ABSTRACT
Informed by the works of Marx and his progeny (Lukács, Gramsci, Althusser) as well as more recent marxian scholarship, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role of ideology and propaganda in the production and circulation of commodities in the informalized contemporary workplace. This focus is particularly relevant to the promotional economy, politics, and culture of the United States in which pre- and postproduction factors (surveillance, marketing, etc.) are the most critical elements. The heightened functions of media and communication technologies are the pinnacle expression of late capitalism – the production, reproduction, and colonization of the sphere of consciousness as a necessary condition for the maintenance of the corporate state in the face of profound contradictions in production and governance. The central question is whether the unfolding dialectic is leading to a more liberated commons or to a society of more fully exploited prosumers within what Italian Autonomistas call the “social factory.”
