Re-embedding the economy within digitalized foundational sectors: The case of platform cooperativism

Criticism of platforms that do not adhere to the democratic principles outlined above has led to the emergence of an alternative proposition, known as “platform cooperativism”: worker-owned cooperatives based on open-source technologies, which respect ethical working conditions and redistribute to the users the value they have created. The cooperative platforms work beyond the public / private dichotomy, rooted in the "foundational" value of services understood as daily infrastructure, but also as a tool of reconnection (and hybridization) among the existing forms of value creation and distribution. In the following paragraphs we will try to focus the analysis on two "foundational" sectors (mobility and care) highlighting the impact generated by the recent digital transformations and the adoption of a "platform based" service model. We’ll try to compare histories and repertoires within the two polar governance systems, those attributable to Platform Capitalism and those related to the Platform Cooperativism, trying to put in evidence the trends of transformation exposed in the previous paragraph, and highilighting risks and opportunities that the platform model can generate.