Activity

[...] Because the consciousness industry produces consumable, saleable spectacles, its product treats both past and future like the present--as blended in the eternal present of a system which was never created and will never end. The society of the spectacle, however, cannot be abstractly contrast…

[...] the workplace where people got paid was transformed ideologically. People learned there that work under monopoly capitalism involves competition between individuals whose possessive needs necessarily set them in conflict with each other rather than with the owners of the means of their (conce…

But is the production and consumption of the audience commodity for advertisers a "productive" activity in Marxian terms? Baran and Sweezy are contradictory in answering this question. They tell us that advertising expenses "...since they are manifestly unrelated to necessary costs of production--h…

[...] labour-power was "home-made" in the absence of dominant brand-name commodities, mass advertising, and the mass media [...] the principal aspect of capitalist production was the alienation of workers from the means of producing commodities-in-general. Now the principal aspect of capitalist pro…

[...] The work which audience members perform for the advertisers to whom they have been sold is to learn to buy particular "brands" of consumer goods, and to spend their income accordingly. In short, they work to create the demand for advertised goods which is the purpose of the monopoly capitalis…