Communication in communicative capitalism, then, is not, as Jirgen Habermas would suggest, action oriented toward reaching understanding.14 In Habermas's model of communicative action, the use value of a message depends on its orientation. A sender sends a message with the intention that the message be received and understood. Any acceptance or rejection of the message depends on this understanding. Understanding is thus a necessary part of the communicative exchange. In communicative capitalism, however, the use value of a message is less important than its exchange value, its contribution to a larger pool, flow, or circulation of content. A contribution need not be understood; it need only be repeated, reproduced, forwarded. Circulation is the setting for the acceptance or rejection of a contribution.
How a contribution circulates determines whether it has been accepted or rejected. Does it circulate widely, among a variety of diferentiated groups such that teenagers in the United States, accountants in Estonia, and indigenous groups in the Amazon speak in its terms, wear its logo, or hum its jingle? Does it circulate narrowly and influentially? Does it catch on but in an ironic, counterintuitive way, a way potentialy counter to its original intention or reception? The questions alert us to how the sender (or author) becomes imaterial to the contribution, just as the producer, labor, drops out of the picture in commodity exchange. The circulation of logos, branded media identities, rumors, catch phrases, blog posts, urban myths, even positions and arguments exemplifes this point. The popularity, the penetration and duration of a contribution, marks its acceptance or success.
Thinking about messages in terms of use value and contributions in terms of exchange value sheds light on what would otherwise appear to be an asymmetry in communicative capitalism: the fact that · some messages are received, that some discussions extend beyond the context of their circulation. It is also the case that many commodities are not useless, that people need them. But what makes them comodities is not the need people have for them or, obviously, their use. Rather it is their economic function, their role in capitalist exchange. Similarly, the fact that messages can retain a relation to understanding in no way negates the centrality of their circulation. Indeed, this link is crucial to the ideological reproduction of comunicative capitalism. Some messages, issues, debates, are efective -public relations, advertising and political consulting are some of the industries depending on the production of such eficacy. Some contributions make a diference. But more significant is the system, the communications network. Even when we know that our specific contributions (our messages, blog posts, podcasts, video uploads, books, articles, films, letters to the editor) simply circulate in a rapidly moving and changing flow of content, in contributing, in participating, we act as if we do not know this. This action manifests ideology as the belief underlying action, the belief that reproduces communicative capitalism.15
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