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Lefebvre criticises that structural linguistics has shattered “the living (dialectical) unity” of language (CEL2, 293). It would reduce the semantic field to the sign. Behaviourism such as Pavlov’s theory would reduce the semantic field to signals. Signification is the process of making meaning of a sign. Lefebvre sees it as a fixed and stable process that is attached to the sign. Expression is in contrast a creative process that involves the voice, gestures, and the face and has a certain level of unexpectedness. “Expression is speech. Signification is language as form” (293). Lefebvre says that a dialectical contradiction between signification and expression shapes the semantic field. This contradiction constantly results in the production of sense, the goal, orientation and direction of dialogue. Sense is the sublation of the contradiction between signification and expression.

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Lefebvre argues that since the rise of industrialism, signals have invaded everyday life and have tried to programme everyday life (CEL2, 300). Lefebvre associates signals with the instrumental reason of quantification and computability. He imagines that cyberneticians could create “a gigantic machine” that processes signals and tries to regulate and control everyday life (300). Lefebvre anticipated discussions about digital surveillance and big data capitalism (see Fuchs 2021b).

The next section discusses everyday life and everyday communication in capitalism.

5.4 Everyday Life and Communication in Capitalism

5.4.1 Alienation

Alienation is Marx’s most general category of critique. Whereas for Hegel contradiction is alienation, for Marx alienation is a type of social contradiction (CEL1, 70). It involves both exploitation and domination, the economic and the non-economic (see Fuchs 2018). It is not just specific for capitalism but for all dominative and class societies. Lefebvre (CEL2, 206–216) provides a definition of alienation: Alienation stops groups from “fully ‘appropriating’ the conditions in which they exist and keep them below their possibilities” (209). Alienation dehumanises human (CEL1, 180). Lefebvre argues there are many forms of alienation, not just economic alienation (CEL1, 52–83; CEL2, 206–216) but also, for example, social, political, ideological, or philosophical alienation (CEL1, 249). For Lefebvre, alienation is a process and reification a state. Reification is the result of and condition that shapes alienation. Alienation stands in a dialectical relation to disalienation. “The worst alienation is when the alienation itself is non-conscious (or unrecognized)” (CEL2, 208). Reification “both defines and disguises all alienations” (209). Lukács (1971) terms unrecognised alienation reified consciousness of the proletariat.

Based on Lefebvre’s insight that there are multiple levels of society and alienation, we can identify three types of alienation: exploitation (economic alienation), domination (political alienation), and ideology (cultural alienation). All three forms have in common that not humans cannot control their conditions of existence that shape their lives. A privileged group with partial interests controls these conditions and derives benefit at the expense of everyday people. Table 5.4 opposes alienated societies to humanistic societies. It summarises the three types of alienation and relates them to the social character. The social character is a common type of social action and psychological disposition characteristic for a particular social group (Fromm 1965). Alienated societies are class and dominative societies. Humanist societies are non-dominative and post-class societies. Socialism is a humanism. True humanism is socialism.

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Table 5.5 shows that alienation is an antagonistic social relation between human groups. Table 5.6 gives an overview of reification practices, alienated structures, cooperation practices, and humanistic structures. There is an antagonism between reification and co-operation and between alienation and humanism.

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5.4.2 Accumulation

Lefebvre is not just interested in a general theory of society but has established a dialectical theory that is an interaction of a general social theory and a critical theory of capitalism. Capitalism is not just an economic system but a social formation, a type of society.

Lefebvre (CEL2, 315–339) distinguishes between accumulative and non-accumulative aspects of nature and society. The one’s key aspect is their growth and increase of quantity, the other’s key feature is quality and that non-accumulative systems cannot grow in a quantitative sense. For example, you can improve your moral values qualitatively but one cannot quantitatively increase morality. For Lefebvre, morality, sensitivity, sensory perception, sensuality, spontaneity, art, emotions and affects have a non-accumulative character. He sees a danger in attributing an accumulative character to them. Human spontaneity and creativity would thereby be undermined. He argues that there is a dialectic of accumulative and non-accumulative processes. For example, the brain stores, remembers, and forgets knowledge (331).

For Marx, accumulation is not a general process of society and humankind that consists in growth. Accumulation is rather a logic that is specific for capitalism. Accumulation implies uneven development, inequality, concentration of control and ownership. Accumulation of capital implies labour’s non-ownership of capital. Marx (1867) argues that capital entails that “the product belongs to the capitalist and not to the worker” (731), that surplus-value is “the legitimate property of the capitalist” (731), and that the worker has to sell labour-power (731). Capitalism is “divorcing the producer from the means of production” (Marx 1867, 875). Labour is in capitalism “absolute poverty […] as total exclusion of objective wealth” (Marx 1857/58, 296). Inequality is built into the accumulation of capital:

Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalisation and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital. (799)

The “increasing concentration of the social means of production in the hands of individual capitalists […] grows directly out of accumulation, or rather is identical with it” (Marx 1867, 776). “Accumulation […] presents itself […] as increasing concentration of the means of production, and of the command over labour” (Marx 1867, 776–777).

