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With a Different Marx: Value and the Contradictions of Web 2.0 Capitalism

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With a Different Marx: Value and the Contradictions of Web 2.0 Capitalism The Information Society, 31:44–51, 2015 Published with license by Taylor & Francis ISSN: 0197-2243 print / 1087-6537 online DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2015.977634 PERSPECTIVE With a Different Marx: Value and the Contradictions of Web 2.0 Capitalism Bruce Robinson Independent Researcher, Manchester, United Kingdom by Fuchs (2010) and Arvidsson and Colleoni (2012) fur- This perspective examines the source of value in Web 2.0 ther by demonstrating the value of a theoretical frame- enterprises such as Facebook and Google by analyzing the work that draws on Marx’s writings on the circulation of advertising model that supplies the bulk of their revenues. Drawing capital and his concepts of unproductive labor, subsump- on Marx’s understanding of the circulation of value within the tion of labor, costs of circulation, commercial capital, capitalist economy as a whole and his concepts of unproductive and primitive accumulation. labor, subsumption of labor, costs of circulation, commercial capital, This perspective therefore remains “With Marx” and primitive accumulation, we analyze the economic relationships of Web 2.0 capital, proposing that revenues from advertising come (Fuchs 2012a) but with a rather different aspect of from value produced in non-Web 2.0 sectors of the economy. On Marx’s economic writings from that proposed by Fuchs. this basis we critique both Fuchs’s and Arvidsson and Colleoni’s Both Fuchs (2010) and Arvidsson and Colleoni (2012) positions on the origin of value in Web 2.0 and recognize some of the start from the position that a Marxist analysis of Web 2.0 difficulties and contradictions of the advertising model as a form of is essentially about the labor theory of value and the cre- monetization of free services for Web 2.0 capital. ation of surplus value through exploitation in the process of production. While this is indeed the cornerstone of Keywords advertising, Marx, productive and unproductive labor, Marxist political economy, this perspective proposes that value theory, Web 2.0 concepts found in in the second and third volumes of Capital (Marx 1978; 1981), where Marx aimed to give a picture of the workings of capitalism as a whole, inte- The emergence of large-scale mass Internet platforms, grating production with the circulation of capital and its free to use, such as Google, Twitter, YouTube, and Face- distribution between different capitals, are more appro- Downloaded by [Boston College] at 08:58 07 January 2015 book, has led to a debate about the origin of value in priate for understanding the economic relationships and these enterprises. Web 2.0 capitalists and critical Internet flows of value in Web 2.0 capitals as advertising forms theorists alike have asked the same questions: Just how part of the process of the circulation of capital (Arriaga is it possible to make a pile of money by providing free 1984; Fuchs 2011a). services? How can a nonpaying sphere coexist with a These Web 2.0 capitals are not based on independent capitalist enterprise? This perspective examines these and self-sustaining value creation. Their dependence on questions by analyzing the advertising model that has advertising means that they depend on consuming value come to dominate the income of dominant Web 2.0 com- produced elsewhere in the economy. While we acknowl- panies, accounting for 95% of Google’s and 85% of edge the role of unpaid labor in Web 2.0 capital, attribut- Facebook’s revenues in 2012. By discussing the eco- ing it to direct appropriation of user content, it is the nomic relationships and flows of value in Web 2.0 capi- relationships with other capitals together with the loyalty talism in this context, we aim to take the debate initiated of their users that are crucial factors in their ability to accumulate capital. This enables us to point to some of the contradictions in the typical Web 2.0 model of Ó Bruce Robinson Received August 18, 2013; accepted March 24, 2014. accumulation. Address correspondence to Bruce Robinson, 1 Cundiff Road, This perspective rejects Fuchs’s position (2010, 191) Manchester M21 8FS, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected] that all processes necessary for the accumulation of 44 VALUE AND WEB 2.0 CAPITALISM 45 capital are value creating and thus that all users of Web For Marx, there are two types of labor that are not pro- 2.0 platforms are productive workers in Marx’s sense of ductive of value: those that are not subsumed by capital producing surplus value. However, the author shares his and take place outside the direct process of capital accu- political conclusion that the drives of capital distort and mulation (which we call non-subsumed labor) and those