[iDC] Dallas Smythe

Tue Jul 7 11:00:18 UTC 2009

> DALLAS SMYTHE - Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism 266-7

This is available online as a PDF here:

http://www.ctheory.net/library/journal.asp?journalid=3

Best

David

On 7 Jul 2009, at 10:21, Sean Cubitt wrote:

> Trebor suggested mentioning another of the lost Canadian connections  
> (Innis
> and MacLuhan occupying such visibility we rarely note some of the  
> other
> amazing contributors. The thesis of attention value in his work  
> dates back
> to the later 1950s, this is just one I have on file for lectures
>
> DALLAS SMYTHE - Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism 266-7
>
> I submit that the materialist answer to the question – What is the  
> commodity
> form of mass-produced, advertiser-supported communications under  
> monopoly
> capitalism? – is audiences and readerships (hereafter referred to for
> simplicity as audiences). The material reality under monopoly  
> capitalism is
> that all non-sleeping time of most of the population is work time.  
> This work
> time is devoted to the production of commodities-in-general  (both  
> where
> people get paid for their work and as members of audiences) and in the
> production and reproduction of labour power (the pay for which is  
> subsumed
> in their income). Of the off-the-job work time, the largest single  
> block is
> time of the audiences which is sold to advertisers. It is not sold by
> workers but by the mass media of communications. Who produces this
> commodity? The mass media of communications do by the mix of  
> explicit and
> hidden advertising and "programme" material, the markets for which  
> preoccupy
> the bourgeois communication theorists . . . . In "their" time which  
> is sold
> to advertisers workers a) perform essential marketing functions for  
> the
> producers of consumers' goods and b) work at the production and  
> reproduction
> of labour power. This joint process, as shall be noted, embodies a  
> principal
> contradiction . . .the mass media of communications are  
> simultaneously  in
> the superstructure and engaged indispensably in the last stage of
> infrastructural production where demand is satisfied by purchaes of  
> consumer
> goods.
>
>
>
> Smythe, Dallas (1994), 'Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism  
> [1977]'
> in Smythe, , Counterclockwise: Perspectives on Communication, ed  
> Thomas
> Guback, Westview Press, Boulder CO., 266-291; orignial Canadian  
> Journal of
> Political and Social Theory, v.1 n.3, Fall 1977, pp 1-27. .
>
> Worth noting too James Beniger's contention in The Control  
> revolution that
> the origins of advertising lie in a crisis of control (his term - I  
> would
> say a crisis of overproduction) in manufacture and distribution,
> specifically of oats, until then bought bulk for horses, but from  
> the 1870s
> sold in 2 pound packages with the boxes branded Quaker Oats. He  
> regards this
> as a way of controlling consumtion to match manufacture/distribution.
>
> sean
>
>
> Prof Sean Cubitt
> scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
> Director
> Media and Communications Program
> Faculty of Arts
> Room 127 John Medley East
> The University of Melbourne
> Parkville VIC 3010
> Australia
>
> Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
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> M: 0448 304 004
> Skype: seancubitt
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>
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---

Dr. David M. Berry

Room 412
Media and Communications Department
School of Arts
University of Wales Swansea
Swansea
SA2 8PP
Wales, UK

Tel: x2633
Email: d.m.berry at swansea.ac.uk
Web: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/academic/Arts/berryd/

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