Lefebvre’s general sociological use of the term splits of non-ownership, inequality, concentration, and crisis from the concept of accumulation. He sees these phenomena as external to accumulation, whereas for Marx they are immanent to capital accumulation. Lefebvre’s terminology risks fetishising capital accumulation as a natural process of society. For Lefebvre, the problem is accumulation that results as part of class society in inequality. For Marx, inequality is part of the definition of accumulation. There is a difference between growth as general natural and social process and accumulation as logic of increasing quantity that shapes capitalism.

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Lefebvre clearly sees that surplus production beyond the realm of necessity exists in all societies that aim at increasing productivity. “A society without surplus product, in which labour allows for nothing more than the survival of its workers, will quickly disappear” (CEL2, 320). Scientific-technological progress is always connected to the question of how to create surplus. In capitalism, surplus-value production becomes and end in itself that serves the capitalist class’ interests. The capitalist class owns the means of production, surplus-value, capital, profit, commodities, and compels the working class to sell its labour-power as commodity. In all class societies the ruling class owns the surplus product. The capitalist economy is specific in that workers are compelled to sell their labour-power and produce commodities, surplus-value and profit that are owned by the capitalist class. Lefebvre argues that in capitalist society, the accumulation of capital comes along with the accumulation of rationality and knowledge in culture and political action in bureaucracies (327). Lefebvre stresses that in capitalist society, the logic of accumulation extends beyond the economy into society at large.

Uneven development, the atomisation of the individual, and the segregation of individuals into groups with polarised interests in respect to the division of labour, education, influence, and so forth are the consequences of capitalist accumulation. Lefebvre argues that capitalism implies an uneven development of everyday life so that general upheaval benefits the ruling class and creates a “backward sector” where humans are exploited and oppressed (CEL2, 316). Lefebvre sees uneven development as a central feature of capitalism. He does, however, not see it, as Marx does, as identical with accumulation (Marx 1867, 776).

From Marx, we can take the insight that the logic of accumulation includes the alienation of workers from the control of the means of production, commodities, capital, surplus-value, and their own lives. From Lefebvre, we can take the insight that in capitalist society, accumulation is both an economic and a non-economic process.

In my own model that is based on these insights, society is the totality of social production processes. We can distinguish between social production in the economy, politics, and culture. In capitalism, we find the accumulation of capital in the economy, the accumulation of decision-power and influence in politics, and the accumulation of reputation, attention, and respect in culture. The key aspect is not that there is growth, but that there is the attempt of the dominant class and dominant groups to accumulate power at the expense of others who as a consequence have disadvantages. Capitalist society is therefore based on an economic antagonism of exploitation between classes and social antagonisms of domination.

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Based on Marx and Lefebvre, we can outline some systematic aspects of capitalist society. Table 5.7 applies Table 5.1 to capitalist society. It shows what forms structures take on the various levels of capitalist society.

Table 5.8 shows how we can make sense of accumulation as general process and in capitalist society. In capitalism, alienation takes on the form of accumulation processes that create classes and inequalities. Capitalism is based on capitalists’ accumulation of capital in the economy, bureaucrats’ accumulation of decision-power and influence in the political system, and ideologues’, influencers’, and celebrities’ accumulation of reputation, attention, and respect in the cultural system. Accumulation is an antagonistic relation that not just constitutes dominant classes and groups but also subordinated, dominated, and exploited groups such as the working class in the capitalist economy, dominated citizens in the capitalist political system, and ideologically targeted everyday people in capitalism’s cultural system.

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Alienation also plays a role in the context of knowledge and communication. In capitalism, communication is “instrument and content” (Lefebvre 1971, 116–117). Lefebvre argues that in capitalism, active groups with active communication practices are replaced by “formal communication, means thus becoming ends and form content”, ideologies (1971, 120), and “emptiness filled with signs” (1971, 135). Table 5.9 gives an overview of alienated and disalienated knowledge and communication. Table 5.10 shows a) the role of capitalist accumulation in respect to knowledge and communication and b) accumulation in digital capitalism².

Accumulation in communicative capitalism and digital capitalism results in particular forms of the social antagonisms characteristic for capitalism. Table 5.11 gives an overview of these antagonisms.

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2 Studies of the Internet that have been influenced by Lefebvre include, for example, Bakardjieva, 2005; Nunes 2006; Poster 2006, part III.

Reading Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life is an occasion and inspiration for thinking about the role of alienation in capitalism, communicative capitalism, and digital capitalism. In the next section, we will discuss another important dimension of a critical theory of communication, namely, ideology.

5.4.3 Digital Capitalism

Especially in CEL’s third volume that was published in French in 1981, Lefebvre gives attention to computing. At this time, personal and home computing was on the rise in France. In 1978, Nora and Minc (1980) published a report to the French President titled “The Computerization of Society”. It shaped France’s information society policy and prepared the introduction of the Minitel system, an early online service comparable to the WWW that used telephone lines, in the early 1980s. Lefebvre explicitly refers to this report in his discussion of “Information Technology and Daily Life” in CEL’s third volume (CEL3, part 2, chapter 6, 138 & 148/154 [footnote 8]).

