Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet

All human action is purposeful, which Lukács stresses by his category of teleological positing. Only specific purposeful action is instrumental action, namely action aimed at domination, exploitation, control, manipulation or exclusion. We can distinguish between instrumental action that aims at instrumentalising humans and society for fostering the domination of some over others and co-operative action that is based on the logic that actions benefit all. Communication as the symbolic process bringing about social relations all over society is embedded into structures of domination and emancipation. There are instrumental and co-operative forms of communication.

Pegatron is a Chinese company that manufactures phones and computer equipment for Apple and other communications companies. In 2015, China Labor Watch released an investigative report about the working conditions in a Pegatron factory in Shanghai:

With a median work week of 60 hours, workers typically accumulate 70 to 90 hours of overtime a month, far in excess of the Chinese statutory limit of 36 hours. One worker even worked 119 overtime hours in September. […] Overtime is mandatory. A Pegatron staf member said that a worker who simply wants to do an 8-hour, 5-day workweek “does not conform to our hiring practices”. […] Workers are paid the minimum wage (about \$1.83/hour), so they depend on overtime to make a living wage. […] Labor intensity can be high. For example, CLW’s investigator worked on one unit every 3.75 seconds, standing for the entirety of his 10.5 hours of daily work. […] Dorms are crowded, with anywhere from 8 to 14 people housed in one room. […] up to 40 people need to share the use of one toilet. […] Dorms are poor and unhygienic. Mold grows everywhere. Bed bugs have spread throughout some dorms. […] In pre-job training, nothing is mentioned of the toxic chemicals that workers may come into contact with during the course of their jobs or how to protect themselves. This is despite hazardous working conditions that may include coming into contact with substances like cadmium, lead, and mercury, and handling heavy industrial equipment. […] Pegatron fines workers for various behaviors, including crossing their legs or not wearing their work ID. […] There was no apparent labor union observed at Pegatron. Pegatron’s trainer did not know the meaning of the words “labor union” (China Labor Watch 2015, 8–9).

Amazon Mechanical Turk is Amazon’s crowd work platform. Workers earning their living on this platform have set up WeAreDynamo.org, a platform that documents working conditions and campaigns, for example publishing letters that these workers wrote to Amazon.com CEO Jef Bezos. One ‘Turker describes her work the following way:

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The stark reality is, in the past two weeks, I’ve earned approximately \$0.75 an hour (yes, that’s 75 cents/hr), however, that will be reduced by 15.3% when I file my Federal taxes next year (Self Employment Tax), as for my state, I haven’t confronted that aspect as of yet. […] I know my family is fortunate to have health insurance, a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and the choice to live where we want but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t also be upset over poor wages, after all, this isn’t the 19th century with sweatshops, robber barons, and no unions, although, it seems like it more and more with the richest 1% of the world soon to own 50% of the world’s wealth. One of my greatest fears is not being able to help my children go to college, especially for my oldest child who falls into the Gifted range. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, don’t you agree?2

How does a dialectical critical theory of communication help us to understand such phenomena? Such a theory sees the economy and culture as inherently connected and does not separate physical and mental labour. The workers in Chinese factories such as Foxconn, Pegatron or Quantat that assemble digital technologies are manufacturing workers. They conduct physical labour. Freelance workers on platforms such as Mechanical Turk, Upwork, TaskRabbit, Freelancer, PeoplePerHour, etc. tend primarily to be information workers who produce some form of information and make use of online freelance platforms (created by software engineers). Both type of labour have in common that they take place in the digital industry that is dominated by large transnational corporations. Corporations such as Amazon.com and Apple do not just exploit one type of digital labour, but diferent ones: Amazon.com doesn’t just put a rent on freelance services via Mechanical Turk, it also sells physical goods such as the Kindle and paperbacks and intangible goods such as e-books. Apple’s primary income source is the sale of digital technologies such as Apple computers and the iPhone. But Apple also sells content via its iTunes store. Given the global and convergent character of transnational information corporations, it is not feasible to separate the physical and the mental labour conducting for these companies. Digital workers form a collective workforce. The phenomenon of cultural and digital labour shows that culture and the economy are not separate.

