Reading Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life is an occasion and inspiration for thinking about the role of alienation in capitalism, communicative capitalism, and digital capitalism. In the next section, we will discuss another important dimension of a critical theory of communication, namely, ideology.
5.4.3 Digital Capitalism
Especially in CEL’s third volume that was published in French in 1981, Lefebvre gives attention to computing. At this time, personal and home computing was on the rise in France. In 1978, Nora and Minc (1980) published a report to the French President titled “The Computerization of Society”. It shaped France’s information society policy and prepared the introduction of the Minitel system, an early online service comparable to the WWW that used telephone lines, in the early 1980s. Lefebvre explicitly refers to this report in his discussion of “Information Technology and Daily Life” in CEL’s third volume (CEL3, part 2, chapter 6, 138 & 148/154 [footnote 8]).
Lefebvre argues that the “scientific and technological revolution” (CEL3, 9, 24, 84) was one of the factors that transformed the capitalist mode of production. Lefebvre here implicitly refers to Radovan Richta’s report Civilization at the Crossroads. Social and Human Implications of the Scientific and Technological Revolution (Richta et al. 1969). Richta was a Czech philosopher, who in his report pointed out how computing transforms both capitalism and socialism. He saw on the one hand the deepening of class society as one dimension of computing in society and on the other hand the advancement of potentials for democratic socialism (see Boucas 2020; Fuchs 2020, chapter 7). Lefebvre sees on the one hand the potentials of computing to deepen class contradictions and on the other hand its potential to make “the end of work possible (in the long run)” (CEL3, 91). “Digitally controlled machines, as well as computer and remote control of complex processes, could replace repetitive, dangerous operations” (CEL3, 98).
Chapter Five | Communication in Everyday (Digital) Life
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Everyday Life and Communication in Capitalism