LITMIR.BIZ

       Preface

      The first draft of this book was written in a great hurry in the summer of 2019. I had recently finished a major research project on the extent and characteristics of platform labour in Europe, the results of which seemed to me to have profound implications for the future of employment and to confirm earlier doubts about the viability of the social model that has underpinned European welfare states since the Second World War. Even more broadly, the findings also raised questions about the organisation of daily life in the digital age. In combination, such questions opened up major concerns about the future of the welfare state, both in relation to its ability to provide safety nets for the vulnerable, promote equality and manage redistribution, and in relation to the kinds of services it provides to citizens and how they are delivered. I wanted to share these concerns with a wider audience, in the hope of contributing to a broad-based dialogue about how they could be addressed by public policies.

      At that moment, British politics were in turmoil, dominated by divisive debates about Brexit. It seemed very likely that a general election was imminent, and with it a writing of manifestos and an opening up of discussions about what sort of society British people might want to inhabit in the future. It seemed an opportune moment to contribute to these conversations, enabling them to be informed by some of the results of this research. There was a risk, I thought, that some socialist policies, in seeking to reverse the effects of austerity and move towards a more equal society, might be aiming for a ‘return to the 1970s’, or even a ‘return to 1945’, which would fail to address the very real social and economic challenges of a digital global economy and the breakdown of solidarities between labour market ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ that my

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