Critique of Digital Capitalism and the Reconstruction of Proletarian Collectivity — An Analysis of New Trends in Overseas Marxism in the 21st Century

The 21st century is precisely entering its third decade. Over the past twenty years, the world situation has been surging with upheaval. The end of the Cold War did not bring peace; instead, more than two decades later, the world has once again fallen into a state of instability. Capital still opens its bloody mouth wide, ceaselessly devouring fresh lives. Digital technology, biotechnology, and intelligent technology advance triumphantly, seemingly reframing the world as a highly datafied and intelligent interface, turning every individual dependent on it into a walking corpse. The world remains unequal. While the top 1% of the world’s ultra-rich accumulate astonishing mountains of wealth, on the other side of the world, immigrants from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Third World still struggle to survive in the cracks between cities and digital modernization. The world has not, as the neoliberal prophets declared just after the end of the Cold War, rapidly moved toward the end of history. On the contrary, capital and power have further concentrated their authority, leaving the basic survival of more people in a state of turbulence and uncertainty. This is the best of times: the technological conveniences of this era have created unprecedented prosperity and spectacle. This is also the worst of times: the situation of the proletariat in the traditional sense is even worse than in Marx’s 19th century. They have been reduced to a multitude of drifters, without fixed abode, living only as bare life. It is hard to imagine that this is a world entering the 21st century: while China is vigorously building socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, the major Western countries have all fallen into a mysterious vicious circle. The disappearance of social welfare has created more destitute classes, and the massive relocation of industries abroad has made it impossible for the traditional proletariat to maintain a basically stable life. In other words, for Marxist researchers abroad, there has never been a time when Marx was more needed than the present. As the French philosopher Alain Badiou once clearly stated in a lecture, “History has come back to life.” This is not only the resurrection of history but also the return of Marx. We see that Marxism, once considered outdated by some left-wing thinkers, stands once again before us. The class that some theorists had discarded has once again emerged in the world’s major capitalist countries. Therefore, in the second decade of the 21st century, we see a call. Whether in North America or Western Europe, East Asia or the Middle East, Latin America or Africa, those living below the poverty line and those scholars who once possessed a Marxist conscience cry out once again: Today, we still need Marx!

21世纪恰好正在进入第三个十年，在过去二十年间，世界局势风起云涌。冷战的结束并没有带来和平，反而在二十多年之后，世界再一次陷入风雨飘摇之中，资本依然张着血盆大口，不停地吞噬着鲜活的生命; 数字技术、生物技术、智能技术的高歌猛进，似乎将世界重新架构为一个高度数据化和智能化的界面，让每一个依附于其上的个体变成了行尸走肉; 世界依然不平等，当世界上顶尖级的1%的巨富积累了惊人的海量级财富的同时，在世界的另一面，来自亚非拉和第三世界的移民仍然在城市和数字现代化的夹缝中苟延残喘。世界并没有像冷战刚刚结束时的新自由主义的先知们宣告的那样，迅速走向历史的终结，相反，资本和权力更加集中化了他们的权力，让更多人的基本生存都处于动荡不定的状态。这是一个最好的时代，这个时代的技术化便利创造了前所未有的繁荣和景观; 这也是一个最坏的时代，那些传统意义上的无产阶级的境地甚至比马克思所处的19世纪更糟，他们沦为了流众，居无定所，他们仅仅只能以赤裸生命的状态活着。很难想像，这是一个进入21世纪的世界: 在中国如火如荼地建设新时代中国特色社会主义的同时，主要的西方国家都陷入一个神秘的怪圈中，社会福利的消失造就了更多的赤贫阶层，大量的产业外移让传统无产阶级无法保持基本的稳定生活。换言之，对于国外的马克思主义研究者来说，从来没有比眼下的状态更需要马克思。正如法国哲学家阿兰·巴迪欧曾经在一次讲座中明确指出“历史复活了”，这不仅仅是历史的复活，也是马克思的归来。我们看到曾经被一些左翼思想家认为过时了的马克思主义重新矗立在我们面前，那个被一些理论家摒弃了的阶级，再一次浮现在世 界主要的资本主义国家。因此，在21世纪的第二个十年，我们看到了一种呼唤，无论是在北美还是西欧，无论是东亚还是中东，无论是拉美还是非洲，处于赤贫线以下的人们和那些曾经有着马克思主义良 知的学者再一次呼喊: 今天的我们仍然需要马克思！

I. The End of the Myth of the End of History

一、历史终结神话的终结

In the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist camp, the Western liberal camp saw the arrival of an era of “ending.” After the end, the pattern of confrontation between the Eastern and Western blocs formed under the Cold War had been broken. What followed was the victory of liberal democracy represented by the United States, and this victory directly ended the once fragmented and mutually antagonistic history, replacing it with permanent world “peace.” While Western liberal thinkers celebrated, they also attempted to establish the authoritative status of liberalism discursively, thereby burying all challenges to liberalism in the garbage heap of barbarism and dictatorship. From then on, political and ideological struggle no longer dominated the pattern of world politics. Instead, people were more concerned with economic issues, social issues, and life issues. Future political struggles were reduced to identity politics, and the concept of class struggle was thrown into the historical wastepaper basket. Thereafter, people could only find traces of socialism and the left in art and culture. Those once-famous left-wing Marxist theorists mostly retreated into the fields of art and aesthetics, maintaining the last dignity of Western Marxism there.

20世纪90年代，随着苏联和东欧社会主义阵营的瓦解，西方自由主义阵营看到了一个“终结”的时代的来临。在终结之后，冷战下形成东西方阵营对垒的格局已经被打破，随之而来的是以美国为代表的自由民主的胜利，而这个胜利也直接终结了曾经的四分五裂、彼此斗争的历史，取而代之的是永久的世界“和平”。在西方自由主义思想家欢呼的同时，他们也试图从话语上来树立自由主义的权威地位，从而将一切对于自由主义的挑战都埋葬在野蛮和独裁的垃圾堆里。从此往后，政治和意识形态的斗争不再主宰着世界政治的格局，相反，人们更多的是关心经济问题、社会问题和生活问题，以后的政治斗争只剩下身份政治的斗争，阶级斗争的概念已经都扔进了历史的故纸堆里。之后，人们只能在艺术和文化中找到曾经社会主义和左派的痕迹，那些曾经名噪一时的左翼马克思主义理论家大多退缩到艺术和美学领域，在那里维持着西方马克思主义最后的尊严。

It was against this backdrop that the Japanese-American political scientist Francis Fukuyama concocted his “end of history” thesis. Although Fukuyama himself still believed that capitalist society and the so-called liberal democratic camp faced many problems, these problems no longer posed any threat to the long-term development of capitalism. Thus, Fukuyama declared passionately:

日裔政治学者弗朗西斯·福山的“历史终结论”就是在这样的背景下被炮制出来的。尽管福山本人仍然认为资本主义社会和所谓的自由民主阵营仍然存在着许多问题，但这些问题已经对资本主义的长远发展不构成任何问题。于是，福山十分激昂地说道:

“The United States and other liberal democracies will have to face the fact that, with the collapse of the communist world, the world they inhabit is increasingly distant from the old geopolitical world, and the rules and methods of the historical world are no longer suitable for life in the post-historical world. For the latter world, the main problems will be economic ones, such as promoting competition and advancing innovation, managing internal and external deficits, maintaining full employment, coordinating the handling of serious environmental problems, and so on. In other words, they must acknowledge the following fact: they are the heirs of the bourgeois revolution that began over four hundred years ago. In the post-historical world, people’s desire for comfortable self-preservation has been elevated above the absolute desire to risk life for pure honor, and universal, rational recognition has replaced the struggle for domination.”

