The article explains foundations of critical political economy, especially the cycle of capital accumulation, and argues that this approach is suited for explaining and analyzing the contemporary information economy, knowledge labor, and the Internet economy. The notions of class and surplus value are applied to knowledge labour and Internet usage. Based on Dallas Smythe’s notion of the audience commodity, the concept of the Internet produsage/prosumer commodity is worked out.
New Paper: Christian Fuchs: Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet
christian fuchs, May 2nd 2010