Political Economy of Media in

Europe

MIKHAIL PUSHKIN
 Nicholas Garnham

Born 1937 and lives today

Diverse and intriguing background:
 Royal Navy
 Film director, editor, producer for BBC and freelance
 Media, Culture and Society journal editor
 Studied at Sorbonne
 Head of Media Department at Westminster University
 Media

Media is both a product of capitalist system and an

ideological one
Media should be studied within its time frame
Media should be studied within global context of
modern imperialism, neo-colonialism, New World
Information Order
 Media and Culture

Mass media and Culture Production and

Reproduction age merged with capitalist structure
and enterprises
Multinational Corporations control all spheres of
media production, consumption, distribution and
manufacture on hardware, software and ideological
level
We have limited resources to make sense of it, so we
need to focus on key cases underlying trends
 On capitalist system of our time

Abstract system of exchange relations

Characterized by exchange of “phenomenal forms”
and “real relations”
In other words – exchange system of abstract ideas
and real things (work, lived experience…)
They’re not opposed, but are reflections of each
other within the capitalist abstract system narrative
 Ideology-Surplus-Labour

Labor is application of work to nature to receive

from it
Minimal labour for survival and reproduction is that
without surplus
Surplus is needed for ideologies to exist (surplus of
produced things)
Capitalism ensures majority is close to minimal
labour in its way of existence
 Material, Economic, Ideological

Distinct yet interpenetrating

Everything is interconnected in a kind of struggle
between private/state/capitalist
Politics struggles against capitalist economic forms
of control
Social interaction forms are material, yet dictated by
ideology of the time sustaining certain economic
system
Economic is the superstructure of our time
regulating material and dictating ideology
 Critique of Existing Marxist Theories

Reduction of everything to manifestation of the will

of the ruling class as opposed to complex economic,
ideological and political network linked to history.
Reduction of the role and complex bidirectional
relationship between the media and the hegemony
positioning media as subjected device of propaganda
broadcast
Narrowing down to specific instances, like Smythe’s
theory of audience as commodity
 On ideology

While a tool to promote ideology is also a field of

struggle between politics and economic
Reflected in private(capitalist) and state
Breaks down into more complex message not
necessarily as dictated
Based on differences therefore controversial
 Dualism of culture

Culture as produced by the hegemonic mode

Culture as produced by workers
Culture as born out of capitalism
Culture as born out of working class (organic
intellectuals)
Ideologists directly paid – special class
Cultural products are ambivalent to the point of
being ideologically subversive
Dualism state investing into pro-state commercials
 Mental production

Contradictory
Where, what and how much is surplus?
Subjugation:
 Copyright
 Media for sale (newspapers)
 Artificial expiry
 Smythe
 State intervention
 Cultural Surplus

Initiation conditions:
 Spare capital
 Expected profit
Bound up with country conditions
Linked with means and materials for its distribution
 Present Condition

Traditional areas overloaded with capital

Lots of surplus capital looking for investment space
Investment goes to alternative sectors
Multinational competition
Attempts to open up, absorb new markets abroad
and convert local state-owned media into a private
(capitalist) one
 Armand Mattelart

Spent a year as a monk

Gained fame in Chile and supported Allende
Currently professor Emeritus at the University of
Paris
How to read Donald Duck