Lefebvre reminds us of the predominantly capitalist character of digital technologies. In digital capitalism, we find ideology that mystifies information and the digital. Computing has potentials to deepen capitalism and class and to advance socialist selfmanagement. It shapes and is shaped by society.
5.6.4 The Communication of Ideology
For Lefebvre, the critique of everyday life is also a critique of ideology. Lefebvre’s concept of empirical consciousness parallels Lukács’ notion of reified consciousness. Both are today relevant for the critique of digital positivism. Lefebvre’s critique of consumer capitalism shares many features of the works of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Guy Debord. For Lefebvre, everyday life is a colony of capitalism where uneven development takes place in multiple forms. Lefebvre’s insight that consumer capitalism not just exploits workers in the factory and the office but extends exploitation into leisure time and consumption resonates with Dallas Smythe’s concept of audience labour and the theory of digital labour that sees users of targeted-ad based Internet platforms as digital workers who are exploited by digital capital.
Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life is an important influence for the foundations of a critical theory of communication in general and a critical theory of communication in and beyond digital capitalism.
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Chapter Five | Communication in Everyday (Digital) Life
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