美国和其他自由民主国家将不得不面对这一事实: 随着共产主义世界的崩溃，它们身处的这个世界越来越远离旧有的地缘政治世界，而且，历史世界的规则和方法也不再适合于后历史世界的生活。对于后一个世界而言，主要的问题将是经济问题，比如促进竞争和推进创新、管理对内对外赤字、保持充分就业、协同处理严重的环境问题，等等。换句话说，他们必须承认如下事实: 它们是始于四百多年前的那场资产阶级革命的继承人。在后历史的世界中，人们对舒适的自我保存的欲望， 已经提升到了高于为了纯粹名誉而甘冒生命危险绝对的欲望的位置，而且，普遍的、理性的承认已经取代了追求支配的斗争。

This passage from Fukuyama contains several important judgments about the world after the end of history: (1) There is a distinction between the historical world and the post-historical world. Fukuyama believes that the world after the end of the Cold War is clearly a post-historical world, one that is the result of the bourgeois revolution that began over four hundred years ago. Thus, when the Berlin Wall fell, the ultimate victors were the heirs of these bourgeois Whigs. (2) The end of history is also the end of politics, and the end of class struggle and political struggle. In Fukuyama’s view, once the post-historical world is entered, political issues are no longer the primary ones. Since there is no genuine political struggle, what remains are only economic issues—that is, how to effectively manage and develop the masses and individuals, as well as how to enable capitalist society to face ecological problems. In Fukuyama’s own words, the post-historical world no longer faces fundamental historical change, but rather a prescriptive problem—how to make the world operate effectively under a single social norm. The history of vigorous political struggle for unequal classes will never return.

福山的这段文字包含了对历史终结之后的世界的几个重要的判断: (1) 存在着历史的世界和后历史世界的区分，福山认为在冷战结束之后的世界显然是一个后历史的世界，这个后历史的世界是滥觞于四百多年前的资产阶级革命的结果，这样，当柏林墙倒塌之后，最终的胜利者就是这些资产阶级辉格党人的继承人; (2) 历史的终结也是政治的终结，也是阶级斗争和政治斗争的终结，在福山看来，一旦进入后历史世界，政治问题也不再是最主要的问题，由于没有真正意义上的政治斗争，剩下的只有经济问题，即如何对大众和个体进行有效的管理和发展问题，也包含如何让资本主义社会去面对生态世界的问题。用福山自己的话来说，后历史世界面对的不再是根本性的历史变革，而是一种诊断(prescriptive)的问题，让世界能够在同一个社会规范下有效运作的问题。那种为了不平等的阶层而进行轰轰烈烈政治斗争的历史将一去不复返。

The most important aspect of Fukuyama’s conclusion in *The End of History and the Last Man* is not the distinction between the historical world and the post-historical world, nor the stark opposition of political and economic issues to class struggle and the lifeworld. A more implicit subtext of his argument is that categories such as political issues and class struggle have been relegated to traditional political categories, outdated and anachronistic concepts, thereby deconstructing the legitimacy of the socialist theory developed by Marx and Engels since the 19th century. For instance, Fukuyama states: “It is therefore not surprising that contemporary liberal democracies like the United States leave ample room for those who desire recognition on the basis of their superiority over others. … Indeed, the long-term health and stability of a democracy may depend on the quality and quantity of the channels its citizens have for releasing their sense of superiority. These channels not only allow the energy latent in *thymos* to be released and channeled into productive uses, but also serve as underground pipes for draining off the excess energy that would otherwise tear the community apart.” In this passage, Fukuyama is clearly defending an unequal capitalist system, arguing that the sense of superiority produced by this inequality is necessary for the long-term stability of capitalist society. At the same time, class struggle and political struggle in the Marxist context are stigmatized by Fukuyama as “excess energy that would tear the community apart.” The post-historical world, then, is one in which these “excess energies” are transformed, through economic and social management, into something that sustains the long-term stability of capitalist society. In other words, the political issues of exploitation and inequality, alienation and oppression analyzed by Marxists are all converted by Fukuyama’s “end of history” into “economic problems.” This is precisely why he says that in the post-historical world, we care more about the “World Cup” than about “war” — because all struggle has been drowned in the honeyed juice of entertainment. Wherever capital reaches, there is no longer resistance, nor the spiritual theory of socialism; only the spectacle of capitalism’s eternal prosperity remains. From anime and NBA to reality TV and the World Cup, from Printemps department stores to Amazon’s online shopping, the post-historical world is forged into a vast economic and consumer spectacle. Class disappears, politics disappears, ideology disappears; even history and time are frozen in immersive entertainment experiences. As another liberal intellectual, Daniel Bell, also pointed out during this period: “Politics is no longer exciting. Some young intellectuals have found their way in science or in university careers. But often this comes at the cost of confining their talents to narrow technicalities; others have found opportunities for self-expression in the arts, but in this cultural desert, the poverty of content also implies a lack of the necessary tension to create new forms and new styles.”

福山的“历史终结论”的结论，最重要的并不是区分了历史世界和后历史世界，或者将政治问题和经济问题与阶级斗争和生活世界截然对立起来，他的一个更隐晦的潜台词是，政治问题和阶级斗争，这类范畴已经被归入到传统的政治范畴，是一种过时且不合时宜的概念，从而将马克思、恩格斯从19世纪发展起来的社会主义学说的合法性解构了。比如福山言明: “美国那样的当代自由民主国家，为那些欲求以高于他人的地位得到承认的留出广阔空间，也就不是什么奇怪的事了。……甚至，民主制度长期健康和稳定，可以说是有赖于其公民可用来释放优越意识的渠道的质量和数量。这些渠道不仅可以使潜在于激情中的能量释放出来并把它转化到生产用途上，而且可以作为地下管道排放那些会撕裂共同体的过剩能量。”在这段文字中，福山显然为一种不平等的资本主义制度在辩护，并认为这种不平等制造的优越感对于资本主义社会的长期稳定是必要的。与此同时，在马克思主义的语境中的阶级斗争和政治斗争，在福山这里也被污名化为“撕裂共同体的过剩能量”，而后历史世界就是通过经济管理和社会管理的方式，将这些“过剩能量”转化为维持资本主义社会长治久安的东西。换言之，在马克思主义者那里分析的剥削和不平等、异化和被压迫的政治问题，全部被福山的“历史终结论”转化成为“经济问题”，这也正是他为什么说在后历史世界里，我们更关注的是“世界杯”而不是“战争”，因为一切争斗已经被沉浸在娱乐化的蜜汁之中，在资本所到之处，不再有反抗，也不再有社会主义的精神理论，那里只剩下资本主义永久繁荣昌盛的景观，从动漫娱乐到 NBA，从真人秀到世界杯，从春天百货到亚马逊的网络购物，后世界历史被锻造成一个巨大的经济和消费的景观，阶级消失了，政治消失了，意识形态消失了，连历史和时间也被凝固在沉浸性的娱乐体验当中。正如另一位自由主义知识分子丹尼尔·贝尔也在这个时期指出: “政治已经不再令人激动。青年知识分子中一些人在科学领域或在大学的职业生涯中找到了出路。但他们常常是以让自己的才智局限于狭隘的技术为代价的，有些人则在艺术领域里找到了自我表现的机会，但在这片文化沙漠里，内容的贫乏也意味着创造新形式和新风格的必然张力的匮乏。”

However, more than twenty years after the publication of Fukuyama’s *The End of History and the Last Man*, the actual trajectory of the world seems not to have followed the myth of Fukuyama’s post-historical world. The problems of today’s world are not merely the rise of populism and the resurgence of anti-globalization movements, nor simply Brexit, the “America First” policy after Trump’s election, the Sino-US trade war, or even the COVID-19 pandemic that swept the globe. Contrary to the view of Fukuyama, Daniel Bell, and the British theorist Anthony Giddens — that in the lifeworld after the end of history only economic and social problems remain — the political movements that their myth of the end of history sought to dissolve have once again surged across the Western world. From the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in 2011 to the “Yellow Vests” movement in France starting in 2018, these movements can no longer be simply understood as economic or social problems within the post-historical world. The sting of real-world inequality has punctured the soap bubble of Fukuyama’s end-of-history thesis. When people raise the banner of the 99%, we understand that Marxist inequality and oppression did not disappear with the end of the Cold War; rather, they have become an inherent symptom of capitalism, a symptom that cannot be eradicated through capitalism’s own mechanisms. It can only be understood anew through the political struggle that Fukuyama ridicules as a relic of history.

