ABSTRACT
Marxist political economy offers a theoretical framework to explain the accumulation of capital from culture. In addition, some of its theorists work to demonstrate that, in some form, the Marxist labour theory of value is still relevant, despite mass culture having many immaterial and ideological aspects to its production and consumption. More qualitative theorizations of labour and capital accumulation must also rely on the quantitative dimension of Marx’s value theory. Frequently will Marxist thought reference equivalent commodity exchange and exploited labour time. In other words, capitalism’s real push to mechanize and de-skill labour will eventually short-circuit the complex-simple problem: The essential measure of the reduction of skilled to simple labour lies in the degree to which capitalism has created skills. Capitalists are said to appropriate this broad influx of value “by positing the brand as a kind of virtual factory, by giving labour a place where its autonomous productivity more or less directly translates into feedback and information”.
