$ ¥ ¥ ¥ CDSMS A Critical Theory COMMUNICATION AND CAPITALISM CHRISTIAN FUCHS Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory Christian Fuchs Critical, Digital and Social Media Studies Series Editor: Christian Fuchs The peer-reviewed book series edited by Christian Fuchs publishes books that critically study the role of the internet and digital and social media in society. Titles analyse how power structures, digital capitalism, ideology and social struggles shape and are shaped by digital and social media. They use and develop critical theory discussing the political relevance and implications of studied topics. The series is a theoretical forum for internet and social media research for books using methods and theories that challenge digital positivism; it also seeks to explore digital media ethics grounded in critical social theories and philosophy. Editorial Board Thomas Allmer, Mark Andrejevic, Miriyam Aouragh, Charles Brown, Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, Eran Fisher, Peter Goodwin, Jonathan Hardy, Kylie Jarrett, Ana- stasia Kavada, Arwid Lund, Maria Michalis, Stefania Milan, Vincent Mosco, Safiya Noble, Jack Qiu, Jernej Amon Prodnik, Sarah Roberts, Marisol Sandoval, Sebastian Sevignani, Pieter Verdegem, Bingqing Xia, Mariano Zukerfeld Published Critical Theory of Communication: New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet Christian Fuchs https://doi.org/10.16997/book1 Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism: An Introduction to Cognitive Materialism Mariano Zukerfeld https://doi.org/10.16997/book3 Politicizing Digital Space: Theory, the Internet, and Renewing Democracy Trevor Garrison Smith https://doi.org/10.16997/book5 Capital, State, Empire: The New American Way of Digital Warfare Scott Timcke https://doi.org/10.16997/book6 The Spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the Context of Digital Capitalism Edited by Marco Briziarelli and Emiliana Armano https://doi.org/10.16997/book11 The Big Data Agenda: Data Ethics and Critical Data Studies Annika Richterich https://doi.org/10.16997/book14 Social Capital Online: Alienation and Accumulation Kane X. Faucher https://doi.org/10.16997/book16 The Propaganda Model Today: Filtering Perception and Awareness Edited by Joan Pedro-Carañana, Daniel Broudy and Jeffery Klaehn https://doi.org/10.16997/book27 Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism Edited by Jeremiah Morelock https://doi.org/10.16997/book30 Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis https://doi.org/10.16997/book33 Bubbles and Machines: Gender, Information and Financial Crises Micky Lee https://doi.org/10.16997/book34 Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour, and Globalization Edited by Vincent Rouzé https://doi.org/10.16997/book38 The Condition of Digitality: A Post-Modern Marxism for the Practice of Digital Life Robert Hassan https://doi.org/10.16997/book44 Incorporating the Digital Commons: Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software Benjamin J. Birkinbine https://doi.org/10.16997/book39 The Internet Myth: From the Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies Paolo Bory https://doi.org/10.16997/book48 Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory Christian Fuchs University of Westminster Press www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk Published by University of Westminster Press 115 New Cavendish Street London W1W 6UW www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk Text © Christian Fuchs 2020 First published 2020 Cover design: www.ketchup-productions.co.uk Series cover concept: Mina Bach (minabach.co.uk) Print and digital versions typeset by Siliconchips Services Ltd. ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-912656-71-4 ISBN (PDF): 978-1-912656-72-1 ISBN (EPUB): 978-1-912656-73-8 ISBN (Kindle): 978-912656-74-5 DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book45 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This license allows for copying and distributing the work, providing author attribution is clearly stated, that you are not using the material for commercial purposes, and that modified versions are not distributed. The full text of this book has been peer-reviewed to ensure high academic standards. For full review policies, see: http://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site /publish. Competing interests: The author has no competing interests to declare. Suggested citation: Fuchs, C. 2020. Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book45 License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 To read the free, open access version of this book online, visit https://doi.org/10.16997/book45 or scan this QR code with your mobile device: Contents Acknowledgements xvii Abbreviations Used in the book xvii 1. Introduction 1 1.1. Marxist Theory 1 The Approach Underlying This Book 3 This Book’s Structure 5 1.2. Critical and Marxist Communication Theory 6 Three Marxist Theory Approaches 7 What is Humanist Marxism? 