不过，就在福山的《历史的终结与最后的人》出版二十余年之后，似乎世界的真实运动轨迹并没有按照福山的后历史世界的神话来运转。今天世界的问题，不仅仅是民粹主义的崛起和逆全球化运动的回潮，更不是英国脱欧、特朗普当选后的“美国优先”和中美贸易战，甚至不是席卷全球的新冠肺炎疫情，而是被福山、丹尼尔·贝尔以及英国理论家安东尼·吉登斯所认为的在历史终结之后的生活世界只有经济问题和社会问题不同，被他们的历史终结神话的消解的政治运动再一次在西方世界里风起云涌，从2011年的“占领华尔街”运动，到2018年开始的法国“黄马甲运动”，这些运动已经不能简单地视为在后历史世界中的经济问题和社会生活问题。真实世界的不平等的螫刺已经扎破了福山等人的历史终结论的肥皂泡，当人们举起99%的旗帜的时候，我们能理解马克思意义上的不平等和压迫并没有随着冷战的结束而远去，而是成为一个资本主义的内在固有的症候，一个通过资本主义自己的机制无法根除的症候，它只能在被福山讽刺为历史的陈年旧物的政治斗争中才能重新得到理解。

Thus, it is not difficult to understand the real problems we have encountered in the first two decades of the new century, as presented by the French left-wing economist Thomas Piketty in his *Capital in the Twenty-First Century*. Piketty points out:

于是，我们不难理解，法国左翼经济学家皮凯蒂在他的《21世纪资本论》给出的新世纪头二十年里， 我们真实遭遇的问题所在，皮凯蒂指出：

To return to the Occupy Wall Street movement: it shows that, although it may seem somewhat abstract at first glance, using common terms, especially the concept of the “top 1%,” helps to reveal the marked increase in inequality and can thus serve as a useful tool for interpreting and criticizing society. Even large-scale social movements can use this tool to develop extraordinarily compelling themes, such as “We are the 99%!”

回过头来说一下“占领华尔街”运动。它表明，虽然乍看起来有些抽象，但使用通用术语，尤其是“最上层1%”概念，有助于揭示不平等的显著加剧，因而可以充当解读和批评社会的有用工具。连大规模社会运动也可以利用这个工具，开发出非同寻常的鼓动性主题，比如“我们是99%！”

As Piketty observes, after the end of the Cold War, the major developed European countries did not become more equal; hierarchical concepts did not disappear with the so-called victory of capitalism’s “liberal democratic society.” On the contrary, inequality has increasingly widened, splitting society into two highly unequal strata: the 1% and the 99%. Compared to earlier terms like serfs and workers, the concept of the 99% today does not designate which class is the main force resisting capitalism, but the 99% signifies that they have all fallen into extreme poverty. For example, whether it is the white-collar office worker, the small business owner, the South African miner, or the worker in a Southeast Asian garment factory, they all share a name for inequality today: the 99%! Compared to the top 1%, who own 20% of the world’s wealth, the 99% live a precarious existence, a state Judith Butler calls “precarity.” She points out: “This is the paradox of neoliberalism and its notion of ‘responsibilization,’ which makes people think about their own precarious position, or accelerates their descent into this precariousness.” In the view of Judith Butler and others, the masses under capitalism have not, as Fukuyama and others claimed, truly enjoyed the end of history. Only the 1% at the top of the pyramid can understand the “end of history” unique to their class. From the very beginning, the end of history was a myth, a myth by which the bourgeoisie repackaged itself as the eternal ruler. As long as the 99% still struggle in the mire of extreme poverty, the myth of the end of history will face the sting of the real world. Therefore, twenty-eight years after the publication of *The End of History and the Last Man*, we can fully say that this is an era of the “end of the end of history.” The theoretical power of Marxism has not died in the developed capitalist countries of the West; instead, it has radiated new vitality. Some have pointed out: “Marxism remains the fundamental path for revitalizing philosophy itself.” As long as capitalism still rides roughshod over the 99%, creating vast inequality, as long as oppression and exploitation still exist in this world, then history in capitalist society will not end, and the clarion call of the proletariat will once again sound before the throne of the 1%.

正如皮凯蒂的观察那样，在冷战结束之后，欧洲主要发达国家并不是越来越平等，等级观念并没有随着资本主义的所谓的“自由民主社会”的胜利而消失; 相反，不平等越来越扩大，而且越来越裂分成高度不平等的两个等级1%和99%。相对于之前的农奴和工人的说法，实际上今天99%的概念，并没有指定那种阶级是反抗资本主义的主力军，但99% 意味着他们都陷入了赤贫。如: 无论是办公室的白领，还是小本经营的老板，无论是南非的矿工还是东南亚服装厂的工人，他们在今天都共享着一个不平等的名称——99%！相对于占有全世界20%财富的前1%来说，99%过着朝不保夕的生活，朱迪斯·巴特勒称之为动荡不定(pre-carious)的生活状态。她指出: “这就是新自由主义及其‘责任化’观念所导致的悖论，让人们在自己的动荡不定的地位上来思考，或者他们加速地陷入到这种动荡不定之中。”在朱迪斯·巴特勒等人看来，资本主义条件下的大众并没有像福山等人宣称的那样，享受到真正的历史的终结，只有那处于金字塔顶层的1%才能理解属于他们那个阶层所独有“历史的终结”。从一开始，历史的终结就是一个神话，一个资产阶级将自己重新粉饰为亘古不变统治者的神话，一旦99%仍然在赤贫的泥淖中踯躅不定，历史终结的神话就会面对真实世界的螫刺。所以，在《历史的终结与最后之人》出版了二十八年之后，我们完全可以说这是一个“历史终结论”终结的时代，马克思主义理论力量没有在西方发达资本主义世界中死去，而是再次焕发出新的活力。有人指出: “马克思主义仍然是让哲学本身重新焕发出活力的根本路径。”只要资本主义仍然凌驾在99%之上，制造着巨大的不平等，只要这个世界仍然存在着压迫和剥削，那么资本主义社会中的历史就不会终结，无产阶级的号角会再一次在1%的王座前吹响。

II. Platforms and Bonuses: The Political Economy of Digital Capitalism

二、平台与奖金: 数字资本主义的政治经济学

As noted above, Judith Butler argues that the condition of those who today occupy the position of the底层 and the proletariat is one of precariousness. However, this precariousness does not refer to the instability of the political and social environment, nor to the instability of the overall global situation, but specifically to the fact that ordinary people living at the bottom face a highly unstable state in both work and life, in both income and consumption. Butler states: “When we consider the general ways of humanization and dehumanization, we find the assumption that those who are able to express themselves, especially to express themselves, have a greater chance of being humanized, while those who have no opportunity to express themselves are largely likely to be regarded as inferior, or not to be seen at all.” [1]1 Judith Butler, *Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence* (London: Verso, 2004), p. 147. The Chinese text here is a paraphrase; the original English reads: “When we consider the general ways of humanization and dehumanization, we find the assumption that those who are able to express themselves, especially to express themselves, have a greater chance of being humanized, while those who have no opportunity to express themselves are largely likely to be regarded as inferior, or not to be seen at all.” Butler’s meaning is that in today’s capitalist society, people are divided into two types: one type consists of those who can be seen or who can express themselves; they can appear in mass media and various media outlets, and their rights and interests can be well protected and maintained within this system of representation. But there is another type of person whose lives never appear within the scope of media exposure or political expression; indeed, no one even knows of their existence. They exist in the world in a manner approaching bare life, their lives precarious, becoming the most vulnerable lives, living a precarious existence. Guy Standing, an economist at the University of Cambridge, has coined a new term by combining Judith Butler’s “precarious” with Marx’s “proletariat”: the precariat, specifically referring to this new proletariat living a precarious existence. Standing describes the precariat as “not feeling they belong to a solidaristic labour community, which gives them a stronger sense of alienation and instrumentality in determining their goals. In a state of instability, their behavior and attitudes tend toward opportunism. There is no ‘shadow of the future’ behind their actions; they do not feel that their current words, actions, or feelings will have a strong influence or binding force on their long-term relationships.” [2]2 Guy Standing, *The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class* (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), p. 24. The Chinese text is a paraphrase; the original English reads: “They do not feel they belong to a solidaristic labour community, which gives them a stronger sense of alienation and instrumentality in determining their goals. In a state of instability, their behavior and attitudes tend toward opportunism. There is no ‘shadow of the future’ behind their actions; they do not feel that their current words, actions, or feelings will have a strong influence or binding force on their long-term relationships.” Unlike the traditional working class, they do not have stable employment relations; they often work gigs or part-time jobs and do not have a constant relationship with a single company or capitalist. Their income comes from scattered opportunities in cyberspace and social space — it could be temporarily helping someone post advertisements, or leveling up characters in online games for others. The fluidity of this gig and part-time work prevents them from forming the stable employment relations typical of early capitalism. Compared with Marx’s industrial workers, they have no fixed boss, nor can they defend their rights through trade unions or social security organizations. Instead, they are like migratory birds drifting through this world, scraping by on occasional crumbs in bustling cities and noisy networks. This is the concept of the precariat, and also Butler’s concept of precarious life. When sociologist Zygmunt Bauman calls today’s capitalist society a “liquid society,” what it brings to the底层 precariat is not happiness but a more indifferent state: they live on, as if nothing in the world has much to do with them; they simply exist there.

