ABSTRACT
This book introduces Marx to the reader by discussing 15 of his key concepts and showing how they matter for understanding communication, culture, digital technologies, the Internet, and the media. These key concepts are: the dialectic, materialism, commodities, capital, capitalism, labour, surplus-value, the working class, alienation, means of communication, the general intellect, ideology, socialism, communism, and class struggles. The introduction of these key ideas and their application to the Marxian study of communication is organised into ten chapters:
The Dialectic (Chapter 2)
Materialism: The Base/Superstructure-Problem (Chapter 3)
Commodities, Capital, Capitalism (Chapter 4)
Labour and Surplus-Value (Chapter 5)
The Working Class (Chapter 6)
Alienation (Chapter 7)
Means of Communication and the General Intellect (Chapter 8)
Ideology (Chapter 9)
Socialism and Communism (Chapter 10)
Class Struggles (Chapter 11)
Each chapter provides key quotes from Karl Marx and discusses his ideas in the context of communication, culture, and the media. This book is a critical theory toolkit on how to think critically about communication, culture, digital technologies, the Internet, and the media with the help of Karl Marx’s key ideas.
At the end of each chapter, there is a list of recommended readings. I also briefly introduce each reading. For work in the classroom and seminars, I recommend that students first read and discuss my chapters. As a second step, it is feasible that students read the recommended texts. And as a third step of learning, it helps to discuss these texts in small groups of three to four students followed by a plenary discussion
