Covering the black hole. For a Critique of the Political Economy of Communication

The author focuses on giving a coherent and integrated answer to a series of questions exposed by a great number of Marxist authors in the field of communication studies, with special attention to Dallas Smythe and his concept of audience commodity. In this way he summarizes and reinterpretes some of the Marx contributions. From this he proposes an alternative theoretical point of view to define the general conditions that a Marxist theory of communication in capitalism should be able to explain, in which the surplus value of labour in the Cultural Industry, the double nature of audience, as well as the evident contradiction between labour and capital - which articulates itself with the contradiction between culture and economy, are exposed.