7 Critical Theory 8 Critical Political Economy of Communication 9 Communication Theory Typologies 10 1.3. Dialectical, Humanist Marxism and Communication Theory 16 Aristotelian, Dialectical, Humanist Marxism 17 1.4. Anti-Humanism 19 Louis Althusser’s Negative Legacy 19 Luhmann, Barthes, Foucault 20 Actor Network Theory, Posthumanism, Cyborgs 20 Technological Determinism: Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler 21 Structuralism’s Anti-Humanism 23 2. Materialism 27 2.1. Matter 27 Aristotle 27 Space and Time 28 Matter’s Becoming 29 Matter, Interaction, Communication 30 viii Contents 2.2. The Dialectic 31 Sublation (Aufhebung) 31 The Dialectic as Matter’s Fire 32 The Dialectic as the Self-Organisation of Matter 33 Consciousness and Reflection 34 Matter and Mind 35 The Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary 36 2.3. Summary and Conclusions 39 3. Materialism and Society 41 3.1. Subject and Object 41 Society and Social Production 42 Human Beings as Species-Being 44 3.2. Freedom and Necessity 46 3.3. The Relations of Production and the Productive Forces 48 The Role of the Body and the Mind in the Mode of Production 52 3.4. Economy and Society 54 Society 54 Economy and Society 56 Society’s Flow 59 3.5. Modern Society 62 Social Roles in Society 64 Power 65 3.6. Summary and Conclusions 66 4. Communication and Society 69 Models of Communication 69 The Mediatisation of Society 70 The Critique of the Political Economy of Communication 72 4.1. Communication, Work, and Labour 74 Work and Labour 74 Teleological Positing 76 Left Aristotelianism 78 Communication as Teleological Positing 80 4.2. The Dialectic of Production and Communication: The Production of Communication 83 Contents ix The Productive Role of Communication in Society’s Dialectic of Subject and Object 83 A Model of Communication as Social and Societal Production Process 86 4.3. The Dialectic of Production and Communication: Communication in Production 88 Communication Structures 88 Communication Work 89 4.4. Communication, Knowledge, and Information 91 Nature, Culture, and Communication 91 Knowledge and Communication 93 Types of Knowledge 96 Information and Communication 97 The Human Psyche and Society 100 Authoritarian and Humanistic Communication 104 4.5. Summary and Conclusions 106 5. Capitalism and Communication 111 5.1. Capital Accumulation and Capitalism 111 Class 111 Capital Accumulation 115 Is Capitalism an Economic System or a Type of Society? 118 5.2. Labour and Capitalism 119 Working Conditions 119 Economic Alienation 122 5.3. Capitalism and Time 124 The Role of Time in Capitalist Society 124 The Role of Time in the Capitalist Economy 128 5.4. The Capitalist Economy and Communication 130 Money and Value as the Language of Commodities 130 The Reified Form of Language and Communication in Capitalism 131 Communication as Commodity 133 The Advertising Industry 140 5.5. Communication’s Roles in the Totality of the Capitalist Economy 146 5.6. Summary and Conclusions 151 x Contents 6. Communication Technologies: Means of Communication as Means of Production 153 6.1. Types of Communication and Communication Technologies 153 6.2. Communication Technology’s Roles in Capitalism 160 6.3. Technological Fetishism 166 6.4. Summary and Conclusions 171 7. Communication Society 173 7.1. Information Society Theories 173 7.2. Information Capitalism, Communicative Capitalism 177 The Fundamental Question of the Present Structure of Society 181 7.3. Information Society Indicators: Measuring Information Capitalism 184 7.4. Summary and Conclusions 193 8. Political Communication in the Public Sphere 197 8.1. Capitalism and Domination 197 Alienation 197 The Instrumental Reason of Capitalist Communications 202 Class and Domination 203 8.2. Communication in the Public Sphere 206 The Public Sphere 206 Communication and the Public Sphere 208 Public Service Media 212 Critical Media and the Counter Public Sphere 213 8.3. Summary and Conclusions 215 9. Ideology 217 9.1. The Reification of Consciousness 217 9.2. What Is Ideology? 220 9.3. Communication and Ideology 224 The Communicative Character of Commodity Fetishism 224 The Fetishist Character of Ideological Communication 225 Responses to Ideological Communication 227 9.4. Ideology Critique 228 Dominative Knowledge and Emancipatory Knowledge 228 9.5. Summary and Conclusions 232 Contents xi 10. Nationalism, Communication, Ideology 235 10.1. Nationalism 236 What is Nationalism? 236 Karl Marx on Nationalism 239 Rosa Luxemburg on Nationalism 240 Fictive Ethnicity 241 Key Aspects of Nationalism 243 10.2. Nationalism and Racism 244 New Racism 245 10.3. Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Authoritarian Capitalism, Fascism 246 A Model of Right-Wing Authoritarianism 247 Authoritarian Capitalism 249 Right-Wing Extremism and Fascism 250 10.4. The Communication of Nationalist Ideology 252 Social Forms of Communicating Nationalism 252 10.5. Summary and Conclusions 257 11. Global Communication and Imperialism 259 11.1. Space 259 The Production of Social Space 260 Spatial Practices, Representational Space, Spaces of Representation 262 Absolute, Relative and Relational Space 265 11.2. Global Space and Globalisation 266 11.3. Capitalism and Globalisation 268 Global Spaces of Capitalism 268 The New Imperialism as the Globalisation of Neoliberalism: A New Phase of Capitalist Globalisation 271 The New Imperialism 272 Capitalism Since the 2008 Economic Crisis 275 Authoritarian Capitalism 282 11.4. Communication, Capitalism, and Globalisation 284 The Dialectic of Communication and Globalisation in Capitalism 284 The Role of Communication Technologies in Time-Space Compression 285 ‘Cultural Imperialism’ 287 11.5. Summary and Conclusions 289 xii Contents 12. Communication Society as Society of the Commons 293 12.1. Communication as Societal Commoning 293 Democratic Communications 294 12.2. Foundations of Critical Ethics 296 The Human Being’s Social Essence 296 Co-operation 297 Ubuntu Philosophy 300 12.3. The Critical Ethics of the Communication Commons 301 The Commons 301 The Commodification of the Commons 303 Why Communication Commons are Morally Good and Politically Necessary 303 12.4. Summary and Conclusions 308 Informational and Communicative Socialism 309 13. Death and Love: The Metaphysics of Communication 313 13.1. Introduction 313 13.2. Death, Love, and Ontology 315 Aristotle on Death 315 Philosophical Positions on Death 316 The Meaning of Human Existence: Three Philosophical Positions 318 Jean-Paul Sartre 319 Martin Heidegger 319 Thomas Nagel 321 13.3. Death and Estrangement: Death as Endstrangement 322 Death as Endstrangement 322 Alienation as Death 323 What Karl Marx Says About Death 324 13.4. The Labour of Mourning and the Communication of Grief and Death 325 The Labour of Mourning 326 The Labour of Mourning and Communication 326 The Commodification of Death and the Communication of Death 328 13.5. Mortality and Immortality 329 Human Life Expectancy 329 Post- and Transhumanism 330 Cyborgs and Capitalism as Cyborg-Fascism 331 Contents xiii 13.6. Summary and Conclusion 332 Love as a Socialist Weapon 333 Marxism and Liberation Theology 334 14. Communication and Struggles for Alternatives 337 14.1. Praxis Communication 337 Praxis 337 Praxis Communication 339 14.2. Alternative Media as Critical Media 342 A Model of Communication 342 Alternative Media, Critical Media 344 Types of Critical Media 349 14.3. Summary and Conclusions 352 15 Conclusion: Advancing a Dialectical, Humanist, Critical Theory of Communication and Society 353 15.1. Habermas’ Dualisms 353 Forms of Social Action 355 Three Forms of Rationality 356 Linguistic Communism 357 Communication Free From Domination 358 The Dialectical Alternative: Communication as Teleological Positing 359 Validity Claims of Communication 360 Dialectical, Materialist, Humanist Critical Theory of Communication 361 15.2. Metaphors of Communication 364 15.3. Towards Communication and Society as Dialectical Dancing 367 15.4. Transcending Capitalism, Transcending Capitalist Communication 369 Index 371 Dedication This book is dedicated to the memory of my father Gerhard Fuchs (2 September 1948–9 October 2018). Keep on rockin’! Acknowledgements Over the years, I have had the privilege to work together with outstanding human beings, for which I am very grateful. They include: Marisol Sandoval, Thomas Allmer, Sebastian Sevignani, Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Dimitris Boucas, David Chandler, Eran Fisher, Pete Goodwin, Denise Rose Hansen, Anastasia Kavada, Manfred Knoche, Verena Kreilinger, Andrew Lockett, Arwid Lund, Maria Michalis, Lara Monticelli, Vincent Mosco, Yuqi Na, Jack Qiu, Daniel Trottier, Pieter Verdegem, Frank Welz. Abbreviations Used in the book: MECW: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Collected Works . London: Lawrence & Wishart. CHAPTER 1 Introduction This book presents an introduction to the critical theory of communication. It asks: What is communication? What are communication’s roles in society? What does it mean to study communication critically based on a materialist approach (communicative materialism)? What are the roles of communication in capitalism? What alternatives are there to capitalist communication? 1.1. Marxist Theory At the time of and in the years after the student rebellions of 1968, socialist pol- itics and radical theory were flourishing. Activists and especially young people were seeking alternative ways of life and perspectives that pointed beyond capi- talism and imperialist wars. The New Left was a movement for socialism that strongly influenced politics and culture in the 1960s and 1970s. Reading and interpreting Marx’s theory was back then an important part of academia and activism. Activists tried to put Marx’s theory into praxis. But the 1970s also saw a major economic crisis and as a consequence the rise of neoliberal politics that aimed at the commodification of everything 1 Thatch- erism and Reagonomics put the neoliberal theory of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman into practice and became the world’s dominant political paradigm. Under the influence of neoliberal capitalism, society as a whole turned into a capitalist business and universities increasingly turned into business schools 1 See: David Harvey. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism . Oxford: Oxford University Press. How to cite this book: Fuchs, C. 2020. Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book45. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0