Class and Exploitation on the Internet

Class and Exploitation on the Internet.

Christian Fuchs

Associate Professor
Unified Theory of Information Research Group
University of Salzburg
Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18
A-5020 Salzburg
Austria
christian.fuchs@sbg.ac.at
http://fuchs.uti.at
http://www.uti.at

Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and Society: Social Theory
in the Information Age. New York: Routledge.

Fuchs, Christian (2010, Forthcoming) Foundations of Critical
Media And Information Studies. A Marxist Approach. New York:
Routledge.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. The web and social theory

3. Participatory web as ideology

4. Class and the web

5. Conclusion

1. Introduction

Critical studies of the Internet:

Jodi Dean: “The more opinions or comments that are out there,
the less of an impact any one given one might make” (Dean 2005,
58).
“Communicative capitalism is rooted in communication
without communicability” (Dean 2005, 281).

Mark Andrejecvic speaks of “the interactive capability of new
media to exploit the work of being watched” (Andrejevic 2002:
239).

McKenzie Wark: “The producing classes – farmers, workers,
hackers – struggle against the expropriating classes – pastoralists,
capitalists, vectoralists – but these successive ruling classes
struggle also amongst themselves“ (Wark 2004: §31).

1. Introduction

Trebor Scholz: “Like with any bubble, the suggestion of sudden
newness is aimed at potential investors. [...] The Web 2.0 hype
drew broad media attention and financial resources to businesses
that manage to profit from networked social production, amateur
participation online, fan cultures, social networking, podcasting,
and collective intelligence” (Scholz 2008).

Mark Andrejevic (2009): Critical Media Studies 2.0,
Exploitation 2.0.

“Related to the development of techniques for making sense out of
the glut is the need to develop an updated critique of
exploitation. The Marxist conception was useful and
productive in that it highlighted the logic of the unfree ‘free’
choice“ (Andrejevic 2009, 48f).

1. Introduction

=double free labour, but also: class and surplus value in
Marxist theory!

My contribution to the critical study of the Internet is the
suggestion to explicitly reactualize and “reload” Marxian
theory.

The task is to create not just a critical theory of the Internet, but
a Marxist theory of the Internet.

The Marxian circuit of capital (Capital Vol. 1 & 2) that is also a
circuit of exploitation needs to be related to Internet produsage.


Information as threefold process of:

Cognition
For Emile Durkheim, a “social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of
exercising on the individual an external constraint” (Durkheim 1982, 59).

Communication
Max Weber had a different notion of sociality as social action: “Not every kind of
action, even of overt action, is ’social’ in the sense of the present discussion. Overt
action is not social if it is oriented solely to the behavior of inanimate objects”
(Weber 1968, 22).

Co-operation
For Ferdinand Tönnies, the most important form of sociality is the community,
which he understands as “consciousness of belonging together and the affirmation of
the condition of mutual dependence” (Tönnies 1988: 69).
For Karl Marx, co-operation is a fundamental mode of human social activity: “By
social we understand the co-operation of several individuals, no matter under
what conditions, in what manner and to what end” (Marx and Engels 1846/1970, 50).


* web 1.0 is a computer-based networked system of human
cognition,
* web 2.0 a computer-based networked system of human
communication,
* web 3.0 a computer-based networked system of human co-
operation


Figure 1: A model of social software and its three subtypes

1998 2008
Rank Website Unique
users in
1000s
Primary
functions
Rank Website Unique users
in 1000s
(February
Primary
Functions Sociality (1) - cogn:
1 Aol.com
(December
1-31, 1998)
28 255 cogn, 1 yahoo.com
2008)

125 000 cogn,
1998: 20
2 yahoo.com 26 843
comm
cogn, 2 google.com 123 000
comm.
cogn, 2008: 20
comm comm.
3 geocities.co 18 977 cogn 3 aol.com 56 000 cogn,
m comm.
4 msn.com 18 707 cogn, 4 youtube.com 54 000 cogn,

5 netscape.co 17 548
comm
cogn, 5 microsoft.com 51 000
comm.
Cogn
Sociality (2) - comm:
1998: 9
m comm
6 excite.com 14 386 cogn, 6 msn.com 48 000 cogn,
comm comm.
7

