IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cambje/v46y2022i6p1341-1367..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Monopoly Capital in the time of digital platforms: a radical approach to the Amazon case

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Coveri
  • Claudio Cozza
  • Dario Guarascio

Abstract

The paper applies the radical view of Monopoly Capitalism to the digital platform economy. Based on the seminal ideas of Hymer and Zeitlin that led Cowling and Sugden to define the large monopolistic firm as a means to plan production from a single strategic decision-making centre, we attempt to develop a framework where digital platforms are conceived as an evolution of large transnational corporations. Power and control, in our view of monopoly capitalism, are thus to be understood not only in terms of market relations, but rather as levers for coordinating global production and influencing world societies. Applying this framework to the Amazon case, we highlight the key analytical dimensions to be considered: not only does Amazon dominate other firms and suppliers through its diversification and direct control of data and technology; its power is also linked to global labour fragmentation and uneven bargaining power vis-à-vis the world’s governments, as in the tradition set by Hymer and Cowling.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Coveri & Claudio Cozza & Dario Guarascio, 2022. "Monopoly Capital in the time of digital platforms: a radical approach to the Amazon case," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1341-1367.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:46:y:2022:i:6:p:1341-1367.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/beac044
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sebastián Fernández Franco & Juan M. Graña & Cecilia Rikap, 2024. "Dependency in the Digital Age? The Experience of Mercado Libre in Latin America," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 55(3), pages 429-464, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:46:y:2022:i:6:p:1341-1367.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.