Lefebvre argues that the “scientific and technological revolution” (CEL3, 9, 24, 84) was one of the factors that transformed the capitalist mode of production. Lefebvre here implicitly refers to Radovan Richta’s report Civilization at the Crossroads. Social and Human Implications of the Scientific and Technological Revolution (Richta et al. 1969). Richta was a Czech philosopher, who in his report pointed out how computing transforms both capitalism and socialism. He saw on the one hand the deepening of class society as one dimension of computing in society and on the other hand the advancement of potentials for democratic socialism (see Boucas 2020; Fuchs 2020, chapter 7). Lefebvre sees on the one hand the potentials of computing to deepen class contradictions and on the other hand its potential to make “the end of work possible (in the long run)” (CEL3, 91). “Digitally controlled machines, as well as computer and remote control of complex processes, could replace repetitive, dangerous operations” (CEL3, 98).

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Computers are things whose immense speed of computation exceeds human capacities. This focus on quantification resonates with the interest of the capitalist class to accumulate ever more capital in ever less time and with the bureaucracy to process lots of data about citizens in order to advance the administered society. Scientists and engineers are fascinated by the idea of playing God, for which the computing is an excellent field of research and development. Capitalist media require constant news and spectacles in order to create attention. Computing promises radical changes, which is why the media are interested in new digital technologies. The thing-character, speed, dualistic logic of computing impresses dominant groups, which results in the diffusion of digital ideology in everyday life in digital capitalism. Representatives of such groups “anticipate miracles” (CEL3, 143) from digital technologies. Lefebvre speaks of “the information ideology” (146–150) as the “myth of freedom realized by information technology” (91). He questions that computing “will generate its effects automatically, since it involves automation” (91). Computer scientists make “optimistic prophecies” (136).

The notion of digital ideology is an update of his notion to 21st-century digital capitalism. Today, such prophecies about computing, the Internet, mobile phones, social media, cloud computing, the Internet of things, industry 4.0, and ever more emergent digital technologies are widespread in daily life. You only need to open a newspaper to find them. I did so on the day when I wrote these lines. One of the first articles I found in the tech section of online news platforms was titled “The World’s First 3D-Printed Neighborhood Is Being Built in Mexico for Families Living on \$3 a Day” (Zdanowicz 2019). The piece was published in CNN Online’s tech section. The author claims that 3D-printing houses is so cheap and fast that the “technology holds promise for affordable housing”. It suggests that housing could be created for the homeless. “The technology is there and the application to building homes for those in need brings a lot of hope for the future”. The article disregards that building homes not just requires materials but also space that is predominantly privately owned and sold as commodity on financialised housing markets. 3D-printing is itself prone to be subsumed under capital. Those who control 3D-printing technologies can also control put price tags on designs and printers. The article presents 3D-printing as technological fix to the social problems of homelessness and housing crises. It disregards these problems’ rootedness in capitalism and class.

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Digital ideology conveys the impression that computing with necessity brings about certain changes of society that cannot be undone or stopped. As a consequence, digital ideology with its fetishistic aura of novelty, speed, and pseudo-radicalness distracts attention from class, exploitation, domination, and other social relations. “Information ideology possesses the dubious merit of prophetically heralding the new society: post-industrial, post-capitalist and even post-socialist” (CEL3, 147–148). Lefebvre reminds us that despite its aura of novelty the production of information involves “profits for those who are in charge of production” (144). In 2019, there were six information technology and media companies among the world’s largest 20 transnational corporations³: Apple (#6), AT&T (#12), Samsung Electronics (#13), Microsoft (#16), Alphabet/Google (#17), Verizon Communication (#20). The digital world is first and foremost digital capitalism.

Lefebvre argues that information and communication have always been central for the organisation of capitalism and markets. Think, for example, about the communication of prices and available products. He says that “for many centuries, information as such did not appear on the market” and that what is “novel about the contemporary world is that there is a world market in information, which positively ‘drives’ the other markets, through advertising, propaganda, the transmission of positive knowledge, and so on” (CEL3, 145). The importance of informational and digital capitalism, where information and the digital are commodities, is a relatively recent dimension of capitalism.

Lefebvre says there is a split in society between the expelled such as the unemployed and precarious workers and those who are “well-integrated into circuits and networks focused around so-called ‘high-tech production (nuclear energy, computer science, the arm industry, etc.)” (CEL3, 86). In 21st-century digital capitalism, there is on the one hand a split between digital capital and digital labour and on the other hand between a well-positioned digital labour aristocracy and precarious digital workers. Think, for example, on the one side of the software engineer with very high wages working for Google in Silicon Valley and on the other side the call-centre agent or the low-paid hardware assembler working for Foxconn in China. Digital capitalism is a deeply divided class society (see Fuchs 2014). Lefebvre argues that the bourgeoisie has made intellectuals and technicians “partners in its system”, so that “the new middle class and the new bourgeoisie” (CEL3, 120) occupy city life and the working class is displaced.

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3 Data source: Forbes 2000 List of the World’s Largest Public Companies, year 2019, https://www.forbes.com/ global2000