The working conditions are as poor as described in the two examples because global information corporations are profitable businesses: Apple’s profits amounted in 2015 to US\$53.4 billion3. Amazon’s profits were in the same year US\$596 million.4 There is a class antagonism between information labour and information capital. These conditions can only be changed if the information workers of the world unite at the transnational level in order to challenge the power of information capital. Apple was in 2015 the world’s twelfth largest company, Amazon the 458th largest.5 The dialectic takes on a very political form in information capitalism so that class relations bring about highly exploited forms of labour. At the same time, many digital media companies have come under criticism for avoiding paying taxes, which not just increases their profits, but also deprives states of tax income and supports austerity measures that destroy the welfare state and threaten social security.

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Information capitalism’s result is that humans are denied recognition and are alienated from society’s essence. Digital media are instruments and technologies of domination: many information and other workers are highly exploited, which fosters information corporations’ profits on the one side of the socioeconomic dialectic and precarity on the other. Surveillance ideologies and practices have erected a totalitarian system of control, in which citizens are categorically suspected to be terrorist and criminals. As a consequence, the Internet has in most parts of the world become a highly controlled communication network. In terms of culture, visibility and attention are highly stratified online and controlled by celebrities and corporations. Another aspect of digital culture are digital ideologies: digital ideologies not just celebrate digital entrepreneurialism, but also justify digital media corporations’ reifying practices. Apple, in its Supplier Responsibility 2015 Progress Report, for example, prides itself by claiming:

“Excessive work hours are a widespread and persistent industry problem. At Apple, finding a solution remains a top priority. We limit workweeks to 60 hours, except in unusual circumstances, with at least one day of mandated rest every seven days. And all overtime must be strictly voluntary. […] We tracked over 1.1 million workers on average per week in our supply chain and 92 percent of all workweeks were compliant with our 60-hour maximum standard”.

Given that the International Labour Organization’s conventions and recommendations define the 40-hour week as a general standard, it is inhumane that Apple considers 60 hours to be an appropriate number of hours per week in the developing country companies that are part of its supply chain. Apple tries to create the impression that by monitoring working hours in its supply chain it really cares about workers. It tries to create the impression that a 60-hours working week is humane. Comparing these claims with international standards shows, however, that such attempts are manipulative and ideological.

Digital media, however, are not just technologies of domination, but to a certain degree are also part of struggles for a society, in which humans overcome alienation and collectively control their conditions of life. We can find examples of online peer production that foster the digital commons instead of digital commodities. There are cultural co-operatives that question precarity and exploitation (see http://cultural.coop). There are progressive social movements that use social media in protests (Fuchs 2014a). And there are platforms for co-operative work that foreground how people can work together instead of performing the individual self online. Alternative tendencies questioning capitalism are certainly often much more precarious than the media world’s corporate and dominative mainstream. They nonetheless show the desire for a world beyond domination and exploitation. The world of information technology is one that is shaped by a dialectic of repression and emancipatory struggles. Digital media are technologies of domination and liberation at the same time. These potentials are, however, not equally distributed. In a class-based society, we can always take the dominative use of technologies for certain, whereas alternative uses aiming at liberation are much more fragile and precarious. Only political praxis can bring about humanity’s emancipation from repression. A critical theory of communication and society stands in solidarity with those who resist and oppose the corporationalisation, commodification and bureaucratisation of communication and the world.

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Notes

4 Data source: Amazon, SEC-filings, form 10-K for year 2015.

5 Data source: Forbes 2000, list for 2015.

References

Conclusion

219

Index

1968 127

A

abstraction 17, 57, 90, 104, 179

abstract labour 12, 17, 20, 125, 179, 197

academia 13, 194

academic knowledge 105

activism 25

Adorno, Theodor W. 1, 18, 22, 28, 29, 36, 40, 49, 75, 112, 154, 178, 210

advertising 10, 61, 65, 79, 82, 88, 104, 115, 123, 125, 130, 132, 136, 159, 170, 212