8
lycos.com

microsoft.co
13 152

13 010
cogn,
comm
cogn
7

8
eBay.com

myspace.com
48 000

46 000
Cogn

cogn,
2008: 10
m comm, co-
op
9 bluemountai 12 315 cogn, 9 wikipedia.org 44 000 cogn,
narts.com comm comm, co-
op Sociality (3)
10 infoseek.com 11 959 cogn, 10 mapquest.com 43 000 Cogn

11 altavista.com 11 217
comm
cogn 11 live.com 41 000 Cogn
- co-op: 1998: 0
2008: 4
12 tripod.com 10 924 cogn 12 amazon.com 41 000 Cogn
13 xoom.com 10 419 cogn 13 about.com 38 000 Cogn
14 angelfire.co 9 732 cogn 14 verizon.com 34 000 Cogn
m
15 hotmail.com 9 661 cogn, 15 adobe.com 30 000 Cogn
comm
16
17
Amazon.com
real.com
9 134
7 572
cogn
cogn
16
17
bizrate.com
facebook.com
29 000
28 000
Cogn
cogn,
comm,
There is at the same
18 zdnet.com 5 902 cogn 18 go.com 28 000
coop
Cogn time continuity and
19 hotbot.com 5 612 cogn 19 answers.com 27 000 cogn,
comm,
coop
discontinuity in the
development of the
20 infospace.co 5 566 cogn 20 wordpress.com 27 000 cogn,
m comm
260 891 961 000
Table 1: Information functions of the top 20 websites in the United States (sources: Comcast
Press Release January 20, 1999, Quantcast Web Usage Statistics March 16, 2008) world wide web.


Henry Jenkins argues that increasingly “the Web has become a
site of consumer participation” (Jenkins 2008: 137) and sees
blogging as “potentially increasing cultural diversity and lowering
barriers in cultural participation”, “expanding the range of
perspectives”, as “grassroots intermediaries” that ensure “that
everyone has a chance to be heard” (Jenkins 2006: 180f).

Axel Bruns says that “open participation” (Bruns 2008: 24, 240)
is a key principle of produsage.

Clay Shirky (2008: 107) says that on web 2.0 there is a “linking
of symmetrical participation and amateur production”.


Tapscott and Williams argue that “the new web” has resulted in
“a new economic democracy […] in which we all have a lead
role” (Tapscott and Williams 2007: 15).

Yochai Benkler (2006) says that due to the emergence of
commons-based peer production on the Internet, “we can say
that culture is becoming more democratic: self-reﬂective and
participatory“ (Benkler 2006: 15).

Is the web participatory?

Answering this question requires an understanding of the notion of
participation.


Participatory democracy theory

A participatory economy requires a “change in the terms of
access to capital in the direction of more nearly equal access”
(Macpherson 1973: 71) and “a change to more nearly equal access
to the means of labour” (Macpherson 1973: 73).

“Genuine democracy, and genuine liberty, both require the
absence of extractive powers” (Macpherson 1973: 121).

A participatory economy furthermore involves “the democratising
of industrial authority structures” (Pateman 1970: 43).

Rank Website Ownership Country Year of Domain Economic Unique Users
Creation Orientation per Month
4 Facebook Facebook Inc. USA 2004 Profit, 91 million
advertising
6 YouTube Google Inc. USA 2005 Profit, 72 million
advertising
8 Wikipedia Wikimedia USA 2001 Non-profit, 67 million
Foundation non-
advertising
9 MySpace MySpace Inc. USA 2003 Profit, 63 million
(News advertising
Corporation)
14 Blogspot Google Inc. USA 2000 Profit, 49 million
advertising
19 Answers Answers USA 1996 Profit, 39 million
Corporation advertising
22 Wordpress Automattic Inc. USA 2000 Profit, 28 million
advertising
23 Photobucket Photobucket.com USA 2003 Profit, 28 million
LLC advertising
26 Twitter Twitter Inc. USA 2006 Profit, no 27 million
advertising
31 Flickr Yahoo! Inc. USA 2003 Profit, 21 million
advertising
32 Blogger Google Inc. USA 1999 Profit, 20 million
advertising
44 eHow Demand Media USA 1998 Profit, 14 million
Inc. advertising
49 eZineArticles SparkNet USA 1999 Profit, 13 million
Corporation advertising
532 million
Table 2: Web 2.0/3.0 platforms that are among the top 50 websites in the USA (data source:
quantcast.com, US site ranking, August 13, 2009)


13 of 50 websites can be classified as web 2.0/3.0 platforms
(=26.0%). These 13 platforms account for 532 million out of a total
of 1916 million monthly usages of the 50 top websites in the US
(=27.7%).

