivery riders in China during the digital age. Using Marxist theories of labour alienation, it investigates how delivery riders experience a loss of control over the means of production, their labour products, autonomy, and subjectivity under algorithmic governance. By examining the worker’s autonomy, democratic decision-making, and profit-sharing models employed by the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) cooperative platform in London, this study highlights the potential of digital cooperative platforms for future worker emancipation. It suggests that digital cooperatives offer vital practical approaches to addressing contemporary digital labour alienation and represent a creative extension of Marxist human emancipation theory within the framework of escaping algorithmic dominance. These insights provide both critical and practical guidance for shaping a global digital labour system rooted in digital labour.