Internet platforms such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Instagram; the role and relations of capitalism, patriarchy, slavery, and racism in the context of digital labour; digital alienation, the role of social media in the capitalist crisis, the relationship of imperialism and digital labour, Marx’s labour theory of value in the context of information industries, trade unions and class struggles in the digital age, platform cooperatives, digital commons, and public service Internet platforms. Digital Capitalism illuminates how a digital capitalist society’s economy, politics, and culture work and interact.
The book is organised in the form of 13 chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. Each chapter focuses on a particular dimension of digital capitalism or a critical theorist whose work helps us to illuminate how digital capitalism works.
The chapters are organised in the form of four parts. Part 1 forms the introduction. Part 2 focuses on theorists and part 3 on themes. Part 4 is the book’s conclusion. In part 2, the discussed theorists are Friedrich Engels (chapter 2), Georg Lukács (chapter 3), Theodor W. Adorno (chapter 4), Henri Lefebvre (chapter 5), and Dallas Smythe (chapter 6). The sequence of the chapters in part 2 is organised by ascending birth dates of the discussed theorists. Karl Marx’s works are utilised throughout the book, which is why there is not a specific chapter dedicated to his works (for a discussion of Marx in the context of communicative and digital capitalism, see Fuchs 2020b, 2019, 2016b). Part 3 discusses a variety of themes and dimensions of digital capitalism, namely digital positivism (chapter 7), big data (chapter 8), social media in capitalist crises (chapter 9), the connection of capitalism, patriarchy and racism in the digital age (chapter 10), digital labour (chapters 10 and 11), and digital imperialism (chapter 11).
Here are the main questions that each chapter asks:
• Chapter 1: What is digital capitalism?
• Chapter 2: How relevant are Friedrich Engels’s works in the age of digital capitalism?
• Chapter 3: How can Georg Lukács’ book History and Class Consciousness inform the critical analysis of digital capitalism and of ideology in the digital age?
• Chapter 4: How can Theodor W. Adorno’s critical theory illuminate how digital capitalism works?
• Chapter 5: How can Henri Lefebvre’s three-volume book Critique of Everyday Life inform a critical theory of communication? How can it inform a critique of digital capitalism?
4
Introduction