Web 2.0/3.0 platforms have become more important, but they do
not dominate the web.

12 of 13 of the web 2.0/3.0 platforms that are among the top 50 US
websites are profit-oriented, 11 of them are advertising-based.

In my empirical sample, 92.3% of the most frequently used web
2.0/3.0 platforms in the US and 87.4% of monthly unique web
2.0/3.0 usages in the USA are corporate-based, which shows that
the vast majority of popular web 2.0/3.0 platforms are mainly
interested in generating monetary profits and that the corporate web
2.0/3.0 is much more popular than the non-corporate web 2.0/3.0.


Google owns three of the 11 web platforms listed in table 2. 18
human and corporate legal persons own 98.8% of Google’s
common stock, Google’s 20 000 employees, the 520 million
global Google users, the 303 million users of YouTube, and the
142 million users of Blogspot/Blogger are non-owners of
Google (Google SEC Filing Proxy Statements 2008).
Rank Website Ownership of data Advertising
4 Facebook License to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
6 YouTube License to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
8 Wikipedia Creative commons No advertising
9 MySpace License to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
14 Blogspot License to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
19 Answers License to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
22 Wordpress License to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
23 Photobucket License to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
26 Twitter No license to use uploaded content No advertising
31 Flickr License to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
32 Blogger License to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
44 eHow License to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
49 eZineArticles No license to use uploaded content Targeted advertisements
Table 3: Ownership rights and advertising rights of the 13 most-used web 2.0/3.0 platforms in
the USA (data source: terms of use and privacy policies)


10 of the 13 web 2.0/3.0 sites hold a de-facto ownership right of
user data. 11 of the 13 platforms have the right to store, analyze,
and sell the content and usage data to advertising clients that are
enabled to provide targeted, personalized advertisements.

Most web 2.0/3.0 companies own the data of the users, whereas
the users do not own a share of the corporations.

This is an asymmetric economic power relation.


For Georg Lukács, ideology “by-passes the essence of the
evolution of society and fails to pinpoint it and express it
adequately” (Lukács 1971: 50).

Slavoj Žižek (1994: 305) argues that “’ideological’ is a social
reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its
participants as to its essence“.

An ideology is a claim about a certain status of reality that does
not correspond to actual reality. It deceives human subjects in
order to forestall societal change. It is false consciousness (Lukács
1971, 83).


Based on participatory democracy theory, we can argue that
scholars who argue that the contemporary web or the Internet is
participatory advance an ideology that celebrates capitalism
and does not see how capitalist interests predominantly shape the
Internet.

Given these empirical results, it seems feasible to theorize the
contemporary “web 2.0” not as a participatory system, but by
employing more negative, critical terms such as class,
exploitation, and surplus value.


Marx’s analysis of capitalism: The expanded reproduction process
of capital, capital accumulation


Karl Marx highlights exploitation as the fundamental aspect of class
by saying that “the driving motive and determining purpose of
capitalist production” is “the greatest possible exploitation of labour-
power by the capitalist” (Marx 1867: 449).

“The theory of surplus value is in consequence immediately the theory
of exploitation” (Negri 1991: 74)

Marx says that the proletariat is “a machine for the production of
surplus-value”, capitalists are “a machine for the transformation of this
surplus-value into surplus capital” (Marx 1867: 742).

Surplus value “is in substance the materialization of unpaid labour-
time. The secret of the self-valorization of capital resolves itself into the
fact that it has at its disposal a definite quantity of the unpaid labour of
other people” (Marx 1867: 672). Surplus value “costs the worker labour
but the capitalist nothing”, but “none the less becomes the legitimate
property of the capitalist” (Marx 1867: 672).


Erik Olin Wright (1997):

Exploitation of labour
Exploitation based on skills
Exploitation based on authority

Bourdieu (1986):

economic capital
cultural capital
Political capital


Rosa Luxemburg (1913: 363) argued that capital accumulation
feeds on the exploitation of milieus that are drawn into the
capitalist system.

This idea was used for explaining the existence of colonies of
imperialism by Luxemburg and was applied by Marxist
Feminism in order to argue that unpaid reproductive labour can
be considered as an inner colony and milieu of primitive
accumulation of capitalism. (Bennholdt-Thomsen, Mies &
Werlhof 1992, Mies 1996, Werlhof 1991).