agriculture 53

alienation 3, 6, 9, 19, 34, 40, 48, 64, 69, 76, 117, 126, 141, 143, 153, 209, 213, 218

alternative media 69, 78, 80, 147, 195

Amazon 63, 216

America 88
Ananke 126
Anaxagoras 53
Andrejevic, Mark 170
animal 22, 30, 57, 200
anti-Semitism 18, 31, 32, 35, 39, 88
aporetic critique 5
appearance 19, 84, 103, 121, 131,
135, 139, 145, 181
Apple 216
appropriation 4, 8, 16, 19, 96,
117, 131, 142, 155, 166, 173,
197, 214
Apps 136
Arab Spring 147
Arbeit und Interaktion
(Habermas) 185
Arendt, Hannah 17, 31
Arnold, Matthew 77, 93
art 16, 27, 40, 58, 83, 100, 104, 105
artefact 65, 98, 102
artwork 84, 87, 104, 191, 209

Aspects of Hegel’s Philosophy (Adorno) 76
Auschwitz 78, 81, 83, 103, 105, 201
automation 114, 179

B

Baidu 133
base 30, 55, 115, 164, 177, 181, 190
Baudrillard, Jean 178, 181
Bauer, Bruno 207
behaviour 131, 193, 200
Being and Time (Heidegger) 34
beliefs 28, 65, 132, 160, 187, 192, 194
Berry, David M. 32
Bezos, Jef 216
big data 170
Black Notebooks (Heidegger) 31
Bloch, Ernst 87, 140
Boltanski, Luc 127
Bonefeld, Werner 2, 18, 25
bourgeois society 6, 21, 96, 127
Brecht, Bertolt 80, 87
broadcasting 135, 203
bullshit 68
Butler, Judith 163

C

capital 8, 33, 64, 77, 97, 121, 126, 128, 130, 159, 180, 212, 217

capital accumulation 8, 11, 15, 18, 34, 67, 69, 126, 128, 131, 135, 141, 144, 212

capitalism 3, 7, 26, 33, 39, 49, 64, 78, 83, 112, 114, 117, 118, 121, 124, 131, 135, 137, 145, 157, 161, 166, 177, 181, 211, 218

capitalist crisis 117, 123, 147

capitalist society 11, 17, 19, 26, 35, 68, 89, 117, 119, 135, 144, 161, 185

Capital (Marx) 20, 35, 155, 208

celebrities 136, 172, 218

censorship 135, 202

Chaplin, Charlie 78

Chiapello, Éve 127

China 62, 134

China Labor Watch 216

citizen 15, 77, 104, 146, 161, 167, 202, 218

class-based society 12, 19, 30, 48, 63, 78, 89, 96, 102, 106, 131, 143, 146, 157, 166, 180, 190, 196, 200, 201, 209

class struggle 12, 59, 69, 123, 145, 158, 167, 169, 190, 197, 202

closed Marxism 2

cognitive capitalism 16

collectivism 67

commodification 10, 30, 67, 77, 89, 116, 125, 128, 137, 140, 219

commodity 6, 11, 18, 20, 30, 35, 60, 61, 65, 67, 79, 88, 97, 104, 114, 122, 131, 141, 155, 171, 178, 181, 185, 194, 200, 213

commodity fetishism 35, 67, 122, 134, 145, 155, 213

commonism 121, 145, 173

communication 13, 16, 20, 24, 25,
30, 39, 41, 50, 52, 54, 57, 90,
95, 113, 120, 125, 133, 140,
147, 159, 162, 164, 170, 177,
180, 184, 207, 210, 214

communication history 197

communication studies 3, 25, 188, 194

communicative rationality 29, 50, 200

Communism 63

competition 13, 122, 142

complex of complexes (society) 54

computer 16, 26, 40, 53, 58, 114, 195

conceptual abstraction 180

concrete labour 11, 18, 180

conflicts of interests 14, 99, 106

222

Index

131, 138, 147, 155, 172, 186,
190, 212

consumption 11, 15, 20, 58, 65, 76, 80, 88, 117, 127, 130, 169, 182, 184, 195, 210