正如前文所述，朱迪斯·巴特勒认为今天处于底层和无产阶级地位的人的状态是一种动荡不定的状态，不过，这种动荡不定并非指的是政治和社会环境的动荡不定，也不是世界大局势的动荡不定，而是特指生活在底层的普通人，无论是在工作还是在生活上，无论是收入还是消费，都面对着高度不稳定的状态。巴特勒说: “当我们思考人性化和非人性化的一般方式时，我们发现了这样一个假设，即那些能得到表达，尤其能得到自我表达的人，更有机会得到人性化，而那些没有任何机会来表达的人，则在很大程度上有可能被视为劣等人，或者说，完全不会被看到。”巴特勒的意思是，在今天的资本主义社会中，人被分成了两种人，一种是可以被看到的人或得到表达的人，他们能出现在大众媒体上和各种媒介上，他们的权益能够在这个表象体制中得到很好的保护和维系; 但还有另一种人，他们的生活根本不会出现在媒体曝光和政治表达的范围之内，甚至根本没有人知道他们的存在，他们以近乎赤裸生命的方式 在这个世界上存在着，他们的生活朝不保夕，成为最脆弱的生命，过着一种动荡不定的生活。英国剑桥大学经济学家居伊· 史坦丁将朱迪斯· 巴特勒的动荡不定(precarious)和马克思意义上的无产阶级(proletariat)合成了一个新词: 流众(precariat)，就是特指这种生活在动荡不定生活之中的新无产阶级。史坦丁描述说，流众“不觉得自己属于一个团结的劳工社群，这让他们在决定目标时，出现更强的疏离感与工具性质。在不稳定的状态下，他们的行为与态度都趋向于机会主义。他们的行动背后没有‘未来的阴影’，并不觉得当下的言论、行为、感觉将会对他们的长期关系产生强大的影响力或者约束力”。与传统的工人阶级不同的是，他们并不具有稳定的雇佣关系，他们常常打零工或兼职，并不会与一个公司和资本家具有恒定的关系，他们的收入来自于散落在网络空间和社会空间中的偶然机会，可以是临时帮人发发广告，也可能在网络游戏中替人代练。这种零工和兼职的流动性关系，让他们不可能形成资本主义早期那种稳定的雇佣关系，相对于马克思笔下的产业工人，他们没有一个固定老板，也不可能通过工会和社会保障团体来维护权益，相反，他们如同在这个世界上流动不定的候鸟，在熙熙攘攘的城市里，在喧嚣躁动的网络中，用偶尔滴落的残羹冷炙来勉强度日。这就是流众的概念，也是巴特勒的动荡不定生活的概念。当社会学家齐格蒙特·鲍曼将今天的资本主义社会称之为液态社会的时候，为这些底层流众带来的不是幸福，而是一种更为冷漠的状态，他们苟活着，仿佛世界的一切和他们没有太大关系，他们只是在那里活着。

The problem is not simply the emergence of the image of the precariat or the unstable proletariat in 21st-century capitalism. The more critical question is how to analyze and understand this phenomenon — that is, why, after capitalism entered the digital age of the 21st century, has the precariatization of the proletariat become an inevitable trend? We can answer this question from two aspects. First, the change in the mode of production: once digital technology merges with capitalism, it forms a new type of capitalist formation, which we can call digital capitalism. And today’s digital capitalism has already developed to a stage of high monopoly, namely the stage of platform capitalism. Second, with the emergence of platform capitalism, the objects of capitalist exploitation are no longer workers or employees with stable employment relations, but the precariat scattered in every corner; every individual can become an object of capitalist exploitation. This inevitably gives rise to new relations of production, which make capitalist exploitation of the precariat more flexible. Capitalists have invented a new mode of exploitation, namely the performance mode. Under the performance mode, a specific relation of production under digital capitalism has formed, which we can call digital relations of production. Digital relations of production have become a new mode of exploitation, premised on the fact that large network platforms controlled by capital have seized all resources, forming the means for capital to control the precariat.

问题并不在于在 21 世纪的资本主义中出现了流众或不稳定无产阶级的形象，更为关键的问题在于，如何分析和理解这种现象，即为什么当资本主义进入到21世纪的数字化时代之后，无产阶级的流众化成为不可避免的趋势? 对于这个问题，我们可以从两个方面来回答。首先，生产方式的改变，即一旦数字化技术和资本主义合流之后形成了新型的资本主义形态，我们可以称之为数字资本主义。而今天的数字资本主义也已经发展到了高度垄断化的阶段，即平台资本主义阶段。其次，随着平台资本主义的出现，资本主义盘剥的对象不再是具有稳定雇佣关系的工人或雇员，而是离散在各个角落中的流众，每 一个人都可以成为资本主义剥削的对象。这势必产生新的生产关系，这种生产关系让资本主义对流众的剥削更为灵活，他们发明了一种新的剥削方式，即绩效方式。在绩效方式下，形成了一种数字资本主义下的特有的生产关系，我们可以称之为数字生产关系。数字生产关系已经成为新的剥削方式，其前提是资本掌控的大的网络平台掌控了所有的资源之后，资本形成了对流众进行控制的手段。

(I) New Mode of Production: Platform Capitalism

( 一) 新生产方式: 平台资本主义

There is no doubt that we have entered an era of digital capitalism, and research on digital capitalism has also increased. However, today’s digital capitalism is already different from the digital capitalism based on the World Wide Web that Nicholas Negroponte and Dan Schiller announced at the end of the last century. [3]3 Nicholas Negroponte, *Being Digital* (New York: Knopf, 1995); Dan Schiller, *Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999). In that period, networked computers were not yet widespread, and those who could own computers and access the internet generally had a good economic status. At that time, the internet had a considerable degree of freedom; people could experience the enormous changes that this invisible network brought to our actions and perceptions in digital existence. However, now that terminal devices such as smartphones have become increasingly ubiquitous, we no longer surf the internet by typing in a web address. Our smartphones are installed with various APP icons, and our connection to that invisible cyberspace must in fact be mediated through these APP platforms. In other words, our interactions with others in cyberspace must be mediated through APPs. When a teacher uses Tencent Meeting to give a lesson to students during the pandemic, in that space there are not only you and the students, but also the monitoring eye behind the digital platform. Thus, in an era of ubiquitous smartphones, all our social actions must be conducted through platforms. Platforms have built the framework for our social interactions, and we can only act within the modes set by the platforms. Although platforms like WeChat, Didi, Meituan, and Douyin [4]4 WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging and social media app; Didi is a Chinese ride-hailing platform; Meituan is a Chinese e-commerce platform for services; Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok, a short-video platform. have brought us great convenience, the APPs of these platforms have become an unavoidable necessity for constructing our social relations.

