Let us not forget that these disciplines and their critical versions emerged quite a few decades after work had begun on the construction of critical thinking, which in its early period gave a decisive, if not deterministic, role to the economic instance. The scientific advances in all currents of thought have enabled us to overcome that stage, and focus thematically and complement knowledge based on methodological respect, which in the case of critical thinking enjoys an added advantage: the close ties between the disciplines arising from shared epistemologies centring on the same social subject.

The founders on both sides of the Atlantic (including Dallas Smythe, Herbert Schiller, Armand Mattelart, Graham Murdock, Bernard Miège and Nicholas Garnham) were convinced of their project and had a dual mission to denounce the communication system and redefine paradigms, whether for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) or for application in states’ national communication policies. We, on the other hand, since reality has changed on the other side of the neoliberal desert, are puzzled in a good many areas, such as the analysis of immaterial and global capitalism, either about the project to be defined (quite apart from the moral philosophy of change, which has never left us) or about what historical subject(s) will shape the future. Perhaps to our credit we have a more complex vision of society and its challenges.

Like the founders, we too have a vision that straddles critical contribution and denunciation. But it is for us already part of that three-sided dialectic of confrontation between the kindly Big Brother that is the communicative system of media groups and cultural merchandise; the massive, unfettered and stimulating social communication on the Web, which has led to a proliferation of communicators; and a few social majorities that haphazardly demand democratic communication. The subjects of reference represent, in the first case, cognitive capital; in the second, new demands and new forms of communication; and, in the third, a more mature society committed to qualitative progress.

This is not the place for a full stocktaking but a quick draft. Of little help to us right now when tackling these changes are two classic versions: that of Althusserian structuralism,² and that of the ideologized and monistic models that reduced the media to a propaganda system of power. For their part, two other more sophisticated models that incorporate key elements of a specific analysis of the media also fail to provide answers to all the questions. In one the central focus is owners and financiers,³ who are certainly crucial but do not take into account certain internal variables. In the other the internal variables that influence information are taken into consideration but ownership and the system are not, meaning that a central aspect is missing: the economy itself.⁴ The current social complexity is absent in the four types of models indicated. There, society is but a mirror, a passive subject and malleable mass at the mercy of the media. We need a fifth model that, in addition to picking up on the successes of previous models, is more refined and allows us to understand the complex relationship of the media with society and power at this time. The critical sociology of early cultural studies (Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, E.P. Thompson, etc.) or of Pierre Bourdieu marked out an interesting path towards undoing that deficit.

There is therefore no single theory or tradition of political economy of communication, but many different traditions of critical economy of communication and culture. Part of the European tradition favoured models that ranged from cultural merchandise itself and the process of commercialization to the creation of structures (British, French (Grenoble), Spanish schools, etc.), and gradually pieced together a bottom-up interpretation, interspersed with the critical contributions of history, anthropology or political science.

Yet to be defined is a general and open model for interpreting the current media and social discourse management system in present-day capitalism. Today’s capitalist system demonstrates a great capacity for self-transformation and continues to be based on goods, the exploitation of labour and the private accumulation of capital. And, at present, it establishes cognitive, technoinformational, intellectual, immaterial and digital capital – or whatever other name we give it – as the driving force of the whole system; with the emphasis on the appropriation and management of knowledge and all its derivatives: innovation, creation, education, learning or talent – forms of ‘complex work’, as Marx called them, that at present are expressed as intellectual work, which is already a direct production factor within the system.

However, in parallel to this, society has become logos, communication. The tension lies in who will be the keeper of the word, which goes beyond and overflows the more obvious confrontation between Internet users and system owners.

Economics in the strictest sense must focus on the economic function. That is its role. This does not detract from the fact that other disciplines can, and must, study culture and communication. On the contrary, the critical versions of anthropology, sociology, political science and so on are indispensable, as together, and along with the critical economy of communication and culture, they would make up a ‘critique of culture and communication’ of sorts or ‘critical analyses of culture and communication’ in which those versions of these various disciplines might come together in a complementary search for common know-how and paradigms. This would take us down an open road to knowledge rather than in the direction of the closed systems that believe they can explain everything.

Little progress will be made by practising economics that is not economics. We need explanatory legitimacy in the eyes of other more established and dominant versions. We will not explain complexity if we believe that economics is science or we do not cross it with other fields. Or to put it another way, critical economy, from the point of view of its own methodology, needs to be complemented by a social theory and by a theory of power, which invites flexibility and integration, or at least a grasp of various related fields.

