[iDC] Michael Jackson and the death of macrofame

[Christian Fuchs]

the sentence "One can respond that Horkheimer and Adorno
advanced an elitist theory, but what else than elitist should critical
theory be in an elitist class theory (that culture or theory or whatever
else can be democratic within capitalism in my opinion is an ideological
myth advanced by cultural studies that thereby becomes uncritical
theory)" in my prior mail should have read "...in an elitist class 
society...", otherwise it makes no sense...

i am by the way still asking myself what this thread has got to do with 
michael jackson...

C.

Christian Fuchs schrieb:
> Dean, Jodi schrieb:
>> Didn't Kevin Kelly talk about the winner take all society? or the 
>> change in market practices such that there are a very few big winners 
>> and a large number of losers (80/20 rule?)? I think I recall as well 
>> sociological analyses (Sassen?) exploring the way that former 
>> divisions between occupations/professions are now
>> divisions within them--so, there are high-powered lawyers and then 
>> lawyers who are basically piece-workers as well as those who are just 
>> mini-cogs in law
>> factories. The same holds in academia--tenured full professors at one 
>> end, adjuncts struggling to teach 6-7 courses in order to make a 
>> living at the other end.
>>   
>
> I think you are right, Jodi, in saying what I would formulate as the
> class structure becoming more complex, antagonistic, and internally
> divided. Another example are those migrant workers who are extremly
> exploited and underpaid (Marx's notion of extra surplus value could be
> employed here) and whose racist exploitation is partly ideologically
> supported by workers (for example in Austria, the shameful
> post-Nazi-country I come from, the two right-wing extremist parties BZOE
> and FPOE (both formerly headed by Haider) are the number 1 working class
> parties, which shows that today many workers have fascist
> consciousness). So those workers are exploited by capital, but at the
> same time support the super-exploitation of migrants because they hope
> they will be better off materially at the expense of migrants. So you
> could say that here we have a super-exploitative class relation with
> capitalists and racist workers (and other racists) as the exploiting
> class and poor migrant workers (the few well-off migrant workers not
> included) as the exploited class. The same with houseworkers, etc. What
> I want to say is the contemporary capitalist class structure is a space
> of overlapping class divisions. But you can still argue that all
> exploited groups together form a super-subject-in-itself (not
> for-itself) that could still be termed proletariat or 
> super-proletariat. In my opinion class is the most important category 
> for analyzing contemporary society.
>
>> Does it make sense today to speak of right-wing or bourgeois 
>> consciousness? What about ideology and ideological practices in which 
>> we all persist (I know, but
>> nevertheles...ala Zizek rather than the older notion that implies a 
>> division between ideology and science or true and false consciousness)?
>>   
> Why should it not make sense to speak of right-wing consciousness, false
> consciousness, bourgeois consciousness today? True, left-wing
> consciousness, proletarian consciousness, etc is today a minority
> consciousness. But only thinkers of the likes of Ulrich Beck or Giddens
> infer in an ideological move that this means that we are witnessing the
> end of class and the end of class consciousness. The capitalist class is
> very conscious of its status and very afraid of loosing this status and
> therefore defends its interests by all means necessary (supported mainly
> by the monopoly of violence of the state that is an today an
> economically very active state, the state of capital), as the new
> economic crisis shows very clearly. I do not see why we should have
> moved "beyond left and right" - we have only done so because the right
> has used its power to destroy the left, which included the ideological
> myth that there is no longer a difference between left and right. This
> difference is so clear today, you can watch it on the street by
> observing poverty, precariousness, unemployment, etc.
>
> Max Horkheimer once wrote in this context: " “It is possible for the
> consciousness of every social stratum today to be limited and corrupted
> by ideology, however much, for its circumstances, it may be bent on
> truth. For all its insight into the individual steps in social change
> and for all the agreement of its elements with the most advanced
> traditional theories, the critical theory has no specific influence on
> its side, except concern for the abolition of social injustice”. In
> order to argue that counsciousness is right-wing, bourgeois, etc, we do
> not need the existence of mass true consciousness, although such
> conditions are advantageous. One can respond that Horkheimer and Adorno
> advanced an elitist theory, but what else than elitist should critical
> theory be in an elitist class theory (that culture or theory or whatever
> else can be democratic within capitalism in my opinion is an ideological
> myth advanced by cultural studies that thereby becomes uncritical
> theory). Even if all people have false consciousness and no political
> left is left, a critical theory is still possible and important and does
> not need a conscious revolutionary mass for the argument that the
> masses' consciousness is false or right-wing. Think of Nazi-Germany as
> an example.
>
> Cheers, Christian
>
>


-- 
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Priv.-Doz. Dr. Christian Fuchs
Unified Theory of Information Research Group
University of Salzburg
Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18
5020 Salzburg
Austria
christian.fuchs at sbg.ac.at
Phone +43 662 8044 4823
http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at
http;//www.uti.at
Editor of 
tripleC - Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation | Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society
http://www.triple-c.at
Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. New York: Routledge. 
http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at/i&s.html