毫无疑问，我们今天已经进入一个数字资本主义时代，关于数字资本主义的研究也多了起来。但是，今天的数字资本主义已经不同于尼葛洛庞帝和丹·席勒在上个世纪末期宣布的那种以万维网为基础的数字资本主义，因为在那个时期，联网的电脑尚未普及，能够拥有电脑上网的人群一般都具有良好的经济状况。当时，互联网具有相当大的自由度，人们可以在数字化生存中领略到这种看不到的网络为我们行动和感知带来的巨大改变。不过，在智能手机等终端设备已经日益普及的今天，我们不再是通过输入一行地址来在互联网上冲浪，我们的智能手机上被安装了各种 APP 的方块标志，而我们与那个看不见的赛博空间的关联，事实上必须要通过这些 APP 的平台来进行。换言之，我们在赛博空间中与其他人的交往必须通过APP中介来进行，当你作为教师在疫情期间通过腾讯会议给学生上课的时候，在那个空间中不仅仅只有你和学生，也有数字平台背后的监控之眼。由此可见，在智能手机已经普及的时 代，我们所有的社会行为都必须通过平台来进行，平台为我们的社会交往搭建了框架，而我们只能在平台设定的模式下进行活动，虽然微信、滴滴、美团、抖音等平台为我们带来了巨大的便利，但是，这些平台的APP却成为我们构建我们社会关系的迫不得已必要方式。

The problem is not that platforms have become the intermediaries of our social life, but that these platforms have monopolized the way they structure our social life; we have gradually become unable to conceive of the possibility of social interaction outside the platforms. A person who does not communicate on WeChat or Tencent is virtually non-existent; a physical store that does not enter platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, or Suning.com can hardly survive as before. This monopoly relationship has created a new mode of production, and this mode of production is entirely possessed by a handful of platform companies. Once this monopoly relationship is in place, platform capitalism is no longer limited to playing the role of a neutral third party. In the words of Nick Srnicek: “The new business model that eventually emerged is a powerful new form of enterprise — the platform. Platforms are usually generated from the internal need to process data and become an effective means to monopolize, extract, analyze, and use the ever-growing data that is recorded. This model has now expanded to the entire economic system.” Consequently, platforms continuously collect, analyze, and calculate the data of ordinary users, ultimately making almost all users fundamentally dependent on the platforms. Thus, we have moved from reification to digital alienation, from commodity fetishism to digital fetishism. Because platforms have monopolized vast amounts of data and appropriated the results of processing and analyzing this data, these big data companies (such as Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Alibaba, TikTok, etc.) have become the new fetishes of the digital world. They monopolize the mode of production in the digital age and make all users highly dependent on the platforms. Correspondingly, all users have become zombies under the governance of the digital matrix and algorithms.

问题并不在于平台成为我们社会生活的中介，而在于这些平台垄断了他们架构我们社会生活的方式，我们逐渐变得无法在平台之外来思考社会交往的可能性，一个不在微信或者腾讯上进行交流的人，几乎等于不存在; 一个不进入淘宝、京东、苏宁易购等平台的实体店很难像以往一样来维持生存。这种垄断关系，缔造了一种新型的生产方式，而且这种生产方式完全被少数的平台公司所占有。当拥有这种垄断关系之后，平台资本主义已经不限于充当一个中立的第三方的角色，用尼克·斯尔尼塞克( Nick Sr-nicek) 的话来说: “最终出现的新业务模式，是一种强大的企业新形式——平台。平台通常由处理数据的内部需求而产生，并成为一种有效的途径，能独占、提取、分析和使用记录下来的日益增长的数据。现在这种模式已经扩大到整个经济体系。”于是，平台不断地对普通用户的数据进行收集、分析和计算，最终几乎让所有的用户从根本上依附平台，这样，我们从物化走向了数字异化，从商品拜物教走向数字拜物教，平台由于垄断了大量的数据，并将这些数据加工分析的结果攫为己有。这些大数据公司(如Facebook、Twitter、Amazon、Alibaba、Tik Tok 等) 已经成为数字世界的新物神( new fetish) ，它们垄断了数字时代的生产方式，并让所有的使用者高度依附于平台，与之对应的是，所有的用户变成了数字矩阵和 算法治理下的僵尸。

(2) New Relations of Production: Bonus Model vs. Wage Model

( 二) 新生产关系: 奖金模式 VS 工资模式

As is well known, in Marx’s view, the capitalist’s exploitation of the worker is related to surplus value, and the amount of surplus value is directly determined by the worker’s wage. Therefore, Marx stated very clearly: “If all other conditions remain the same, the rate of surplus value depends on the ratio between the part of the working day necessary to reproduce the value of labor power and the surplus time or surplus labor performed for the capitalist. Hence, the rate of surplus value depends on the extent to which the working day is prolonged beyond the labor time during which the worker merely reproduces the value of his labor power or merely offsets his wages.” In other words, in the stage of industrial capitalism, on the one hand, the reason the capitalist can appropriate the surplus value created by the worker without compensation lies precisely in the fact that the worker’s labor production exceeds the portion covered by wages; but on the other hand, and more importantly, through wages, a relatively stable employment relationship is formed between the capitalist and the worker. Regardless of market fluctuations, the capitalist pays the worker a relatively stable wage, while the worker, within this employment relationship, has a relatively stable source of livelihood. With the development of the workers’ movement, the formation of trade unions, and the establishment of welfare capitalism as the mainstream form of post-war capitalism, the stable employment relationship between workers and capitalists formed through wages was further affirmed. Trade unions and labor laws under the welfare capitalist system both rejected the possibility of capitalists laying off workers or reducing their wages due to a decline in the profit rate. Thus, although wages are the source of capitalist exploitation, they also become the employment relationship binding workers and capitalists together. When facing workers and white-collar employees, the capitalist consistently pays wages to maintain their basic livelihood, so that workers under the employment relationship, although exploited, can still maintain a stable income situation.

众所周知，在马克思那里，资本家对工人的剥削与剩余价值有关，而剩余价值的多少直接取决于工人的工资。所以马克思十分明确地指出: “如果其他一切条件都相同，剩余价值率取决于再生产劳动力价值所必需的那部分工作日和为资本家效力的剩余时间或剩余劳动之间的比。所以，剩余价值率取决于工作日的延长在多大程度上超过工人只再生产他的劳动力价值或只抵偿他的工资所花费的劳动时间。”换言之，在产业资本主义阶段，一方面，资本家之所以能无偿占有工人创造出来的剩余价值，恰恰在于工人劳动力生产超出了工资的部分; 但另一方面，也是更为重要的方面，通过工资，资本家与工人之间形成了相对稳定的雇佣关系，无论市场如何变化，资本家相对稳定地支付给工人工资，而工人则在这个雇佣关系中拥有了相对稳定的生活来源。随着工人运动的开展，工会的形成，以及福利资本主义成为战后资本主义的主流形式，通过工资结成的工人与资本家之间的稳定的雇佣关系得到进一步的肯定。工会和福利资本主义制度下的劳动法都拒绝了资本家以利润率的降低来解雇工人或降低工人工资的可 能性，这样，工资尽管是资本家剥削的来源，但是也成为将工人与资本家绑定在一起的雇佣关系，在面对工人和白领雇员时，资本家恒定地支付工资来维持工人们的基本生活，从而让雇佣关系下的工人尽管被剥削，但仍然能维持稳定的收入状况。

American political scientist Jodi Dean, in her recent research, has found that digital capitalism has gradually changed the relatively stable conditions of the industrial capitalist era. Dean argues that with the deepening of platform capitalism, large internet companies and platform companies are increasingly using traditional salary models and employment relationships to maintain the relationship between capitalists and employees less and less. Instead, another mode of exploitation has emerged under the digital platform. Simply put, platforms use traditional employment relationships only for a small number of back-end services and R&D departments, while the platform’s main product is absolutely not an APP. As Žižek’s analysis points out, if Microsoft’s product were the Windows system, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt long ago. Žižek says: “Let’s look at the example of Bill Gates. How did he become the richest man in the world? His wealth has nothing to do with the price of the products Microsoft sells. In fact, paying extremely high salaries to senior employees developing software means that Gates’s wealth is not the result of producing better software, nor is it the result of ruthlessly exploiting the senior employees he hires. If that were the case, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt long ago, and people would widely use systems like Linux, which are free and, according to some experts, of better quality than Microsoft’s products. So why do millions of people still buy Microsoft products? Because Microsoft has set a pseudo-universal standard with a near-monopoly position, directly embodied as general intellect. For decades, Gates became the richest man because he collected rent from the millions of people participating in this general intellect, while he privatized and controlled this general intellect.” That is to say, large platform companies have created a huge pseudo-universality, forcing all users to depend on such platforms. They can then turn this dependency relationship into a rent model, thereby continuously enjoying the wealth provided by various users.