Luckily, critical thinking does have a theory of history – albeit not a univocal one – linked to agents, particularly the working classes and their conflicts. Economic criticism cannot be divorced from society, its agents and effects; on the contrary, it incorporates them as a framework into its matrix. Economics would only appear to explain ownership, goods, work, relations between capital and labour force, production processes, specific output, sectors, boards of directors, concentration, corporate functioning, market behaviours, economic policy and son on. But not the rest. That requires the intersecting of its knowledge to produce social theory, of which economics is a part. Adding the word ‘political’ to ‘economics’, ‘political economy’, helps if it is understood as the ‘critique of political economy’, but it ‘needs to be grounded in a realist, inclusive, constitutive and critical epistemology’ (Mosco, 2006) to be added in to critical studies in general.

Social anchoring in the potential subjects of transformation is essential for progress towards a ‘general theoretical model’ without this needing to be done on the basis of purely laboratory-type thinking, or through a combination of various epistemologies, or from the viewpoint merely of ethics. Our ‘economy of culture’ must subordinate economic imperatives to strategies of cultural democratization and likewise subordinate the economic vision of culture – financing, sectors, regional policies and so on – to the cultural aspect of development.

Critical economy – unlike functionalism, behaviourism, positivism or postmodernism – will always place culture in the context of societies in conflict and, based on its own methodology, sets itself the function of revealing the structure and functioning of the system, and cannot, to analyse it, be detached from its relationship with collective welfare, domestic and international equality, or the rationality and fair distribution of resources and their uses, or with their opposites. This is to say, the defence of equality or respect for diversity are inherent in the very discourse of a critical economy that, due to its own definition and methodology, does not shrink from its role or its effects as a science for society.

With regard to culture, there is a difference between this and other perspectives, in which it is not economics that is instrumental but culture, which is regarded as a means for diversifying, reconstructing, maintaining, consolidating or developing cities and economies, including local cultural industries. Culture has been pervaded by other motivations. Indeed, in terms of cultural and communication policies on cultural products and equipment or networks, the liberal logic of the principle of subsidiarity has been gaining ground over classical logics in policies of intervention, promotion and stimulus. Similarly, in the deployment and management of equipment or programmes, uniqueness and ‘spectacularity’ have gained ground over social effectiveness.

In the absence of a metanarrative that is finalistic but grounded in the elements that define political economy, such as history, ethics, the concept of totality and praxis⁵ – and one should, I think, add the continuous adaptation of methodologies – it is a matter of rebuilding a critical thinking of culture and communication⁶ that will not be independent from a comprehensive system of thinking anchored in the potential subjects of change, such as workers’ movements, alterglobalist and citizen-based social movements, be they alternative or reformist (see Waterman, 2006).

The advantage of the critical approach is that it offers a global vision and a number of tools. We will not easily fall into a formal conceptualist logic, or be swayed by fashions – for example, the ‘creative industries’ – nor will we disregard the social implications. But we also face certain risks, such as ideologism, a lack of rigour justified by a good cause, the hermeticism of models or subordination to political gains. In other words, we have no guarantee of getting it right, which is why we must be modest enough to study every version, because sometimes it is others that are entirely in the right, or partly so.

Having said that, we must confess that, in this age of social multiplication of the fragmented and socialized intellect, we are witnessing a monumental lapse of focus with regard to a possible project for change and an achievable utopia. In the case of culture and communication there is a proliferation of studies that – with the precision of an entomologist and like an intangible mosaic – detect the changes under way and the new subject matters. From that point on there are differences in the diagnoses, subjects, methodologies or centrality of knowledge. The result is considerable confusion within the main fields and topics of debate of our time and, consequently, in the alliances or the demands made on the administration in office with regard to public service or cultural and communication policies.

But let us not be misled: what in general there are aplenty, on the one hand, are expert reports promoted by state administrations or suprastate regional organizations like the European Union (EU) or the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) – dealing with policies, agreements, harmonizations, observatories, the audiovisual sector and so on – or by cultural networks, be they of cities, regions, researchers or cultural managers, which in turn create the need for research of common interest on a variety of topics.¹² That is useful material for analysis.

On the other hand, there are significant theoretical works based on the conceptual apparatuses of neoclassical economics (Frey, 2000; Vogel, 2004; Towse, 2005; Lasuén Sancho et al., 2006), although the peculiarities of culture may not be of help in the useful or explanatory application of some of their vulnerable models.¹³

There are also macroeconomic and sectoral research efforts – with better results – provided by public or private institutional reports, and numerous statistics¹⁴ accompanied by studies on the cultural gross domestic product (GDP), employment for the sector and the various cultural industries or by monitoring of public and private spending on culture (e.g. Jaén García, 2006). An increase has taken place in the ‘observatory’ function of governments, rights-management companies or foundations, for coll...