This inaugural issue is dedicated to the question of global inequality in contemporary theories of labor. Both orthodox Marxian framings and more contemporary analyses — such as immaterial labour; rentier capitalism; platform capitalism — describe how value is created and captured in systems of production, exchange, and technological mediation. In parallel, long-standing traditions of thought have grappled with the global dimensions of capital accumulation, analysing how imperialist structures and practices have enabled and shaped the expansion of capital.

This issue brings together these two bodies of literature to examine how technological change and shifting patterns of labour and value extraction — the automation of knowledge work; intellectual property enclosures; the gig economy — are reconfiguring global relationships between North and Souths.