{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title":"Digital Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2021022153","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","uuid":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title":"Digital Capitalism","normalized_title":"digitalcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2021022153","isbns":["2021022153","9781032119182","9781032119205","9781003222149","2405518376"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":343,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Digital%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/search"},"page":{"printed_page":183,"pdf_page":197,"physical_index":197,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"3123c08182d1d17a21c2d6ac19023b215aa14160b208553f78eee37b4cd5958b"},"chapter":"DIGITAL CAPITALISM","content":"6) Alternatives: Marx envisioned alternatives to capitalism and domination. Given capitalist crisis and monopoly control of social media today, it is important to envision alternatives to capitalism and capitalist social media.\n\nMarxian concepts that matter for the understanding of digital/social media, include dialectics, capitalism, commodity/commodification, surplus value, exploitation, alienation, class, globalisation, ideology/ideology critique, class struggle, commons, the public sphere, communism, and aesthetics (Fuchs 2012).\n\nMarx certainly did not describe 21st-century society, although his analysis was very anticipatory. Marxian categories are historical and dialectical themselves, which means that for analysing a specific period of society, one needs to work out the dialectical continuities and changes of social phenomena. Marx opened his main work Capital with the analysis of the commodity: “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’” (Marx 1867, 125). On targeted-advertising-based social media, the commodity takes on a peculiar form: users create and re-create sociality as use value that is as data sold in commodity form to targeted advertisers. Users thereby become digital workers (Fuchs 2014a, 2015a).\n\nMarx is certainly not the only relevant critical social theorist who matters for understanding social media. The critical study of social media should be based on a broad range of critical theories of society. The crisis of capitalism and the devastating social and political effects of austerity and neoliberalism have made evident that political economy can no longer be ignored in the study of society. This does not mean that the economy determines society but rather that all social phenomena have an economy and are economic and non-economic at the same time (Fuchs 2015a).\n\nMarx’s critical ontology of society is one of social co-production, in which humans produce the social under particular social relations. In class societies, co-production is embedded into alienated social relations. If we assume that those who co-produce the social have the right to collectively control their products, then the implication for social media platforms is that they are incompletely social: private ownership of social media corporations should be replaced by forms of collective ownership, that is, public social media and commons-based social media. One can, for example, envision an alternative YouTube run by a network that is operated by public service broadcasters, on which all programme archives are made available with Creative Commons licences. And one can envision an alternative Facebook that is decentralised, owned, and controlled by the community of users and funded by a combination of user contributions and a participatory media fee (Fuchs 2015b).\n\nChapter Seven | Digital Positivism and Administrative\n\n183\n\nTheory: Karl Marx and Critical Digital and Social Media Theory","previous_page":182,"next_page":184}