美国政治学家约迪·迪恩( Jodi Dean) 在她最近研究中发现，数字资本主义已经逐渐改变了产业资本主义时代的相对稳定的状况，迪恩认为，随着平台资本主义的深入，大的互联网公司和平台公司实际上用传统的薪资模式和雇佣关系来维持资本家和雇员之间的关系变得越来越少，相反，在数字平台下产生了另一种剥削模式。简单来说，平台用于传统的雇佣关系只限于少量的后台服务和研发部分，而平台的主要的产品，绝对不是一个APP。正如齐泽克分析指出，如果微软的产品是Windows系统，那么微软应该早就破产了。齐泽克说: “让我们看看比尔·盖茨的例子。他何以成为世界上最富有的人? 他的财富与微软销售的产品的价格无关，事实上，给软件开发的高级雇员开出非常惊人的薪金，这意味着，盖茨的财富并不是生产更好软件的结果，也不是无情剥削他雇佣的高级雇员的结果。倘若如此，微软应该很久以前就破产了，人们会广泛地使用像 Linux之类的系统，那些系统是免费的，按照一些专家的说法，Linux 的质量比微软的东西更好。那么为什么数以百万计的人还会购买微软产品呢? 因为微软自己设定了一个近乎垄断地位的伪普遍性的标准，直接体现为一般智力。数十年来，盖茨成为首富，就是因为他赚取了数以百万计的人参与这个一般智力时的租金，而他将这个一般智力私有化了，并对其加以控制。”也就是说，大的平台公司创造了巨大的伪普遍性，而让所有的用户不得不依附于这样的平台，他们则可以将这种依附关系变成租金模式，从而源源不断地享受各种用户提供的财富。

However, Dean discovered that the problem lies not only in the platform’s rent, but also in the platform’s further exploitation of users’ creation and labor. Taking YouTube as an example, the platform promotes that excellent UP hosts [n10] can receive rewards, and even high-traffic UP hosts can obtain considerable advertising revenue. Li Ziqi, who recently rose to fame on YouTube, is a typical case. When her viewership exceeded two million, Li Ziqi’s videos could generate substantial income. But the myth remains a myth. Dean found that high-attention UP hosts like Li Ziqi are only a tiny fraction of the YouTube video platform, like the tip of a pyramid, while the vast majority of ordinary UP hosts, even if they produce high-quality videos and gain a certain amount of attention, receive no income at all. That is to say, on platforms like YouTube, the real beneficiaries are the top 1% of all users, while the filming and uploading behavior of the vast majority is effectively provided to the platform for free. Similarly, the same applies to posts on Twitter, because Dean points out that on the platform, “many novels are written, only very few can be published, even fewer can be sold, and those that become bestsellers are extremely rare. Twitter has hundreds of millions of users, such as pop star Katy Perry with 94 million followers, while the vast majority of people have no more than two hundred followers. Mass media platforms express the power-law structure of this complex network, much like the 80/20 rule, where 20% of people (the winners) take all or take most of the benefits.” It can be seen that, compared with the wage-labor relationship of industrial workers described by Marx, the exploitation of the platform has actually become a more naked relationship of appropriation. On YouTube and Twitter, people expend labor, hoping to earn substantial income like Li Ziqi and Katy Perry, but from the platform’s perspective, the videos and writing they create have already been seized by the platform. They provide free labor to the platform without any payment, and all they gain is the hope that one day they too will have the spotlight of public attention like Li Ziqi and Katy Perry.

不过，迪恩发现，问题还不仅仅在于平台的租金，而是平台进一步盘剥了用户的创造与劳动。以Youtube 为例，平台方宣传了优秀的 UP 主（UP 主是境外的 Youtube 和国内 B 站等平台，对上传各种视频的用户的称谓。而像Youtube和B站的官方很少上传视频节目，他们的流量大多通过来自于世界各地的 UP 主来实现。）可以获得奖励，甚至高流量的UP可以获得可观的广告受益。前不久在Youtube声名鹊起的李子柒就是其中的一个典型，当她拥有了两百万以上的观看量时，李子柒的视频都能从中收取可观的收益。但是神话终归是神话，迪恩发现，诸如李子柒这样的高关注度的UP主仅仅是Youtube视频平台上的极少一部分，就像金字塔的顶尖，而绝大多数普通的UP主即便拍摄了高质量的视频，赢得了一定的关注度，但并不能获得任何收入。也就是说，在Youtube这样的平台上，真正获益的是处于所有用户顶尖的1%的人，而绝大多数人的摄制和上传行为，实际上变成了免费提供给平台的东西。同样，Twitter 的发言也是如此，因为迪恩指出，在平台上“写了很多小说，只有极少的小说能够出版，更少的能够卖出去，能够成为畅销书的凤毛麟角。Twitter上有数亿的用户，如流行歌星凯蒂·佩里拥有 9400 万粉丝，而绝大多数人的粉丝不超过两百人。大众媒体平台表达了这种复杂网络的权力法律结构，这就像 80 /20 的规则，20%的人( 赢者) 通吃或者拿走了大部分收益”。可见，相对于马克思笔下的产业工人的雇佣关系，平台的剥削实际上变成了一种更赤裸裸的占有关系，在Youtube 和 Twitter 上，人们付出了劳动，期望像李子柒和凯蒂·佩里一样赢得客观的收入，而在平台看来，他们创造出来的视频和写作已经被平台掠取了，他们为平台免费提供了劳动，但没有得到任何支付，他们所赢得的仅仅是终有一天他们会和李子柒和凯蒂·佩里一样有着众人聚焦的光环。

This is a new relation of production. People participate in the platform to win huge prizes. They are not employed by the platform, nor do they have organizations like traditional trade unions to protect their rights and interests. The platform has no need to use wages or similar means to secure their loyalty. Under a prize model akin to a bubble, users flock to become its laborers. Just like in Spielberg’s film *Ready Player One*, where the winner is promised three keys and control of the OASIS corporation, the victor (Parzival) takes everything — winner takes all — while all other participating players become cannon fodder, their efforts entirely absorbed by the platform, becoming the source of its immense wealth. This is a new form of exploitation, one that does not look like exploitation. Or rather, it is precisely the prize model that increasingly becomes the platform’s means of control, and increasingly makes it unnecessary for the platform to rely on substantive wage-labor relations to govern the political economy of the entire digital platform. The result is that more and more wage-laborers are cast out into society, joining the social multitude as cannon fodder under the prize model. Thus, the traditional stable wage relationship no longer exists, replaced by what Judith Butler calls precarious life.

