Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno
Exactly. Like all firms, Amazon is competing with other firms in various sectors across the economy over market share, but it is also locked in a competitive struggle with its customers and suppliers to capture the maximum quantity of surplus value within value chains. It wants to acquire the largest possible amount of surplus by forcing suppliers to accept the lowest possible prices (and other conditions) while charging customers the highest prices it can get away with. But its ability to raise prices is limited by the intensely competitive nature of these markets. Amazon has to attract supplier firms by offering them the opportunity to reduce their costs, compress turnover time, and reach the widest markets. Meanwhile, it has to attract customers by offering them fast delivery times and low prices. This means Amazon is under incredible competitive discipline to maximize efficiency, intensify work, and exploit labor.
In order to pull this off, Amazon undertakes extremely high levels of investment in its warehousing and logistics system. The competitiveness of Amazon, including AWS, hinges on the efficiency of its warehouses, where thousands of workers are employed laboring together under conditions of bitter exploitation, close work discipline, and intense surveillance. In many respects, it looks like a scene out of Capital, Volume I.
‘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.
As you mention, these warehouses are hubs within Amazon’s regionalized logistics network: 76 percent of orders are shipped from an FC in the customer’s region. This means that although Amazon operates on a national scale, its operations are segmented at the regional level. While the intense competitive pressure…
Auteur: Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno
