Page 14 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Introduction to Part I

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Culture Is Our Business. Marshall McLuhan’s evocative maxim can be un-
derstood at two levels, at least.
First and most obviously, cultural industries manufacture, buy, sell, and dis-
tribute symbolic wares for money. These symbolic wares—likened to pieces
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of toast by a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission —
pass through a series of production nodes (for books: text preparation, editing,
typesetting, printing, binding, distribution, marketing, retail; for stage plays:
scripting, financing, assemblage of props, facilities and performers, direction,
rehearsal, insurance, marketing, performance). Value is added at each stage of
the production process, as is true of all commodity production—including
toasters and pieces of toast. Cultural artifacts, then, McLuhan’s aphorism im-
plies, are to be understood as commodities. That they are more than mere com-
modities—a term inappropriately implying final consumption, few if any
externalities, and presuming the ubiquity of private, not public goods —does
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not gainsay their status or treatment primarily as commodity in our political-
economic system.
Second, and even more poignantly, McLuhan’s dictum can be construed as
implying that cultural artifacts are means to fabricate, support, reinforce, con-
done, justify, or extend the fundamental organization of the consumer society.
“We make consumer culture” would be an accurate paraphrase of this second
interpretation. By this rendering, the production and distribution of cultural
(symbolic) wares are understood to create and reinforce the psychic ground
of, or more philosophically the ontology for, a culture of consumption. Cul-
tural products that pass the market “test” of success by achieving high sales—
top-grossing movies, books on the bestseller list, sound recordings at the top
of the charts, TV shows winning the ratings sweeps, the painting that sets a

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