devalue the potential social benefits of the Internet and taking place within it but in functions unproductive of the socially useful services provided by firms such as value (what Marx calls unproductive labor). The distinc- Google, together with many of his criticisms of Arvids- tion between productive and unproductive labor1 is not son and Colleoni’s subjective and finance-based theory based on the nature of the activity or product, the differ- of value and his defense of the labor theory of value. ence between goods and services, or whether the result Accordingly, this perspective also rejects Arvidsson and of production takes the form of a material object: “the Colleoni’s view that the market valuation of “affective designation of labor as productive labor has absolutely investments” by financial capital provides the basis for nothing to do with the determinate content of the labor, the creation of value and that advertising revenues are its special utility, or the particular use-value in which it secondary to Web 2.0 capital. While financial markets manifests itself. The same kind of labor may be produc- can serve as a source of investment and personal enrich- tive or unproductive” (Marx 1987, 401, emphasis in orig- ment, the increased detachment of market valuation from inal). Rather, based on the economic relationship of the underlying value relationships does not provide the labor to capital, the most basic aspect of productive labor basis for a stabilization of value but rather is a source of is that it should produce surplus value and thus contribute instability and crisis. to the self-valorization of capital (Marx 1976, 644). This The perspective begins by outlining the concepts on depends in turn on productive labor having a direct rela- which this analysis is based, which are then applied to tionship to capital—typically but not exclusively one of Google and Facebook. On this basis we critique both wage labor—and on it being subsumed to capital, that is, Fuchs’s and Arvidsson and Colleoni’s positions on the its labor process being under control of capital. Without origin of value in Web 2.0. The final section demon- the latter condition capital has no control over what is strates its value in discussing something missing from produced. both their analyses: the problems, actual and potential, of Marx makes this distinction clear in a famous passage the Web 2.0 model of capital accumulation as reflected that occurs in two places in his writings (1976, 1044; in such examples as the decline of MySpace and the 1987, 401): uncertain effectiveness of Internet advertising. It ends by briefly discussing the strategies of Web 2.0 firms to over- Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost for five pounds, was an unproduc- come them: user tie-in, monopolization, diversification, tive labourer. On the other hand, the writer who turns out stuff for and alternative models of monetisation. his publisher in factory style, is a productive labourer. Milton pro- duced Paradise Lost for the same reason that a silk worm produces silk. It was an activity of his nature. Later he sold the product for MARX REVISITED £5 and thus became a merchant. But the literary proletarian of Leip- zig, who fabricates books ...under the direction of his publisher, is The aspects of Marx we consider central to an analysis of a productive labourer; for his product is from the outset subsumed Web 2.0 capital are the relationship between forms of under capital, and comes into being only for the purpose of increas- Downloaded by [Boston College] at 08:58 07 January 2015 labor and the production of value and between produc- ing that capital. tion and circulation; the specific role of commercial capi- Marx, using the example of an informational product, tal; and the possibility of direct appropriation as an distinguishes between autonomous labor undertaken for alternative to value-producing exploitation as a mecha- the laborer’s own ends, the labor of a petty producer who nism of capital accumulation. takes on the functions of a merchant when he or she puts the product on the market, and “productive workers, Forms of Labor and the Production of Value workers directly exploited by capital and subordinated to its process of production and expansion” (1976, 1040, For Marx, the expenditure of labor time is the sole source emphasis in original). of value but not all labor creates value. Most fundamen- Marx also adds a number of further criteria to distin- tally, value-producing labor must be labor for capital in guish productive and unproductive labor. In the circuit of that it must occur within a given circuit of capital and be capital from money to more money (M-C-P-C0-M0 where subject to the control of capital. Labor may be both M D money, C D commodities, and P D the production socially useful and absolutely essential to the overall pro- process) only P produces value.
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