Marx is Back, But Which One? On Knowledge Labour and Media Practice

A Marxist primer for critical public relations scholarship

“…Marx was a prolific public communicator in the presentation of these ideas. For most of his adult life, he depended on the press for an income and was highly critical of the economic and political imperatives and biases of media and communication systems (Mosco, 2012). Public relations did not feature on the communication landscape during Marx’s life.…”

“…An ardent advocate for the freedom of the press, Marx opposed censorship (Mosco, 2012; Shaw, 2012) and considered a free press essential for the expression of intellectual and political struggle and self-examination in a liberal democracy (Shaw, 2012: 62). He proclaimed,[I]t is startling to find freedom of the press subsumed under freedom of doing business.…”

“…Critical social inquiry, broadly a transformative emancipatory project which seeks to identify and expose systems and causes domination (Bohman, 2011), began with Karl Marx and his critique of the capitalist political economy (Berlin, 2013; Fuchs, 2011). Mosco (2012) states that ‘it is not an exaggeration to conclude that the Marx of political economy and cultural studies form pillars of critical communications study’ (p. 571). Some critical public relations scholars have identified the public relations industry’s historical and contemporary close associations with the growth of capitalism, globalisation, corporate interest, and the transnational corporate class (e.g.…”