Antonio Negri uses the term “social worker” for arguing that
there is a broadening of the proletariat that is “now extended
throughout the entire span of production and reproduction”
(Negri 1982: 209).


The multitude or proletariat is formed by “all those who labour
and produce under the rule of capital” (Hardt & Negri 2004:
106), “all those whose labour is directly or indirectly exploited
by and subjected to capitalist norms of production and
reproduction” (Hardt & Negri 2000: 52).

The proletariat is objectively united by the fact that it consists of
all those individuals and groups that are exploited capital, live and
produce directly and indirectly for capital that expropriates and
appropriates resources (commodities, labour power, the
commons, knowledge, nature, public infrastructures and services)
that are produced and reproduced by the proletariat in
common.


Over-exploitation means that goods are produced in a way that
the “individual value of these articles is now below their social
value” (Marx 1867: 434).


Knowledge is “universal labour” that is “brought about partly by
the cooperation of men now living, but partly also by building on
earlier work” (Marx 1894: 199).

“Communal labour, however, simply involves the direct
cooperation of individuals” (Marx 1894: 199).

profit rate p = s / (c + v) = surplus value / (constant capital +
variable capital)

Exploitation of labour by Internet firms:

p = s / (c + v1 + v2),
s … surplus value, c … constant capital, v1 … wages paid to
fixed employees, v2 … wages paid to users
v2 => 0, v1 => v2 (v2 substitutes v1) outsourcing of labour


Produsage in a capitalist society can be interpreted as the
outsourcing of productive labour from wage labour to users who
work completely for free and help maximizing the rate of
exploitation (e = s / v, = surplus value / variable capital) so that
profits can be raised and new media capital can be accumulated.

e = s /v: v=>0 => exploitation=>infinity

Dallas Smythe (1981/2006) suggests that in the case of media
advertisement models, the audience is sold as a commodity to
advertisers (audience commodity):

“Because audience power is produced, sold, purchased and
consumed, it commands a price and is a commodity. (….) You
audience members contribute your unpaid work time and in exchange
you receive the program material and the explicit advertisements”
(Smythe 1981/2006: 233, 238).


The Internet users who google data, upload or watch videos on
YouTube, upload or browse personal images on Flickr, or
accumulate friends with whom they exchange content or
communicate online via social networking platforms like MySpace
or Facebook, constitute an audience commodity that is sold to
advertisers.

The difference between the audience commodity on traditional mass
media and on the Internet is that in the latter case the users are also
content producers; there is user-generated content, the users engage
in permanent creative activity, communication, community
building, and content-production.

Internet produser/produsage commodity: Due to the permanent
activity of the recipients and their status as produsers, we can say that
in the case of the Internet the audience commodity is a produser
commodity.


The category of the produser commodity does not signify a
democratization of the media towards a participatory or
democratic system, but the total commodification of human
creativity.


Advertisements on the Internet are frequently personalized;
this is made possible by surveilling, storing, and assessing user
activities with the help of computers and databases. This is
another difference from TV and radio, which provide less
individualized content and advertisements due to their more
centralized structure.

In 2008, Internet advertising was the third-largest advertising
market in the USA and the UK.

Figure: The growth of Internet advertising profits in the USA (source: IAB Internet
Advertising Revenue Report 2008)

Figure: The growth of Internet advertising profits in the UK (source: Ofcom
Communications Market Report 2009)

5. Conclusion

The dialectic of technology and society

The contemporary Internet and the contemporary world wide web
are predominantly corporate spaces of capital accumulation
through exploitation.

“Critical theory argues that technology is not a thing in the
ordinary sense of the term, but an ‘ambivalent’ process of
development suspended between different possibilities”
(Feenberg 2002: 15).

Critical studies as alternative to technological/media
determinism

5. Conclusion

Technological/Media determinism:

Cause Effect
+ = Techno-optimism
MEDIA / TECHNOLOGY SOCIETY
-- = Techno-pessimism

Dialectic of technology/media:

Cause Effect

MEDIA / TECHNOLOGY ... SOCIETY

Effect Cause

MEDIA / TECHNOLOGY ... SOCIETY

5. Conclusion

The Internet is a dialectical space that contains both positive and
negative potentials, potentials for dominative competition and for
co-operation that contradict each other (for a detailed discussion of
this hypothesis see Fuchs 2008).

