History and Class Consciousness has just like Karl Marx’s works influenced the development of Marxist humanism, an approach that has an emphasis on dialectical analysis alienation, practices, class struggles, and democratic socialism (see volumes 1 and 2 of my book series Media, Communication and Society, of which the volume at hand forms volume 3). In France, Henri Lefebvre has been the most important 20thcentury Marxist theorist and Marxists humanist. There are many parallels between Lefebvre and Lukács. Lefebvre was the French Lukács. Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) was a Marxist-humanist philosopher and sociologist. He can be considered as the most important and most influential French Marxist theorist. He published more than 60 books, including the three-volume The Critique of Everyday Life and The Production of Space (for an analysis of how The Production of Space matters for a critical theory of communication, see Fuchs 2019 ). Chapter 5 (“Communication in Everyday (Digital) Life. A Reading of Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life in the Age of Digital Capitalism”) analyses how Henri Lefebvre’s three-volume Critique of Everyday Life helps us to critically analyse the analysis of digital capitalism.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) was a German philosopher and sociologist who together with Max Horkheimer shaped the approach of Frankfurt School critical theory. Among Adorno’s most well-known works are Dialectic of Enlightenment (written together with Horkheimer), The Authoritarian Personality, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, Hegel: Three Studies, The Jargon of Authenticity, Negative Dialectics, and Aesthetic Theory. Chapter 4 (Adorno and the Media in Digital Capitalism) analyses how Adorno’s works can inform the critical analysis of digital capitalism.
Dallas Smythe (1907–1992) was a Marxist political economist who played an important role in the formation of the academic field of the political economy of communication. Smythe’s most influential work has been his essay Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism, in which he coined the notions of the audience commodity and audience labour that he uses in the analysis of advertising’s political economy. These concepts have been revived as the foundation of the analysis of the political economy of targeted advertising on social media platforms. Chapter 6 (Dallas Smythe and Digital Labour) focuses on the question of how Smythe’s work can inform the analysis of platforms such as Facebook and what role the concept of digital labour plays in this context (see also Fuchs 2012, 2014a, 2014b, 2015).
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Introduction