The Existential Dimensions of the Creative Economy: Insights from a re-reading of Kierkegaard

Daniel R. Smith

The creative industries have a strong socialist thread within them. Or so the story goes. Much of the literature on the communism of capital, in various spheres, stresses the communality of acts of production: value is made out of a common collaboration, a community of productive activities which is both the beginning and end of the social life of the community (e.g. Negri, 2011). Yet while this argument is, theoretically, very compelling I can’t help but notice that those in the creative economies don’t themselves articulate the communism of capital. Instead they remain stuck between a claim to the communality of the industry and the capitalist realities they remain positioned within. One case in point is YouTube.