History and Class Consciousness 2.0: Georg Lukács in the age of digital capitalism and big data

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the relevance of Georg Lukács’ 1923 book History and Class Consciousness in the context of digital capitalism. It does so by analysing how Lukács’ concepts of the dialectic of subject and object, ideology, reification, reified consciousness matter today in the context of big data and digital capitalism. The essay shows that History and Class Consciousness’ critique of reification, ideology, and reified consciousness remains highly topical in the age of digital capitalism and big data. Lukács’ analysis allows us to critically analyse how social media, big data, and various other Internet technologies are used as tools of reification. At the same time, Lukács reminds us that only human praxis can establish alternatives.

KEYWORDS:

• History and Class Consciousness
• Georg Lukács
• digital capitalism
• reification
• reified consciousness
• Internet

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/communication

2 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/exchange

3 https://www.etymonline.com/word/exchange

4 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/exchange

5 For an overview see the contributions in Maxwell (2016).

6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJQP7kiw5Fk, accessed on July 29, 2018.

7 ISI Web of Knowledge: search conducted on July 29, 2018: With 863 citations, the article was the second most cited work containing ‘big data’ in the title.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christian Fuchs

Christian Fuchs is a critical theorist of communication and society. He is editor of the journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique (http://www.triple-c.at) and author of many publications, including the books Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory, Social Media: A Critical Introduction; Marxism: Karl Marx’s Fifteen Key Concepts for Cultural & Communication Studies; Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism; Nationalism on the Internet: Critical Theory and Ideology in the Age of Social Media and Fake News; Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter; Critical Theory of Communication: New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet; Reading Marx in the Information Age: A Media and Communication Studies Perspective on Capital Volume 1; Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media; Digital Labour and Karl Marx; OccupyMedia! The Occupy Movement and Social Media in Crisis Capitalism; Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies; Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age.