by César Bolaño and Fabrício Zanghelini
Bolaño, C., & Zanghelini, F. (2025). Data economy: A discussion on value, fictitious valorisation, and national sovereignty. Big Data & Society, 12(4), https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517251396101. (Original work published 2025)
In this article, we outline key elements for a critique of the so-called data economy, often presented as a new phase of capitalism that would break with the model of flexible accumulation and the finance-dominated regime of regulation.
This phenomenon derives from the Third Industrial Revolution, which expanded the capacity to collect, store, and process massive amounts of data through digital systems. Our analysis focuses on its economic dimension, though it must be recalled that data extraction ultimately serves purposes of surveillance and social control by dominant economic agents. In this sense, big data essentially means control.
Data can be integrated into concrete productive processes. In advanced industries, real-time data enhance coordination and monitoring, as in automotive production systems. Platforms such as Uber use their data-driven digital architecture to exert external control over labor, materially subsuming it under capital and parasitically appropriating part of drivers’ income without establishing a wage relation — a regressive form of accumulation. Data are also employed in the production of the audience-commodity within cultural industries, making them increasingly segmented. Likewise, informational labor can transform data into information-commodities, which may serve, for instance, the real estate and construction sector, guiding speculation and the planning of new developments.
Against fetishistic views that attribute intrinsic value to things, we argue that data are not commodities a priori but crude raw material devoid of intrinsic value. Digital infrastructures operate, at an initial moment, to capture and detach data from their connection with individuals. In Marx’s view, all things that labor merely separates from their immediate connection with their natural environment become objects of labor, provided by nature; only through the transformative action of labor do they become raw materials endowed with value. The same reasoning applies to data: the mere separation and unstructured storage of dispersed data do not make them raw materials — nor commodities — endowed with value.
Beyond their concrete uses in production, we hypothesize that data may represent an innovative form of fictitious capital, in Marx’s terms, whose valorization is based on the promise of future revenues. Thus, when extracted and commercialized by corporations controlling large repositories, sets of raw data — though valueless — may operate as capital without being capital a priori, fueling speculation and fictitious valorization.
Finally, we note the erosion of the national state’s monopoly over the production and organization of official information, now transferred to external agents, thereby threatening national sovereignty. The case of official statistics is emblematic but only part of a broader issue: digital networks and platforms have become central to the current mode of capitalist regulation, deepening core–periphery asymmetries and extending the commodity form into the most intimate spheres of social life.
Just as society once resisted the patenting of genes, it must now confront the private exploitation of data and the growing power of digital platforms. Yet public management of data is legitimate only insofar as it ensures statistical confidentiality, anonymized access, and the use of information for collective well-being.
