Digital fetishism means that the immediacy of online sociality enabled by digital media veils the realities of digital exploitation, control, surveillance and exclusion that are more abstract. Digital media’s concrete social and communicative use-value obscures the more abstract forms of digital commodities and power that underpin usage.
5.6. Conclusion
Axel Honneth has reformulated Georg Lukács’ theory of reification and alienation in a critical theory of recognition. Recognition is for him the social essence of society that grounds a moral theory that allows moral standards for criticising the disrespect for care, rights and solidarity. The advantage of this theory is that it is based on the distinction of three subdomains of society, reformulates Hegel’s dialectic of essence of existence in moral theory and thereby transcends postmodern moral relativism, stresses the importance of sociality as moral essence, and distinguishes between alienation’s subjective, intersubjective, and objective dimensions.
Honneth’s moral monism however also makes recognition and morality the foundation of society and thereby ignores the importance of humans’ co-production of the social world and the relevance of the economy in society as being simultaneously part and no-part of all social systems. I have reformulated basic assumptions of theoretical concepts of morality and alienation in a way that takes social co-production and co-operation to be the essence of humans and society. Based on this foundation, I have identified nine dimensions of alienation along the distinction between economy, politics, and culture on one axis and the subject, intersubjective communication and the object on another axis. Social struggles can challenge alienation and result in humans’ appropriation of the conditions that shape their lives.
The example of Facebook shows that alienation has not ceased to exist in the world of digital media, but has become more complex. The exploitation of digital labour, the surveillance-industrial complex and centralised online visibility constitute forms of digital alienation. The contradictory and mediated character of the online world makes it sometimes dificult for users to perceive and describe objectively alienated digital conditions as such. They tend tend to mistake digital alienation for digital freedom. Digital fetishism and digital alienation can only be overcome by social struggles that aim at appropriating the Internet and put it into the control of users. Digital media that are alternatively designed, shaped and used can advance achieving and living commonism, participatory democracy, mutual understanding and respect. Attaining such a world requires not just alternative projects and social movements, but also political parties, programmes and demands that make media reforms that enable and provide space, time and resources for alternatives.
The Internet, Social Media and Axel Honneth’s Interpretation of Georg Lukács’ Theory
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