contradictions 8, 17, 117, 122, 145, 172, 211

control 9, 12, 25, 55, 63, 70, 87, 94, 95, 99, 114, 127, 131, 140, 143, 145, 147, 156, 166, 187, 200, 214, 216, 218

co-operation 7, 12, 20, 41, 54, 57, 92, 138, 141, 145, 165, 173, 213

co-operative 138, 141, 196, 215, 218

co-production 41, 159, 165, 173, 214

copyrights 89

Crabgrass 101

creativity 60, 67, 105, 127, 131, 189, 190

Critical Discourse Analysis 64

critical theory 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 21, 25, 29, 32, 39, 112, 145, 153, 162, 177, 213

critical theory of communication 2, 16, 23, 39, 178, 193, 202, 214, 217, 219

critical theory of knowledge 4, 40, 75, 82, 105, 211

Critical Theory versus critical theory 6

crowdsourcing 15

cultural democracy 202

cultural Marxism 1, 23, 27, 203, 207, 215

Cultural Materialism 16, 24, 39, 95, 192, 209, 210

cultural pessimism 40, 105

cultural studies 5, 40, 67, 76, 82, 105

cultural work 3, 30, 56, 59, 64, 69, 190, 210

culture 10, 15, 23, 50, 54, 93, 125, 164, 169, 182, 192, 207, 213 culture and economy 16, 24, 27, 41, 51, 55, 69, 178, 180, 192, 208, 210, 214, 217

culture industry 2, 15, 60, 76, 88, 89, 112, 130, 178, 200, 210

D

death of class 15

Deleuze, Gilles 127

Derrida, Jacques 31

Destruction of Reason, The (Lukács) 83

determinate negation 118

dialectical critique 5

dialectical reason 6, 10

dialectical thinking 13, 104, 132

dialectic of essence and existence 41, 121, 124, 143, 153, 155

Dialectic of the Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno) 78

dialectics 3, 10, 13, 40, 49, 52, 76, 98, 99, 105, 114, 116, 145, 202, 210

dialectics of knowledge 76, 95, 101

Diaspora 101

digital capitalism 16

digital communication 2, 26, 195

digital fetishism 172, 173

digital ideologies 218

digital labour 27, 39, 47, 60, 69, 116, 124, 135, 145, 170, 173, 213, 217

digital work 39, 47, 61, 69, 125

distribution 58, 66, 127, 133, 142, 160, 195, 209

division of labour 20, 55, 64, 78, 179, 208

domination 7, 26, 30, 34, 65, 70, 86, 89, 96, 99, 102, 104, 114, 131, 135, 142, 166, 168, 188, 196, 201, 215, 218

Index

223

E

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (Marx) 154

economic crisis 3

economy 24, 28, 30, 95, 101, 116, 123, 125, 159, 161, 164, 167, 178, 180, 184, 213

education 68, 78, 79, 81, 92, 100, 105, 125, 169

Education after Auschwitz (Adorno) 81

elites 64, 77, 157, 166, 215

emancipation 31, 78, 82, 127, 216, 219

emancipatory knowledge 94, 99, 100, 106

emancipatory social philosophy 6

emotion 67, 77, 92, 144, 158, 162, 167

engaging/connecting/sharing ideology 67, 133

Engels, Friedrich 79, 106, 198, 208, 215

entertainment 78, 80, 88, 92, 100, 125, 200, 209, 212

Eörsi, István 84

epistemology 32, 76, 90, 95, 102, 145

Eros 125

essence 7, 9, 41, 49, 85, 103, 118, 121, 125, 129, 137, 153, 165, 212

ethics 5, 19, 40, 100, 105, 141, 164, 213

exchange-value 21, 30, 64, 68, 76, 97, 122, 124, 125, 140, 180, 194

exploitation 6, 9, 30, 41, 102, 114, 116, 128, 137, 142, 170, 188, 201, 210, 213

F

Facebook 3, 39, 60, 66, 101, 116, 122, 123, 125, 127, 133, 141, 145, 147, 169, 213

family 19, 21, 38, 66, 88, 133, 142, 158, 160, 169, 217

fan studies 80

fascism 36, 39, 79, 83, 88, 119, 201

fetishism 10, 15, 23, 35, 65, 67, 79, 93, 104, 132, 146, 173, 196

Feudalism 63

Feuerbach, Ludwig 207

Figal, Günter 31

financialisation 123, 131, 212

FIRE 177

Fisher, Eran 170

Foucault, Michel 157

Foxconn 62, 217

Frankfurt, Harry G. 68

Frankfurt School 2, 6, 8, 16, 22, 26, 28, 34, 76, 102, 112, 154, 156, 203, 207, 210, 213

