Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

The economic field 231
accommodation, clothing, etc., all contribute to the reproduction of the system I would
like to overthrow. Therefore, although most of, if not all, my consumption is ‘capitalist’,
this does not prevent me from being anti-capitalist. There is always a potential contradiction
between exchange value and use value.
The primary concern of capitalist production is exchange value leading to surplus
value (profit). This does not mean, of course, that capitalism is uninterested in use
value: without use value, commodities would not sell (so every effort is made to stimulate
demand). But it does mean that the individual capitalist’s search for surplus value
can often be at the expense of the general ideological needs of the system as a whole.
Marx was more aware than most of the contradictions in the capitalist system. In a discussion
of the demands of capitalists that workers should save in order to better endure
the fluctuations of boom and slump, he points to the tension that may exist between
‘worker as producer’ and ‘worker as consumer’:
each capitalist does demand that his workers should save, but only his own,
because they stand towards him as workers; but by no means the remaining world
of workers, for these stand towards him as consumers. In spite of all ‘pious’
speeches he therefore searches for means to spur them on to consumption, to give
his wares new charms, to inspire them with new needs by constant chatter, etc.
(Marx, 1973: 287).
The situation is further complicated by tensions between particular capitals and capitalism
as a whole. Common class interests – unless specific restraints, censorship, etc.,
are imposed – usually take second place to the interests of particular capitals in search
of surplus value.
If surplus value can be extracted from the production of cultural commodities
which challenge, or even subvert, the dominant ideology, then all other things
being equal it is in the interests of particular capitals to invest in the production of
such commodities. Unless collective class restraints are exercised, the individual
capitalist’s pursuit of surplus value may lead to forms of cultural production which
are against the interests of capitalism as a whole (Lovell, 2009: 542–3).
To explore this possibility would require specific focus on consumption as opposed to
production. This is not to deny the claim of political economy that a full analysis must
take into account technological and economic determinations. But it is to insist that if
our focus is consumption, then our focus must be consumption as it is experienced and
not as it should be experienced given a prior analysis of the relations of production.
Those on the moral and pessimistic left who attack the capitalist relations of consumption
miss the point: it is the capitalist relations of production that are oppressive
and exploitative and not the consumer choice facilitated by the capitalist market. This
also seems to be Willis’s point. Moral leftists and left pessimists have allowed themselves
to become trapped in an elitist and reactionary argument that claims more
(quantity) always means less (quality).