Co-creative prosumer labor, financial knowledge capitalism, and Marxist value theory

ABSTRACT

Some argue that the “co-creative labors” of “prosumers,” who often work for free on social media sites, represent new types of exploitation insofar that they provide novel ways for capitalists to accumulate surplus value. For others, however, prosumers illustrate how capitalism is now dominated by commercial and noncommercial informational networks that build brand value in innovative ways, especially through “immaterial” relations of communication and information. This article argues that each perspective has limitations. By working from an alternative Marxist perspective the article outlines some of these limitations and then argues that co-creative labor and prosumers are best explored as representing unproductive labor that helps transfer, but not produce, already generated surplus value from the productive to unproductive spheres of the global economy. Through their free labor, prosumers thus have the potential to cut costs for new media companies in the unproductive sphere of the economy. The article further suggests that the “unproductive” actions of prosumers are compatible with a financialized form of knowledge capitalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-creative prosumers
• financialization
• Marxism
• social media
• unproductive labor
• value relations

Notes

1. Fuchs “selectively” draws upon Wright's work to the extent that he also draws on other critical analysts to develop his own approach to social class. For example, Fuchs appropriates Hardt and Negri's theory of the multitude to argue that nonwaged knowledge workers are exploited. Fuchs's theory of social class therefore differs in certain respects from Wright's theory of social class.

2. Other researchers view elements of the global economy in similar ways. Potts et al. (2008) suggest that creative industries flourish through “word of mouth, taste, cultures, and popularity, so that such that individual choices are dominated by information feedback over social networks rather than innate preferences and price signals” (Potts et al. 2008, 169–70).