这是一种新的生产关系，人们参与平台是为了赢得巨大奖金，他们并不被平台雇佣，他们也没有传统的工会一类的组织来保障他们的权益，而平台根本不需要使用工资之类的手段来赢得他们的忠诚。在一个类似于泡影一般的奖金模式下，用户趋之若鹜地成为其中的劳动者。就像斯皮尔伯格电影《头号玩家》中许诺的赢家将获得三把钥匙和绿洲公司的掌控权一样，胜利者( 帕西法尔) 拿走了一切，赢者通吃，而其他所有参与的玩家都成为炮灰玩家，他们的努力全部被平台所吸纳，成为平台赚取巨额财富的源泉。这是一种新的剥削，一种看起来不像剥削的剥削，或者说，正是奖金模式越来越成为平台的控制手段，也越来越让平台不需要实体性的雇佣关系来支配整个数字平台的政治经济学。这样导致的结果是，越来越多的雇佣关系下的打工人被抛入到社会当中，与社会上的流众一起成为奖金模式下的炮灰，从而传统意义上稳定的薪金关系不复存在，取而代之的正是朱迪斯·巴特勒所说的动荡不定的生活。

III. Reinventing Collectivity

三、重新发明集体性

Under the new mode of production and new relations of production in the era of digital capitalism, the wage-labor-based employment relationship characteristic of traditional industrial capitalism is gradually disintegrating, yielding to contingent and random multitude-type relationships. There is no stable social relationship between the platform and the masses, and all users and the masses do not exhibit loyalty to the platform. However, this new type of production relation needs to be understood from two aspects: On the one hand, from a vertical perspective, because the relationship between the platform and the masses lacks stability, the platform is freed from the burdens borne by capitalists in the era of industrial capitalism. That is, platform users as free labor cannot form the kind of powerful trade union alliances that 19th- and 20th-century industrial workers could, to effectively resist the capitalists. They easily become a disposable people, which in Kevin Bales’s view has evolved into a new form of slavery. On the other hand, from a horizontal perspective, because all cooperative relations are temporary, people can no longer form effective worker movement alliances as in the era of industrial capitalism. That is, they cannot form relatively stable cooperative relations in production labor, nor the comradely relations among workers that arise from such cooperation. The Italian workerist movement placed great value on the worker cooperative relations formed in factories for resisting capitalism. For instance, Negri early on keenly noted: “This transition not only provides conditions for the massive increase in surplus value, subjecting a large number of workers to the discipline of capital, but also extends capitalist despotism from the factory to the whole of society. Thus, the realization of the process of extracting surplus value involves not only the distinction between the necessary labor part and the surplus labor part of workers’ working time; it also brings about a revolution in the technical process of labor and social organization from beginning to end.” In other words, in the view of Negri and others, large-scale machine industrial production not only brought capitalists enormous surplus value but also enabled workers laboring beside machines to achieve new forms of association through technological innovation. The hope of overthrowing capitalist despotic rule and moving toward a future society was built on this association. However, the relations of production in the era of digital capitalism have changed all this. Although Negri and others remain optimistic, believing that internet technology can unite the proletariat across a broader space, Nancy Fraser and Jodi Dean see the opposite process. In cyberspace, in digital media mediated by various platforms, people’s communication has actually weakened rather than strengthened. The living comradely interactions of reality have degenerated into isolation in cubicles and cramped living spaces. Rather than saying that the production association of people under large-scale industry has further developed in the internet era, it is more accurate to say that this apparent expansion of social relations is an illusion. Under the control of digital media platforms, we have degenerated into individuals living in solitary cells in Foucault’s panopticon. What is fed back from the internet and smartphones is only the reflection of the individual, not real social relations. In Jodi Dean’s words, this is a process of greater individualization. It is precisely because the era of digital capitalism has further intensified the individualization of each person that, in the global resistance against capitalist rule, individuals find it difficult to truly unite into a political group or force, and cannot form an effective resistance to capitalist control.

在数字资本主义时代的新生产方式和新生产关系的作用下，传统产业资本主义意义上以薪酬为纽 带的雇佣关系逐渐瓦解，逐渐让步于偶然性和随机性的流众式关系。在平台与大众之间不存在稳定的社会关系，而所有的用户和大众也并不表现为对平台的忠诚。但是对于这种新型的生产关系，我们需要从两个方面来理解: 一方面是纵向的理解，由于平台和大众形成的关系不具有稳定性，让平台不必背上产业资本主义时代资本家的负担，即作为免费劳动力的平台用户并不能形成19—20世纪产业工人那种强有力的工会联盟，与资本家进行有效的抗争，很容易变成一种用后即弃(disposable)的人民，在凯文· 巴勒斯(Kevin Bales)眼中，这俨然已经演化为一种新的奴隶制。另一方面，从横向上来看，由于所有的协作关系都是临时性的，人们之间已经不可能像产业资本主义时代，形成有效的工人运动的联合，即无法像工人在生产劳动中那样形成相对稳定的协作关系，以及在这种协作关系上形成工人之间的同志 般的关系。意大利工人自治运动非常重视在工厂里形成的工人协作关系对于反抗资本主义的价值，比如奈格里很早就敏锐地注意到: “这种过渡不仅为剩余价值的巨额增值提供了条件，让大量的工人服从于资本的规训，而资本家的专制也从工厂进一步过渡到整个社会。于是，剩余价值榨取过程的实现，不仅仅涉及在工作时间里工人必要劳动部分和剩余劳动部分的区分: 它也从头到尾地带来了对劳动技术过程和社会组织的革命。”换言之，在奈格里等人看来，机器大工业生产不仅为资本家带来了巨额的剩余价值，也让在机器旁工作的工人通过技术的革新得到了新的联合，而推翻资本主义专制统治、走向未来社会的希望，就建立在这种联合之上。然而，数字资本主义时代的生产关系改变了这一切。尽管奈格里等人依然十分乐观，认为互联网技术可以让更为广阔空间中的无产阶级联合起来，但是，南希·弗雷泽、约迪·迪恩则看到的是相反的过程，在互联网空间中，在由各个平台中介的数字化媒体中，实际上人们的交流并非加强，而是减弱了，原先的现实中活生生的同志间的交往，退化成为在格子间里、在自己的逼仄的生活空间的隔离。与其说人们在大工业生产下的生产联合在互联网时代进一步发展了，不如说，这种表面上的社会关系的扩大实际上都是一种幻象，在数字媒体平台的控制下，我们更像是堕落成为福柯笔下的全景敞视监狱中生活在单身牢笼中的个体，从互联网上和智能手机上反馈回来的只有个人的映射，而不是真实的社会关系。用约迪·迪恩的话说，这是一个更为个体化的过程。也正是由于数字资本主义时代进一步强化了每一个人的个体化，导致在全球反抗资本主义统治的过程中，个体很难真正联合成为一种政治团体和势力，也无法对资本主义的控制形成有效的反抗。

Why is this the case? Dean points out that the real problem is that we place too much hope in individual resistance, thereby forgetting that individuality itself is a symptom of capitalism. She says:

为什么会这样呢? 迪恩指出，真正的问题是，我们将太多的希望寄托于个体性的反抗，从而忘却了个体性本身就是资本主义的症候，她说道:

The real pathogen is the individual form itself. … In a certain sense, the individual is a pathological form, incompatible with its surrounding environment, unable to confront the pressures it faces without pain, sacrifice, or violence (this is precisely the origin of psychoanalysis, and also the source of castration). The problem of contemporary subjectivity does not arise from the extremity of capitalism, that is, from capitalism mixing with the basic elements of digital communication. It is not the highly saturated, intensified, and unbearable competition of communicative capitalism that makes us depressed, anxious, autistic, and distracted; rather, it is that we always try to find various ways to protect our fragile individuality.

真正的病原就是个体形式本身。……从某种意义上说，个体就是病理性的形式，它与周遭的环境格格不入，不能毫无痛苦、牺牲或暴力地去面对它所面对的压力( 精神分析正是源自于此，这也是阉割的来源) 。当代主体性的问题并不是来自于资本主义的极端性，即资本主义与数字传播交流的基本要素混合在一起。并非是传播资本主义( communicative capitalism)的高度饱和的、强化的、令人无法忍受的竞争让我们沮丧、焦虑、自闭和涣散，而是我们总是试图找到各种方式来保护自己脆弱的个体性。

Indeed, in today’s era of digital capitalism (which Dean calls communicative capitalism), most individuals are caught in anxiety and depression in the face of endless competition. Almost all the masses, when confronting competition on platforms, when facing the performance indicators and bonus contests set by platform capitalism, exhibit a state of mental distraction and depression. When we no longer focus on what creates inequality, but instead focus on how many clicks and replies our uploaded videos and articles get, how many tips and advertising revenues we receive, then we ourselves have been locked into the individual cage set for us by the platform and digital capital. Although individual freedom and autonomy are the finest legacies of the Enlightenment, they complemented the free-competitive civil society at that historical stage of development. However, today, this individual form has been pushed to its extreme, because the backend algorithms of software such as TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook have already classified each individual algorithmically. We can only access messages and replies that align with our own opinions, or even replies made by bots. Thus, this kind of reply and communication on digital platforms actually produces a social communicative illusion. On the surface, we are exchanging ideas with like-minded people from all over the world; in reality, we are locked into an even narrower space of existence in physical space. Unlike the solitary confinement cells in Foucault’s prison, which were passively imposed, the individualization effect in the era of digital capitalism is something we actively fall into.

