Here is a glimpse of what makes cloud capital so fundamentally new, different and scary: capital has hitherto been reproduced within some labour market – within the factory, the office, the warehouse. Aided by machines, it was waged workers who produced the stuff that was sold to generate profits, which in turn financed their wages and the production of more machines – that’s how capital accumulated and reproduced. Cloud capital, in contrast, can reproduce itself in ways that involve no waged labour. How? By commanding almost the whole of humanity to chip in to its reproduction – for free!