Fraser, Nancy 161

freedom 7, 58, 87, 119, 127, 128, 133, 135, 138, 141, 156, 171, 173

freelance 63, 217

Freelancer 217

Freud, Sigmund 29, 125

Friedrich Schiller University 153
functionlessness 87

G

Galtung, Johan 101

Gattungswesen. See  species-being; See  species-being

Geisteswissenschaften 90

German Communist Party (DKP) 188

German Ideology (Marx and Engels) 207, 215

gerontocracy 55

global capitalism 69, 177, 197

God 92, 93, 143, 183

Goldmann, Lucien 35

goods 17, 53, 124, 160, 164, 188, 215, 217

224 Index

Google 62, 123, 125, 130, 133, 136,
145, 147, 212
Google Scholar 24
Gramsci, Antonio 64
Great Purge Trials 86
Grundrisse (Marx) 16, 19
Gulag 83

H

Habermas, Jürgen 1, 23, 25, 29, 50, 76, 92, 94, 99, 102, 105, 112, 154, 159, 178, 183, 198, 200, 203, 214

happiness 7, 31, 38, 125, 138, 142, 145

Hardt, Michael 16

Haug, Wolfgang Fritz 2, 117

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 5, 7, 11, 24, 29, 37, 40, 51, 53, 76, 90, 95, 102, 106, 111, 138, 142, 153, 165, 173, 185, 210, 212, 215

Hegel: Three Studies (Adorno) 4, 33, 76

Heideggerianism 31

Heidegger, Martin 1, 31, 49, 83, 156, 162, 210

Held, David 23

history 18, 23, 35, 78, 119, 121, 144, 197, 208, 209, 215

History and Class Consciousness (Lukács) 4, 24, 28, 48, 65, 70, 153, 208, 209, 210, 213

Hitler 37, 78, 83

Hölderlin, Friedrich 83

Holzer, Horst 188, 190

Honneth, Axel 1, 4, 23, 41, 51, 153, 213, 215

Horkheimer, Max 5, 23, 29, 34, 39, 48, 75, 82, 112, 154, 210, 212, 215

humanities 22, 25, 32, 105

Hund, Wulf D. 191, 198

Hungary 85

hunting 53, 57
Husserl, Edmund 37
hyperreality 184

I

idealism 48, 50, 85, 159, 164, 184

identity 16, 24, 40, 57, 80, 94, 103, 120, 138, 167, 211, 212

ideological labour 3, 51, 64, 68

ideology 2, 10, 24, 29, 39, 48, 56, 64, 76, 78, 83, 85, 101, 102, 104, 118, 131, 141, 144, 177, 183, 188, 200, 207

ideology critique 4, 6, 8, 13, 32, 48, 102, 208

immanent transcendence 143, 162

immaterial 182

imperialism 15, 83, 86, 167, 184, 197
India 62

industrialisation 86

inequality 18, 25, 100, 144, 200

information 26, 53, 58, 94, 102, 116, 121, 125, 133, 135, 147, 166, 170, 177, 183, 190, 192, 209, 217

Instagram 66, 133, 135

instrumental rationality. See instrumental reason; See instrumental reason

instrumental reason 10, 31, 50, 64, 67, 77, 131, 154, 201, 210, 212

Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology (Sohn-Rethel) 178

interaction 186, 214

international division of digital labour 61, 69

International Labour Organization 218

Internet 15, 23, 26, 40, 58, 63, 66, 82, 89, 113, 121, 123, 128, 134, 147, 153, 154, 169, 173, 212, 218

Index

225