Page 11 - Critical Theory of Communication as Critical Sociology of Critique

FUCHS: CRITICAL THEORY OF COMMUNICATION AS CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY OF CRITIQUE IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL CAPITALISM

book? Is it, as the title says, to study the cultural and economic embeddedness of social media? Or is it to
argue for a specif c theoretical position through which our contemporary time could/should be analysed (Karl
Marx, Raymond Willams’ cultural materialism, Herbert Marcuse, and in the last chapter Jürgen Habermas)?”
These are important epistemological questions that really go to the heart of media and digital studies and ask a
more fundamental question: what is a critical theory of communications and digital media?
Communications has contemporary society as its context. So in order to understand communications phe-
nomena (such as social media, mobile media, big data, etc.), we need to understand contemporary society. But
contemporary society is a specif c societal formation and historical organisation of capitalism and class society.
So in order to understand contemporary society, we need to understand capitalism and class society. And both
are particular forms of society that we can only understand if we know what the general features of societies are.
My own approach to media and digital studies is based on the insight that most work is inadequately grounded
in social theory and therefore fails to understand how communications and society interact in a dialectical way.
Most theorising in our f eld is the rather simplistic application of single concepts in an eclectic manner. Systematic
theories of society and the role of communications phenomena are largely missing. So to a certain extent I also
try to f ll a gap by developing a critical theory of society and a critical theory of communications phenomena
at the same time. Adequately understanding concrete phenomena requires us to abstract from the concrete to
the more general dimensions that the concrete entails, which then can inform an understanding of the historical
specif cities of social phenomena, commonalities and differences in respect to other phenomena, their continuous
and discontinuous dimensions, etc. Marx called this dialectical method of thought the method of ascending from
the abstract to the concrete (see Marx, 1857, pp. 37-45). The lack of social theory foundations and of engage-
ment with the dialectics of the abstract/the concrete, continuity/discontinuity, object/subject, structures/agency,
etc. often results in ideological conceptualisations that either present certain communications phenomena as
completely novel and revolutionary or disregard how domination has to change at specif c levels of society’s
organisation in order to reproduce itself on more fundamental levels.
Why Marx as a starting point? Because his dialectical thought, his analysis of capitalism, labour, class, ideolo-
gy, social struggles and alternatives, are an excellent and important foundation for a critical theory of society and
communication. Because Marx was not just a critical theorist, but also a prototypical and inspiring critical jour-
nalist and public intellectual. Why Raymond Williams, Herbert Marcuse and Dallas Smythe? Because all three
of them were truly dialectical and materialist thinkers, whose works can still help us avoid dualism and idealism
in contemporary academic analyses and political praxis. Williams, Marcuse and Smythe were not just critical
theorists, but also critical cultural theorists, which is why their thought is of special interest for a critical theory
of communication. Importantly, all three of them were socialists, and socialists who thought about alternatives
to capitalist media: Williams says he is a socialist, because this means to demand “the destruction of capitalist
society”, “the need to supersede” capitalist society and “to go beyond” it “so that a socialist society” is estab-
lished (Williams 1975, 72). For Marcuse (1967, 82), socialism means “the abolition of labour, the termination
of the struggle for existence – that is to say, life as an end in itself and no longer as a means to an end – and the
liberation of human sensibility and sensitivity, not as a private factor, but as a force for transformation of human
existence and of its environment.”
Williams imagines “cable systems of a different kind, genuinely run by and serving local communities, with
access to a full range of public programmes for which the necessary resources had been specif cally provided,
could indeed democratise broadcasting” (Williams, 1974/1990, 146). He understands alternative media as
“tools of the long revolution towards and educated and participatory democracy” (Williams 1974/1990, 156).
Smythe argues in a similar manner for a “two-way system in which each receiver would have the capability to
provide either a voice or voice-and-picture response” (Smythe 1994, 231-232). Marcuse argues for the “col-
lection of large funds for the operation of effective counter-institutions”, which includes the idea of establishing
“radical, ‘free’ media” as counter-institutions (Marcuse 1972, 55-56).

CONJUNCTIONS, VOL. 3, NO. 1, 2016, ISSN 2246-3755 | PAGE 11