Fuchs, Christian. Digital Labour and Karl Marx. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.
0. Introduction
Claim: The task of this book is to better understand labour and value generation in the context of digital media.
Who deals with: Karx Marx, Dallas Smythe. Supports Dyer-Witheford and Trevor Scholtz.
Method: Grounded in the works of Karl Marx. Introduces a matrix of two sets of ideas: (1) Labour-Power and the Objects, Tools and Products of Labour and (2) role in the International Division of Digital Labour. Applies it to case studies (Foxconn, mineral extraction, call centres, labour on social media, indian software industry). The aim is to create a set of categories, or more a lexicon of key ideas (listed below).
Why important: Nine reasons for which Marxist analysis fits the best in today's situation are occupying a whole section in Introduction. The reasons are: economic crisis, neoliberalism and precarisation of work, new social movements, financialisation of economy, global wars, revolutions and rebellions, globalisation, mediatisation, precarious work in academia.
Relevance to my research: In order to introduce the debate on digital labour (a candidate to develop a debate with?). Find out what his ideas are on the differences between industrial and software engineering. And the role of abstraction he sees in software.
Dallas Walker Smythe was a political activist and researcher who contributed to a political economy of communications. He believed that research should be used to develop knowledge that could be applied to policies in support of public interest and the disenfranchised in the face of private capital.Wikipedia
Notes:
The task is rather to introduce a multifaceted conceptual digital labour theory toolbox with following categories: absolute and relative surplus-value production, commodity fetishism, formal and real subsumption, housewifization, labour aristocracy, modes of production, play labour, productive forces, prosumers commodifi cation, slavery, the new imperialism, primitive accumulation, etc. (8)
Prejudices against Marx (Eagleton, Terry. 2011. Why Marx was right. London: Yale University Press.) - addressed directly to Eagleton's text, where the reasons for rejection of those prejudices are described. Fuchs supports Eagleton's claims and adds a few of his own in a media and communiations dimension, which he calls "a Marxist theiry of communication" (16).