Digital Labour and Karl Marx

Christian Fuchs is professor of social media at the University of Westminster in London. He is the author of more than 180 academic publications in the fields of Internet studies, social media studies, critical social theory and information society studies. Among his publications are the books, Internet and Society, Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies, and the collected volumes, Internet and Surveillance: The Challenges of Web 2.0 and Social Media and Critique, Social Media, and the Information Society.

• 1. Introduction   2. An Introduction to Karl Marx's Theory  3. Contemporary Cultural Studies and Karl Marx  4. Dallas Smythe and Audience Labour Today  5. Capitalism or Information Society  6. Digital Slavery: Slave Work in ICT-Related Mineral Extraction  7. Exploitation at Foxconn: Primitive Accumulation and the Formal Subsumption of Labour  8. The Division of Labour of the New Imperialism: Work in the Indian Software Industry  9. The Silicon Valley of Dreams and Nightmares of Exploitation: The Google Labour Aristocracy and its Context  10. Tayloristic, Housewifised Service Labour: The Example of Call Centre Work  11. Theorising Digital Labour on Social Media  12. Digital Labour and Struggles for Digital Work--The Occupy Movement as a New Working Class Movement? Social Media as Working Class Social Media? Glossary

"Fuchs has written a rigorous, passionate, and deeply humane book... He successfully manages to demonstrate the need to revisit Marx's work in relation to digital labour... The book is demanding, yet suitable for both dedicated Marxist scholars and readers who are less well read in Marx's work. Fuchs is thorough in detailing his reading of Marx, which can be welcome for newcomers to the field, while the argument itself and the application of Marx's work will sustain the attention of those who are better versed in the quoted texts."- Vladimir Rizov, University of York, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books