Page 7 - 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

opportunism and egoism” (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005, p. 37).
Boltanski & Chiapello (2005) argue that “themes from the artistic critique were integrated into the discourse of
capitalism, so that this critique might seem to have been partially satisf ed” (p. 346). The “artistic critique opened
up an opportunity for capitalism to base itself on new forms of control and commodify new, more individualized
and ‘authentic’ goods” (p. 467). “Of the two forms of critique that were constructed in the nineteenth century
– the artistic critique, which elaborates demands for liberation and authenticity, and the social critique, which
denounces poverty and exploitation – it is the latter that is showing a new lease of life, however hesitant and
modest it may currently be” (p. 346).
Boltanski and Chiapello’s critique of the new spirit of capitalism is an important contribution to contemporary
ideology critique. In my own work, inspired by their insights, I have criticised the subsumption of specif c cat-
egories under the ideology of digital capitalism: Stephensen remarks brief y that chapter seven of Culture and
Economy in the Age of Social Media (Fuchs, 2015) contains a critique of what I term the engaging/connecting/
sharing-ideology. Other of my works have featured for example a critique of the ideology of labour as play
(Fuchs, 2014b, pp. 122-127), the ideology of playbour (play labour) at Google (Fuchs, 2014b, chapter 9) and
other Google ideologies (that I term Googology, see Fuchs, 2014c, pp. 132-141). The book Social Media: A
Critical Introduction includes a critique of participatory culture and the participatory web as ideology (Fuchs,
2014c, chapter 3; see also Fuchs, 2011a, chapter 7). The second edition of this book will feature a new chapter
on the concept of the sharing economy as ideology. I have also criticised the network enterprise and participa-
tory management as neoliberal ideology (Fuchs, 2008, pp. 148-153), the use of the concept and the theory of
self-organisation – an idea that especially appeals to grassroots activists, anarchists, neoliberal tech entrepre-
neurs and gurus, and Internet users – as neoliberal ideology that conceives capitalism as self-organising system
that is harmed by state regulation (Fuchs, 2008, chapters 2.3 + 3.1). In most of these works, I have explicitly
acknowledged the importance of Boltanski and Chiapello, so one cannot say that I do not take the relevance of
their work for ideology critique seriously. My key point in conducting such analyses is that progressively sound-
ing concepts, like participation, creativity, sharing, network, self-organisation, the gift, etc., are ideologies that
help justify and deepen exploitation in digital capitalism. In this context, Eran Fisher (2010) speaks of the new
spirit of networks (see also Fuchs 2011b for a discussion). But there are also other forms of digital ideology that
need to be analysed and that I have covered in my works, such as right-wing law and order ideology and the
surveillance ideology (that is inspired by law and order politics), techno-optimistic visions of Twitter revolutions
and Internet protests, techno-pessimistic hatred of the Internet, etc.
Boltanski and Chiapello’s book certainly is of huge importance for digital ideology critique, but it also has
certain limits and problems. For example, they assume in a quite deterministic manner that the demand for cre-
ative work almost necessarily has to advance the ideological subsumption of the highly-skilled knowledge work-
ers’ consciousness: “The demand for creativity, voiced primarily by highly qualif ed wage-earners, engineers or
cadres, has received greater recognition than could have been hoped for thirty years earlier, when it became
obvious that an ever growing share of prof ts derived from the exploitation of resources of inventiveness, imag-
ination and innovation developed in the new technologies, and especially in the rapidly expanding sectors of
services and cultural production. Among other effects, this has led to a fading of the opposition, on which the
artistic critique had been based for a century, between intellectuals and businessmen and production, between
artists and bourgeois” (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005, p. 326).
It is certainly true that a specif c share of highly skilled digital workers share neoliberal entrepreneurial ideol-
ogies. At the same time, such liberalism is also contradictory, as can be observed in the liberalism characteristic
for WikiLeaks (Fuchs 2014c, chapter 9) or Anonymous (Fuchs 2014a, 2014b). And given that many digital
workers either face precarious working conditions or are socially poor in terms of their private relations or leisure
time, because labour takes up so much of their lifetime, there is real potential for politicisation. Actual develop-
ments into this direction are the emergence of freelancer unions as well as of cultural and digital co-operatives.
These phenomena are in themselves contradictory, the same applies to all social phenomena in a class society.

CONJUNCTIONS, VOL. 3, NO. 1, 2016, ISSN 2246-3755 | PAGE 7