What has happened to Social Structures of Accumulation (SSA) theory’s initial emphasis on labor process in characterizing SSAs and their stages? US SSA theorists have long focused mostly on macro and financial dynamics, institutions, and policies. Recentering the labor process points to the emergence of a distinctive set of organizational and technological tools and arrangements now shaping work in the United States and beyond, one that is qualitatively different from those that characterized the neoliberal period. Increasingly, work and workers are organizationally and spatially dispersed, even as they become more tightly integrated with the rhythms and controls of capital—in both instances, mediated by cloud-based and artificial intelligence–infused technologies. Tracing the roots of this labor process dispersion suggests that it is an element within a new, post-neoliberal institutional framework: a US capitalism that is economically, socially, and culturally dominated by a handful of giant technology firms.
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