Lefebvre argues that everyday life is the place where exploitation takes place. He argues that consumer capitalism extends alienation and exploitation from the economy into culture:
According to this theory, daily life replaces the colonies. Incapable of maintaining the old imperialism, searching for new tools of domination, and having decided to bank on the home market, capitalist leaders treat daily life as they once treated the colonized territories: massive trading posts (supermarkets and shopping centres); absolute predominance of exchange over use; dual exploitation of the dominated in their capacity as producers and consumers. (CEL3, 26)
Lefebvre’s argument that consumer capitalism means the exploitation of producers and consumers resonates with the contemporary development in digital capitalism that on the capitalist Internet, consumers of information become producers of information who produce online content and social relations. Google and Facebook exploit consumers of the Internet who are, while consuming targeted-ad based online platforms, producers of these companies’ surplus-value.
As examples of how to challenge ideology, Lefebvre (CEL1, 10–28) discusses Charlie Chaplin’s humour, the estrangement effect/distancing effect (Verfremdungseffekt) in
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Theorists