[ICTs-and-Society] Plenary 7: “The Internet and Critical Theory Today” (Mark Andrejevic, Andrew Feenberg)

[Jakob Rigi]

Jan,
But that is a form of exploitation. If the farmer himself worked on the
lland, then the landowner extracted surplus labor from him in the form
of surplus product. But, if the farmer used someone else`s labor, then
the farmer shared the surplus labor extracted from the laborer with land
owner. In both cases the land lord extracts surplus labor, which is the
precise definition of economic explotation.

Now exploitation can have many different forms and is not limited to the
extraction of surplus labor, whether directly or in the form of products
or money.

Hence, when we claim that Facebook and google exploit , first we need to
specify the forms of exploitation, second we need to specify who
exploits whom. 
In my view contrary to the claims of the proponents of the Cinematic
Mode of Production , Attention Econmists, and Brand Economists facebook
and goole do not extract any surplus labor from the users, though they
may exploit them in other forms, which as said, need to be specified. I
enclose here a slightly edited version of a short essay, I wrote on this
matter in a different contex.




← Occupy Wall Street and the Peer-to-Peer Revolution: a discussion with
Michel Bauwens Part II

Whom Does Facebook Exploit?

A brief response to Chris Land’s and Steffen Bohm’s Short Essay: “They
are exploiting us! Why we all work for Facebbok for free”

The gist of the essay is the following hypothesis: The users of Facebook
produce value in the same way as wage workers produce it. Hence,
Facebook exploits users by expropriating this value.

Although I have a great respect for Land’s and Bohm’s good intentions
and sympathize with their anti Facebook sentiments their claim that
Facebook exploits users by extracting value from them is wrong. 

Facebook definitely exploits someone. But whom? The answer is: the total
world wage labor which is exchanged with capital (variable capital).
This is Marx’s definition of productive labor under capitalism. From the
point of view of capital only the labor that produces value and surplus
value is productive. Only, in this limited sense productive labor is
equated with the wage labor, whether material or immaterial, which is
exchanged with capital. Otherwise, all labor as far as it is a
purposeful activity is productive, because it produces something,
whether material or immaterial. 

The overwhelming part of the value expropriated by consists of rents
which are extracted from the worldwide wage labor. Hence to claim that
Facebook users produce value is to deny the role of wage laborers and
their antagonism to rent-extracting entities such as Faceebook and
Google. 

Marx, in Vol. 3 of Capital, demonstrates how the surplus values that are
produced by different sections of working class become a total pool and
then are redistributed among industrial and commercial capitalists ( in
the form of profit), Bankers (in the form of interest ), and land owners
(in the form of rent). So the source of both interest and rent is
surplus value produced by the labor which is exchanged with capital. We
use banks on daily basis and banks lend our money (savings, pensions..)
to others in exchange for interests. It would be absurd to claim that
users of banks produce value for banks. We spend time and energy to use
bank services, even when we use credit cards. But this energy -time does
not produce value, because it is not exchanged with capital. Even when
users pay fees to banks for using services they, do not produce values
but buy values which are produced by bank workers. It is equally absurd
to claim that the users of Facebook and Google produce value. Facebook
and Google extract rents that are parts of the total surplus value which
is produced by the wage laborers worldwide. 
Actually the knowledge economy in general rests on the shoulders of the
wage labor which is exchanged with capital outside it. The overwhelming
part of the value circulating in the knowledge economy is produced by
wage labor outside it, though kncontribute to the total surplus value to the extent that their labor is
exchanged with capital (variable capital).

The thesis that users produce value for Facebook may lead to the
following practical misleading conclusion. The users should build their
own p2p cooperatives of Facebooks and Googles, and sell information and
collect fees for adverts. This is apparently a fair exchange, because,
the members of such cooperatives appropriate the value they themselves
have produced. But, such cooperatives only replace Facebook in
extracting surplus value in the form of rent from the wage labor. The
thesis foregrounds rentier forms of p2p communities. Hence, the thesis
is indeed a mystification of the exploitation of labor by capital.
To conclude the claim that users produce value for Fcebook is a very bad
thesis. We should not fight to become rent suckers but to abolish wage
labor, surplus value, in all its forms including rent.

With solidarity
Jakob
. 

