Venture Labor: How Venture Labor Sheds Light on the Digital Platform Economy

I draw attention to the entrepreneurial ideology that underlies both venture labor and several manifestations of digital labor, defined as deskilled and underpaid/unpaid work performed for online platforms. If contemporary workers seem more willing to accept the burden of entrepreneurial risk or the hardships of underpaid undertakings, this is because they reinterpret value-producing tasks as aligned with their private goals. At the same time, both venture labor and “implicit” work on digital platforms raise issues of distributive justice connected to value capture and centralization, thus increasing the potential for social antagonism and conflict.