What Exactly IS Amazon?
An interview with Steve Maher and Scott Aquanno
For Jacobin, we interviewed Steve Maher and Scott Aquanno about their recent article for Amazon Worker Solidarity, “A Prime Competitor: Understanding Amazon’s Market Power.” Steve and Scott offer a very helpful understanding of Amazon’s structure and competitive advantage.
A few highlights from the interview:
Rejecting the idea that Amazon is a “monopoly”:
Seeing how the forces of competition compel Amazon to continuously restructure, to innovate technologically, and to intensify the exploitation of labor is the only way to make sense of what the company is doing — and points to the necessity for workers to develop the disruptive capacities, at the necessary scale, to be able to exert real leverage and fight it.
On the mistaken notion that AWS might simply be split off from Amazon eventually:
If AWS can’t be separated from the logistics and warehousing operations, then the firm can’t just divest from the latter as a result of workers’ struggles for better wages, working conditions, and shop floor power.
On the unique conditions of Amazon’s marketplace:
Amazon therefore effectively centralizes these capitals by absorbing them within its overall structure, continually funneling value into Amazon, while sellers benefit from their ability to profit “independently” from using Amazon’s highly competitive system. In fact, the fees and conditions Amazon imposes on these sellers is nearly sufficient to finance all new investment as well as its day-to-day operations.
On labor organizing strategy:
As we argue, “organizing Amazon” seems to ultimately mean organizing the warehouses that are the hubs of its system. But this demands a strategy that combines disruption and scale. Given the size of the warehouses, building power there requires broad and deep organizing involving a relatively large number of workers. And to be effective, these efforts cannot just be limited to a single warehouse but need to take place at a regional scale.
Read the full interview here.