ABSTRACT
Marx’s critical theory analyses capitalism as a class society. This means that wherever there is capital there is also the exploitation of labour in a class relationship. Labour produces capital and commodities. Without labour, there is no capital. There is a dialectic of capital and labour. Just like the commodity and capital, labour is a key category of Marx’s critique of the political economy.
This chapter gives an introduction to Marx’s concept of labour and how it matters in the context of communication and culture. Section 5.2 introduces the notions of work and labour, Section 5.3 discusses the concepts of surplus-value and surplus-labour, and Section 5.4 focuses on cultural labour.
Commodities stand in a dialectical relationship to labour. Wherever there is a commodity, it has been produced by labour. Abstract and concrete labour are the two labour dimensions of the commodity. Surplus-value and surplus-labour are two of the key categories of Marx’s theory. They are at the heart of the analysis of class relations between an exploiting class and an exploited class.
The combination of love of the work and precarious labour is a feature of cultural and digital labour that is found frequently. Transnational cultural and digital corporations exploit workers in an international division of labour that features a range of different forms of exploitation. Workers in the international division of cultural/digital labour have in common that they coproduce the value, commodities and profits of transnational capital in the culture/digital industries. The exploitation of global digital/cultural labour can only be overcome if they unite and organise class struggles against digital/cultural capital.
A better world can only be won through class struggles. The slogan under which the digital workers of the world should unite needs to reflect The Manifesto of the Communist Party’s dictum: “Let the [digital] ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution! […] [Digital workers] of all countries, unite!”