The Internet acts as critical medium that enables information, co-
ordination, communication, and co-operation of protest
movements (Fuchs 2008), it has a potential to act as a critical
alternative medium for progressive social movements, as
examples such as Indymedia show (Fuchs 2010, Sandoval and
Fuchs 2009).

The Internet is both a social medium and a space of accumulation.

5. Conclusion

But the dialectic of the Internet is an asymmetric dialectic.

Visibility is a central resource on the Internet.

Dominant actors such as corporations, political parties, or
governments control a vast amount of resources (money,
influence, reputation, power, etc) which allows them to gain and
accumulate visibility on the Internet.

Although everyone can produce and diffuse information in
principle easily with the help of the Internet because it is a global
decentralized many-to-many and one-to-many communication
system, not all information is visible to the same degree.

5. Conclusion
Rank Video Number of hits Originator Corporation,

1 Evolution of Dance 128 350 731 Judson Laipply
owner
Private, non- 11 of the 15 most
2 Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend 127 518 607 RCA Records
corporate
Sony Music viewed YouTube
Entertainment
3 Charlie bit my finger – 127 370 584 Harry and Charlie Private, non- videos of all time are
again! corporate
4 Miley Cirus – 7 Things 102 979 855 Hollywood Walt Disney provided by large
Records Company
5 Rihanna – Don’t Stop the 101 501 290 Universal Music Vivendi media corporations
Music Group
6 Chris Brown – With You 99 195 687 Jive Records Sony Music
Entertainment
such as Sony Music
7 Pands - Disculpa los
Malos Pensamientos
98 309 779 Movic Records Movic Records Entertainment,
8
(Evangelion)
Lo qué tú Quieras Oír 98 204 841 Guilermo Zapata Non-corporate,
Vivendi, Walt
creative
commons Disney Company,
9 Jeff Dunham – Achmed
the Dead Terrorist
97 015 666 Comedy Central Viacom
ITV plc, Movic
10 Hahaha 93 906 757 Spacelord72 Private, non-
corporate Records.
11 Leona Lewis – Bleeding 91 243 811 Syco Music Sony Music
Love Entertainment
12 Lady Gaga – Just Dance 80 633 974 Interscope- Vivendi
Geffen-A&M The “Internet
13 Britney Spears - 78 448 761 Jive Sony Music

14
Womanizer
Timbaland – Apologize 78 400 330 Interscope-
Entertainment
Vivendi
attention economy“
15 Susan Boyle – Singer – 77 121 404
Geffen-A&M
ITV ITV plc
is dominated by
Britains Got Talent 2009
Table: Most viewed videos on YouTube of all time, October 17th, 2009, 21:00 CET
large corporations.

5. Conclusion

Rank Blog Operator Character Alexa Traffic Rank (3
month average of visits
by global Internet users)
1 Huffington Huffington Post Inc. Corporate #274 0.3192%
Post
2 Gizmodo Gawker Media Corporate #760 0.1434%
3 TechCrunch TechCrunch Corporate #495 0.2117%
4 Engadget AOL Time Warner Corporate #562 0.1829%

5 Boing Boing Happy Mutants LLC Corporate #2301 0.058%
6 Mashable! Mashable Corporate #517 0.2142%
7 Think Center for American Non-corporate, #9259 0.0166%
Progress Progress Action politcal think tank
Fund
8 The Daily RTST Inc. Corporate #4390 0.0277%
Beast
8 The Corner on National Review, Corporate #5740 0.0211%
National Inc.
Review
10 Hot Air Hot Air LLC Corporate #5039
0.0217%
Table: Blogs with the largest attention and influence, data source: Technorati Authority,
October 17, 2009

5. Conclusion

The blogosphere is dominated by start-up companies that aim at
capital accumulation.

9 of the top 10 blogs are corporate blogs.

The only non-corporate top 10 blog is a political think tank
funded by individuals who are politically close to the Democrats.

The blogosphere is dominated by a power elite, capital and
political actors.

None of these blogs reaches as much attention on the Internet as
the large information platforms operated by large corporations:
Yahoo: 25.699%, MSN: 11.768%, AOL: 2.253%, BBC: 1.594%,
CNN: 1.404% (alexa.com, percentage of global Internet users who
visit web platforms, 3 month average).

