Book Review: Digital Labour and Karl Marx
In this book, Fuchs sets out to elucidate Marx's theory of labour and exploitation within the capitalist mode of production and then to apply this theory in an analysis of the role of labour within the various stages of production that result in the delivery of digital media. He claims in particular that only such a theoretical perspective allows us to grasp (a) the way in which users of social media are being exploited to produce surplus value for the owners of services such as Facebook and (b) the need for a classic Marxist proletarian revolution within the field of social media to end this exploitation and replace it with what he calls 'a communications commons' Fuchs places his project within the renewed interest in Marxism inspired by the 2008 financial crisis and explicitly sees it as a continuation of the debate between Cultural Studies and The Political Economy of Communications. Certainly, the book, in its case studies of the labour process and the relations of production within the various stages of global production that underpin, within the International Division of Labour (IDL) our usage of digital devices and network services, serves as a useful reminder, to those with a more benign, idealist view of the digital information revolution, of the very real material costs involved and who bears them. A reminder unfortunately that cannot be reiterated often enough. However, one does not, I think, require the very narrow and dogmatic version of Marxist theory that Fuchs deploys to get this point. Much writing on the Left in response to the 2008 crisis has talked in terms of a return to Marxism. After the years in the wilderness of neo liberal hegemony, the rumbling of capitalist crisis is heard again, and now, perhaps, at last it can be claimed that 'our time has come' One more circumnavigation of the walls of capitalism blowing the trumpets of proletarian revolution and the gates to an unalienated paradise will open to us. The sense of anger and the widespread economic and social distress are, of course, very real. But it is the idea that we should go back to something with which I want to take issue. Particularly to a set of theories of both economy and polity designed for very different conditions. What is required is not a going back but a going beyond which takes into account the very real theoretical inadequacies of Marxism and the lessons learnt by political economists, and citizens at large, from analysing and experiencing 150 years of capitalist development and attempts at socialist transformation. Indeed, in my judgement, the sad irony is that both Marxism and neo liberalism suffer from the same failure, born of the same 19th century model of the world. Both systems of thought believe that the economy is a simple, monolithic system and that therefore there 612543 MCS0010.1177/0163443715612543Media, Culture SocietyBook Review research article2015