aspects: the relationship of the economy and culture, communication in everyday life, communication in capitalism, and the communication of ideology.
5.6.1 The Relationship of the Economy and Culture
Lefebvre argues that the rise of information technology undermines the orthodox and Stalinist assumption that there is an economic base and a cultural and political superstructure. The economy operates as the production of ideas in culture. Culture operates as knowledge goods and knowledge work in the economy. Culture is material, economic, and non-economic. Lefebvre partly uses himself the language of base and superstructures and speaks of the immaterial character of culture, which contradicts his criticism of Marxist orthodoxy.
5.6.2 Communication in Everyday Life
Lefebvre is a critic of structuralism, who stresses the importance of practices in society. Everyday life refers to social practices within the totality of society. It is a dialectic of structures and practices, of what Lefebvre terms the living (le vivre) and the lived (le vécu). Everyday life is an important category for a dialectical theory of society and communication. What we need to add to Lefebvre’s theory is the role of communication as the process of the production of sociality that mediates the dialectic of the individual and society, individual practices/thought and social structures, the lived and the living. Lefebvre introduces the notion of the semantic field. The semantic field is the space where the dialectic of communicative practices and means of communication takes place.
5.6.3 Communication in Capitalism
Lefebvre stresses the dialectical multidimensionality of society and alienation, which allows us to distinguish between the economic, political, and the cultural as dialectically interacting and interpenetrating dimensions of society. He points out that alienation and accumulation extend beyond the economy into society at large. We can identify three types of alienation: exploitation (economic alienation), domination (political alienation), and ideology (cultural alienation). In capitalism, alienation takes on the form of capital accumulation in the economy, the accumulation of decision-power in the political system, and the accumulation of reputation in the cultural system. It creates inequalities and therefore exploited and oppressed groups and classes, of which the working class is the largest and most important one. Based on, among others, Lefebvre, Marx, and Lukács, a critical theory of communication can be grounded in a critical theory of alienation and capitalism. There are economic, political, and cultural dimensions of the alienation of communication. In digital capitalism, alienation takes on the economic form of the antagonism between digital labour and digital capital, the political form of the antagonism between digital dictators and digital citizens, and the cultural form of the antagonism between digital ideologues and digital humans.
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Theorists