It is often said that controversial political events ‘create divisions’ — this isn’t strictly true: in most cases, events (Brexit for example) latch onto pre-existing divisions and exacerbate them.

With the recent Transport for London (TfL) ruling that Uber will be banned in London, the divide over what Uber actually is has become more striking. On the surface, this is something of a trite semantic question, but in many ways it is a deeply revealing dividing-line: it points to a political cleavage concerning how people understand the functional as well as the ideological components of (contemporary) capitalism.

Thus, how one frames what Uber is as a company is really a cover for one’s own political position. A lot of people on the right speak of Uber as being a cool innovative tech start-up — framing it this way allows them to dodge awkward questions concerning employment, or rather, they simply regurgitate Uber’s line: we’re a tech start-up, we don’t hire drivers, they’re self-employed and use us as a vehicle to earn money, and so on.

The framing of Uber as innovators in tech puts forward a narrative where the epistemological-crux of Uber is that they’re really just a tech-company ran by heroic, Randian, ex Goldman Sachs titans. When viewed like this, the recent ruling is seen as info-capitalist dynamism and tech-originality being crushed by a giant hydra-headed state-tentacle — and framing it as thus allows one to ignore the actual reasons stated by the TfL for the ban.

On the other side of the ideological pole is the reversal of this position. The position is as follows: yes, Uber has a technical component to it, but that merely acts as a communicative mediator to its actual service, transport — this discourse posits that Uber is fundamentally a taxi-firm where you hail a taxi via an app as opposed to calling a number. When the emphasis is placed on driving as opposed to tech, questions about material working-conditions for the drivers ultimately arise. The debate becomes framed not through the lens of capitalist dynamism but through the lens of capitalist exploitation. And logically from this, such opinions about Uber have only been exacerbated further by the TfL ban.

Both these positions contain kernels of truth to them, but they’re ultimately wrong in so far as they mislabel the fundamental characteristics of capitalism as an economic-model.

They attempt to impinge an objective moral-judgement onto capitalism — one judgement positive, the other negative — yet it is arguable that such frameworks don’t really grasp at the epicentre of the persona of our economy.

Capitalism is neither moral nor immoral. It is amoral — there’s the rub.

Capitalism is fundamentally about the consistent accumulation of capital into the hands of the owners of private property. It is about self-perpetuation, continual reproduction (of material goods and ideology), profit. In this sense, its dynamism and exploitative elements are secondary characteristics which logically follow from the cold pursuit of economic-surplus, or simple just self-expansion (self-expansion is important in regards to Uber, as its losses are actually staggering, but it has nonetheless geographically expanded).

Its desire for continual growth means that its ultimate ‘goal’ is to simply spread and move in a frictionless manner across the globe — by any means necessary. (A minor excursion. In this sense, those who align themselves with Donald Trump are ideologically inconsistent: they champion a brutish capitalist and simultaneously lambaste ‘globalists’. Trump is very much a globalist, he has business-deals transnationally, he just simply doesn’t hold, ah, cosmopolitan social values).

The problem for capital is that its movement often faces friction, barriers even. To overcome this, it has to recalibrate itself. Capital, chameleon-like, moves across the world by dressing up in different garbs.

It is this framework which we should situate Uber in. We return to our initial question. What is Uber? We certainly know what Uber isn’t.

Uber doesn’t function under the old industrial capitalist (and hack-Marxist) framework: i.e. the top-hat-and-tails capitalist owns labour-power, tools/materials, he puts the two to work to create a commodity which hopefully consumers purchase en-masse, then boomf — profit.

Uber evades this analysis for two reasons.

Firstly, it doesn’t own the ‘tools’. Uber is the largest taxi-company in the world — it also doesn’t own any taxis.

Secondly, it doesn’t own labour-power. It slithers out of the conventional employer-employee relationship category. Uber doesn’t have set hours for its drivers, this is because according to Uber, the drivers are ‘self-employed’.

Yet, like a fracturing kaleidoscope, we also cannot pin-point and define Uber drivers as being ‘self-employed’ as they don’t slot into that category either. If we are to define Uber drivers as ‘self employed’, we must at least recognise that Uber drivers pertain to a deeply unique mode of self-employment. Uber doesn’t own any cars, because of this they rely on the drivers to provide them. Most drivers are poor thus they have to hire out a car or take out a loan to get a car. Using the money they get from using the Uber app they not only pay for their rent, food, water (etc) but also for the cost of the car as well. In this sense they are inexplicably tied to Uber but also loosely distanced from it.

Drivers are not directly hired by Uber thus have the appearance of economic agency, however in order to pay off their rent and car-running costs, they have to work long hours. Thus the idea of work-flexibility here is something of a PR-sham. In this sense, their economic category involves the worst elements of self-employment (insecurity; commission-based work) and employment (ruthlessly glued to a single company for the purpose of economic-security).

It is here where we see the true amorality of the system under question, for the brilliance of Uber is that its dynamism and its exploitation aren’t just complementary components, but parts that fundamentally feed into one another.

Its ‘hollow’ business-model (doesn’t own any taxis) points to this fact — and this hollow business model isn’t a new conception. Nike don’t own any of their factories, they outsource their labour. Airbnb is the largest hotel chain in the world — doesn’t own any hotels. This asset-lite business-model is dynamic in so far as it is inventive and creates a different sort of capitalist, worker, and consumer — and this recalibration of these three core roles does two things to the exploitation question: it is a different sort of exploitation than you’d see being conducted by an ‘old fashioned industrialist’, and it conceals exploitation (in the case of Nike: we don’t own any factories, don’t blame us for poor working conditions).

Capitalism is always searching for new methods to exploit. The new-ness of exploitation is the dynamism. (If ever an entrepreneur walks up to you in jeans and a T-shirt, encourages you to sit on a beanbag and then waxes lyrical about ‘blue sky thinking’, I’d advise you to hold onto your wallet.)

I’m reminded of a joke in the American TV-show Veep, where Selena Meyer’s strap-line on her battle-bus is “Continuity With Change”. This is the reason why the confusion over the definition of Uber arises (and thus the lack of understanding of our contemporary economic-scene): it is difficult, at first, to grasp that a system may have continuous and fixed elements to it whilst simultaneously always evolving.

The cold hard logic of expansion is eternal, what changes are the technical details, in this case: the business structure itself.