Jakob Rigi
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
Central European University
Budapest




>>> "Jan Nolin" 04/11/12 4:44 PM >>>
Mark,
This is a very important discussion. For some of the reasons you
mentioned, I find "exploitation" to be a bit misleading for these
phenomena. I think we need to develop new and more specific concepts for
the things that we analyze. One concept that has some promise is
"digital sharecropping", suggested by Nicholas Carr. This creates a
parallel to the traditional forms of sharecropping where the farmers
worked the land while the land owners reaped the profits.

/Jan



..........................................
Jan Nolin, PhD 
Professor 
Bibliotekshögskolan/Institutionen för biblioteks- och
informationsvetenskap
Högskolan i Borås
501 90 Borås


http://www.hb.se/wps/portal/forskning/forskare/jan-nolin

Telefon: + 46 (0)33 435 43 36
Fax: +46 (0)33 435 40 05
>>> Mark Andrejevic 2012-04-11 03:11 >>>
Thanks Christian,
I'm looking forward to the conference -- and have greatly appreciated
the pre-conference discussions. I'm very interested to see that there
are at least a couple of talks that focus on the question of
exploitation. The term has become an important one for me because I'm
trying to come up with a formulation other than privacy to explore areas
of concern about the collection and use of personal information in the
digital era. Recent events in Europe and the US related to Google and
Facebook's handling of personal information demonstrate how powerful the
privacy "frame" is for talking about the wholesale capture of personal
data for commercial purposes is -- and yet, in many cases we are talking
about processes of information capture that do not violate conventional
expectations of privacy (such as looking at aggregate patterns without
attempting to drill down and identify individuals) and in other cases we
are talking about forms of privatization (the capture and proprietary
use of particular types of data) that rely on conventional
understandings of the relationship between privacy and property. 

The notion of exploitation looks like a useful one to me because it
points to the underlying patterns of commercial ownership and control of
communication infrastructures that are coming to colonize an increasing
range of social interactions and behavior. The seemingly "free" and
ubiquitous character of services provided by Google and Facebook has led
to our treating them as if they are public utilities, when of course
they are private, for-profit, commercially driven companies whose
decisions play an important role in shaping the information environment
upon which we are becoming increasingly reliant. When I started studying
the mass media -- then considered to be primarily TV, newspapers
(magazines), and radio (with some cinema and sound recording thrown in)
-- there was a strong critical emphasis on "media monopoly" and the
political economy of those industries that shape our information
environment. The advent of the World Wide Web and techno-enthusiasm seems to have had the perhaps temporary effect of
sidelining such questions as core elements of media studies, and one of
the reasons I am looking forward to this conference is that it brings
together people who have been challenging this tendency from the start.

I have been taken to task on occasion for enlisting a term traditionally
associated with critical approaches to the analysis of human suffering
and immiseration in the realm of production to critique apparently
voluntary forms of behavior that take place outside the realm of
production "proper" -- intriguingly such challenges have, on occasion,
come from people who have otherwise worked to destabilize these
oppositions (by highlighting the convergence of consumption and
production, etc.). I am sensitive to the observation that providing data
for Facebook is qualitatively different from laboring under sweatshop
conditions, and yet, I continue to think that the notion of exploitation
usefully points to the structured relations of power that allow for the
capture and use of personal information -- often as a tool that can be
turned back upon those who generate it. I also think that it is
important to note the ways in which the online economy is not isolated
from the broader economy that continues to rely on more brutal
conditions of exploitation, shored up by the very same relations of
ownership and control. 

As part of the lead up to the conference I'd be interested in hearing
people's thoughts about the potential and limitations of the critique of
exploitation as a way of thinking about the forms of value production
that take place in the context of social media. 

As a side note, Facebook's reframing of its privacy policy as a "data
use policy" is perhaps a suggestive one -- privacy advocates I know saw
it as a move by Facebook to attempt to distance itself from privacy
concerns. To me, this looked to like an opportunity to focus on the
question of data use and perhaps sidestep the way in which the
commercial sector has been working to exploit the ambivalence of the
notion of privacy. 