5. Conclusion

Indymedia is only ranked number 4147 in the list of the most
accessed websites, whereas BBC Online is ranked number 44,
CNN Online number 52, the New York Times Online number
115, Spiegel Online number 152, Bildzeitung Online number 246,
and Fox News Online number 250 (data source: alexa.com, top 1
000 000 000 sites, August 2, 2009).

= stratified capitalist online attention economy

Internet-supported protest is possible and necessary, but today
remains rather marginalized.

The question if resistance to online surveillance is possible,
depends on how conscious users are about potential threats.

Survey: N=674 students who use social networking sites

5. Conclusion

Figure: Major perceived opportunities of social networking sites
1: Maintaining existing contacts, friendships, family relations, e t c
2: Establishing new contacts with unknown people or with people whom one hardly knows and can
easier contact o n l i n e
3: Finding and renewing old contacts
4: Communication in interest groups and hobby groups
5: Communication and contacts in general (no further specification)
6: International and global character of communication and contacts
7: Sharing and accessing photos, music, v i d e o s
8: Entertainment, fun, spare time, amusem e n t
9: Source of information and new s
10: Browsing other profiles, "spying" on others
11: Free communication that saves money
12: Reminder of birthdays
13: Business communication, finding jobs, self-presentation for potential employers
14: Being hip and trendy
15: Mobility, access from anyw h e r e
16: Self-presentation to others (for non-business reasons )
17: Flirting, sex, love

5. Conclusion

Figure: Major perceived risks of social networking sites
1: Data abuse or data forwarding or lack of data protection that lead to surveillance by state, companies, or
individuals
2: Private affairs become public and result in a lack of privacy and privacy control
3: Personal profile data (images, etc) are accessed by employer or potential employers and result in job-related
disadvantages (such as losing a job or not getting h i r e d )
4: Receiving advertising or spam
5: Lack or loss of personal contacts, superficial communication and contacts, impoverishment of social relat i o n s
6: Stalking, harassment, becoming a crime victi m
7: Commercial selling of personal data
8: Data and identity theft
9: I see no disadvanta g e s
10: It is a waste of time
11: Virus, hacking and defacing of profiles, data integri t y
12: Internet addiction, increase of stress and health damages
13: Unrealistic, exaggerated self-presentation, competition for best self-presentati o n
14: Disadvantages at university because professors can access profile s
15: Costs for usage can be introduced (or exist in the case of some platforms)
16: Friends can get a negative impression of m e

5. Conclusion

Antangonism between surveillance and communication on
SNS:

55.7% of the respondents say that political, economic, or personal
surveillance is a main threat of social networking sites. 59.1%
consider maintaining existing contacts as the main advantage.

As our study has shown, many young people seem to be aware
of the surveillance risks of web 2.0.

They possess a critical potential that could be transformed into
protest and social movement action if it is adequately triggered and
organized.

5. Conclusion

Kojin Karatani

Internet produsage: reflects “the transcritical moment where
workers and consumers intersect” (Karatani 2005: 21).

For political strategies this brings up the actuality of an
associationist movement that is “a transnational association of
consumers/workers” (Karatani 2005: 295) that engages in “the
class struggle against capitalism” of “workers qua consumers or
consumers qua workers” (Karatani 2005: 294).

The Hegelian Dialectical Triad of Multitude,
Capital, and Communism commonwealth =
communism
Marx:
produces surplus knowledge = part of
value, the commons = “AUFHEBUNG“ (SUBLATION)
“a world of common wealth, focusing on and
commons “universal labour”
expanding our capacities for collective
(knowledge, language, that is “brought about
production and self-government“ (Hardt and
affects, communication, partly by the Negri 2009, Commonwealth: xiii), comunism
education, care, technology, cooperation of men “centralized state control“, “proper meaning“ of
digital knowledge, user- now living, but partly communism=“what the private is to capitalism,
generated Internet content, also by building on what the public is to [state] socialism, the
Internet-mediated earlier work” (Marx common is to communism“ (Hardt and Negri
communication, etc)
1894: 199). 2009: 273) =>
FOR A COMMUNIST INTERNET IN A
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION COMMUNIST SOCIETY
capital exploits surplus value and the commons

V = c + v + s the multitude resists against capitalM-C..P..C‘-M‘

= actuality: necessary for capitalism
MULTITUDE = potentiality CAPITAL, “EMPIRE“

Class and Exploitation on the Internet

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