Wander around Port Sunlight, Bournville, or Saltaire, and the genuine concern of their founders for the wellbeing of the workers is manifest in the fabric of these British model towns developed by enlightened entrepreneurs, even if it is at times oppressively paternalistic. Other company towns, like those depicted in Depression-era novels, were simply exploitative, paying workers meagre amounts in company money that could only be spent at costly company stores.
This was the comparison that came to my mind when reading Markets and Power in Digital Capitalism by Philipp Staab. The book explores what is distinctive about today’s digital capitalist economies, focusing on the extensive reach and power of the Big Tech companies, and looks back in time to find apt comparisons. Yet, rather than look to the 19th century luminaries — the Lever brothers, the Cadbury family or the mill baron Titus Salt — who developed those model towns, Staab, professor of sociology at Berlin’s Humboldt University, offers a different, earlier parallel, namely the colonising businesses of the age of empire, such as the East India Company.