I'd be interested in people's thoughts. 
best,
Mark



On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs at uti.at>
wrote:
Friday, May 4th, 2012
* Mark Andrejevic (University of Queensland, Australia): Social Media:
Surveillance and Exploitation 2.0
* Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University, Canada): Great Refusal and
Long March: How to Use Critical Theory to Think About the Internet.
Chair: Christian Fuchs

Mark's and Andrew's talks will bring up questions like the following
ones: How do corporations use social networking sites? What is
exploitation 2.0 and how does the exploitation of labour work on social
media? How is online life commercialized, branded, and monetized? What
is the role of surveillance in online exploitation? How can critical
theory adequately reflect and criticize these developments?
How relevant is Herbert Marcuse's thinking and critical theory today?
What is an adequate strategy for transforming the Internet? Does it
require a "Great Refusal" (Marcuse) or a "Long March through the
Institutions" (Dutschke, Marcuse)? Does Critical Theory require a
blanket condemnation of the Internet? Does Critical Theory need a long
march strategy that assesses the Internet's reality against its
potentials? What is the essence of the Internet? What is the existence
of the Internet? Is there a difference between essence and existence of
the Internet? What is a true Internet? What a false Internet?

Pre-conference discussions on these and related questions are welcome
over the mailing list.

***

MARK ANDREJEVIC
University of Queensland, Australia

Social Media: Surveillance and Exploitation 2.0

ABSTRACT: This presentation explores the ways in which social networking
technologies are being taken up by the commercial sector as ways for
integrating social and work life. Thanks to the popularity and ubiquity
of social network technologies in some sectors of the population,
companies are finding ways to exploit the social connectionsemployees, customers, and clients, leading to start-up companies that
seek to monetize social network data by linking it with consumer
relations databases and other technologies for target marketing. When
important aspects of people’s social lives migrate onto commercial
platforms these become subject to marketing imperatives, self-branding
becomes a new (or updated) form of employee asset. The goal of the
presentation is to develop a theoretical approach to the
commercialization and monetization of online social life. To what extent
might the critique of exploitation be updated and brought to bear upon
the productivity of social networks? What aspects of this critique help
illuminate the wholesale commodification of social relationships, and
what are the implications of relying upon a privately owned commercial
infrastructure for their development? The critique of exploitation
directs us back to these questions. It urges us to consider the ways in
which the commercialization of the platform turns our own activity back
upon ourselves in the service of priorities that are not our own, and it
reminds us of the double duty done by the privately controlled
interactive infrastructure. This infrastructure might serve as a
platform for new forms of creativity, deliberation, communication,
interaction, and consumption. At the same time, though, it works to
assemble the most comprehensive system for mass monitoring in human
history. The accusation associated with the critique of exploitation
reminds us of the ways in which new forms of marketing driven
surveillance help turn our own productive activity back upon ourselves
in the service of ends that are not our own.

SPEAKER INFO: Mark Andrejevic is a media scholar at The University of
Queensland, Australia. He writes about surveillance, new media, and
popular culture. In broad terms, he is interested in the ways in which
forms of surveillance and monitoring enabled by the development of new
media technologies impact the realms of economics, politics, and
culture.

***

ANDREW FEENBERG
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Great Refusal and Long March: How to Use Critical Theory to Think About
the Internet

ABSTRACT: Herbert Marcuse suggested two different strategies at
different points in his career. The Great Refusal implied a strategy of
non-cooptable demands. This notion stemmed from a dystopian sense of the
total systematization of society and was in harmony with the
uncompromising opposition of the early New Left. But in the later period
of what Marcuse called the “preventive counter-revolution”, he adopted
Rudi Dutschke’s slogan of “the long march through the institutions”. The
choice at this time was between withdrawal, terrorism and participating
critically. Marcuse advocated the latter.
I want to think about our critical stance toward the Internet in terms
of these two strategies. Does Critical Theory require a blanket
condemnation of the Internet? This seems to be the conclusion drawn by
many observers. Hypothetically, this could lead one to a Great Refusal
of the Internet and all its works, withdrawal to an Internet-free zone
of some sort. I will argue that we need a long march strategy based on a
much more nuanced critique. We need to measure the Internet against its
real potentials and defend it against real dangers rather than
condemning it unqualifiedly.

SPEAKER INFO: Andrew Feenberg holds the Canada Research Chair in
Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser
University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology
Lab. His main areas of research are Critical Theory and philosophy of
technology.

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