的确，在今天的数字资本主义( 迪恩称之为传播资本主义) 时代里，大多数个体都处在面对无穷无尽的竞争的焦虑和沮丧之中，几乎所有的大众在面对平台上的竞争时，在面对平台资本主义给出的绩效指标和奖金竞赛时，表现出精神涣散和沮丧的状态。当我们不再关注是什么造就了不公平，而是关注我们上传的视频和文章有多少点击率和回复，有多少打赏和广告受益时，那么我们自己已经被套牢在平台和数字资本为我们设定的个体的囚笼中。尽管个体的自由和自治是启蒙以来最优秀的遗产，它在历史发展阶段上与自由竞争的市民社会是相得益彰的。不过在今天，这种个体化形式已经被推向了极致，因为诸如 Tik Tok、Twitter、Facebook等软件的后台算法已经对每一个体进行了算法归类，我们只能接触到那些与我们意见一致的消息和回复，甚至是一种由网络机器人做出的回复，这样，在数字平台上的这种回复和交流，实际上导致了社会幻象( social communicative illusion) ，表面上我们在同世界各地的志同道合的人一起交流心得，实际上我们在现实空间中被锁定在更为狭小的存在空间之中，与福柯笔下的监狱 的单身牢房不同的是，福柯的单身牢房是被动投入的，而数字资本主义时代的个体化效应则是我们主动陷入的。

Along with the pathology of individualization in contemporary society comes the near impossibility of thinking about collectivity. For example, when we think about happiness today, many people focus more on their own individual happiness, such as having more money, a spacious and bright house, a luxury sports car, or a pleasant afternoon sipping a cup of ground coffee in the sun. Today, it is difficult for us to imagine the collective happiness described in “The Story of Peach Blossom Spring” [n11] — “paths crisscrossing, cocks crowing and dogs barking,” “the old and the young all contented and happy” — nor can we imagine the necessity of sacrificing oneself to protect others’ happiness during the revolutionary war period. Under neoliberal ideology, all possibilities for community solidarity can only be based on contractarian discourse ethics and deliberative politics. The ultimate possibility of collective coexistence depends entirely on the game and balance of interests among all stakeholders, finally reaching a commonality that maximizes each individual’s interests. For contemporary Marxists like Dean, the loss of collectivity is precisely the greatest tragedy under contemporary capitalist society, and the only possibility to break this tragedy is to reinvent a kind of collectivity, replacing the individual “I” with the collective “we.” Dean says: “I write ‘we’ precisely to elevate the partisan meaning of collectivity. I want to break with that tradition that defends individualism, which intends to eliminate the possibility of thinking and talking about larger collective subjects.” Thinkers like Jodi Dean have already clearly pointed out that in the process of breaking capitalist rule and moving toward a future society, collectivity must be reinvented, and the communist revolution in Marx’s sense is proposed precisely on the basis of collectivity. Dean states: “‘The people’ is Marxism’s richest legacy; ‘the people’ is the revolutionary alliance of the oppressed (fundamentally different from populist groups) … and ‘the people’ is only possible in a collective sense.”

与当代社会的个体化的病理学随之产生的是我们几乎不可能思考集体性。比如说，当我们思考今天的幸福的时候，许多人更多地是关注自己的个体的幸福，如拥有更多钱，有宽敞明亮的大房子，豪华的跑车，或者惬意的午后，在阳光下小啜一口研磨咖啡。我们今天已经很难想象像《桃花源记》中那种“阡陌交通、鸡犬相闻”、“黄发垂髫并怡然自得”之类的集体性幸福，也无法想象在革命战争时期，为了保护他人的幸福而牺牲自己的必要性。在新自由主义的意识形态下，所有的共同体的团结的可能性只能建立在契约论式的商谈伦理学和协商政治学基础上，最终的集体共存的可能性完全依赖于各个利益攸关方的博弈和权衡，最终达成的以每一个体的利益最大化的共同性。在迪恩之类的当代马克思主义者看来，集体性的丧失，恰恰就是当代资本主义社会下最大的悲剧，而打破这种悲剧的唯一可能性就是重新发明一种集体性，用集体性的“我们”来代替个体性的“我”。迪恩说: “我写‘我们’，就是希望来提升集体性的党派意义。我要与那种捍卫个体主义的传统决裂，他们打算消除思考和谈论更大的集体主体的可能性。”像约迪·迪恩这样的当代思想家，已经十分明确地指出，在打破资本主义的统治、走向未来社会的过程中，必须要重新发明集体性，而马克思意义上的共产主义革命，就是在集体性意义上提出的。迪恩表示: “‘人民’就是马克思主义最丰富的遗产，‘人民’是受压迫者的革命联盟(与民粹主义的团体有着根本的不同) ……而‘人民’只有在集体性意义上才具有可能。”

However, there remains significant disagreement within contemporary Western Marxism on how to reinvent collectivity. In fact, in the 20th century, when neoliberal ideology dominated, the concept of the proletarian party had already been stigmatized. Many left-wing thinkers, such as Laclau, Mouffe, and Negri, effectively resorted to a kind of spontaneous struggle without leadership. In Negri and Hardt’s representative work *Multitude*, Negri placed his hopes on the multitude produced by biopolitical production under the development of communication technology: “Communication is productive; it produces not only economic value but also subjectivity, so communication is the core of biopolitical production. … We can only understand these forms of social expression as networks of the multitude, thereby resisting sovereign power and attempting to produce alternative expressions from within.” Even so, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s plan of resistance by the multitude has still been criticized as a scattered, sand-like revolution. Even in their 2017 work *Assembly*, they recognized that Marxist revolutionary practice cannot rely solely on biopolitical production and the spontaneous union of the proletariat formed by general intellect; the proletariat needs an organic collective, that is, a leadership to help the multitude resist the highly organized rule of capitalism. Yet Negri and Hardt still harbor doubts about leadership, so they propose an attitude of “no need for leadership strategically, but need for leadership tactically.”

不过，对于如何重新发明集体性，在当代西方马克思主义内部仍然存在很大的分歧。事实上，在20世纪以新自由主义意识形态占据主导地位的时代里，无产阶级政党的概念已经被污名化了，许多左翼思想家如拉克劳、墨菲、奈格里等人实际上诉诸一种近似于没有领导的自发性斗争，在奈格里和哈特代表作《大众》( Multitude) ，奈格里寄望于由于传播通信技术发展所带来的生命政治生产下的大众，“传播是生产性的，它不仅仅生产出经济价值，也生产出主体性，这样传播就是生命政治生产的核心。……我们只能将这些社会表达的形式理解为大众的网络，以此来抵抗统治权力，并试图从内部生产出替代性的表达”。即便如此，迈克尔·哈特和安东尼奥·奈格里的大众抵抗的方案仍然被人批判为一盘散沙式的革命，即便在2017年出版的《集会》(Assembly) 中，他们二人已经意识到马克思主义的革命运行不能只依靠生命政治生产和一般智力自发形成的无产阶级联合，无产阶级需要一种有机集体，即需要一种领导来帮助大众抵抗被高度组织起来的资本主义统治，但是奈格里和哈特仍然对领导持有怀疑态度，所以他们提出了“战略上不需要领导，但策略上需要领导”的态度。

Another attitude of resistance comes from more radical thinkers like Badiou and Dean. They believe that without the leadership of a vanguard party, an effective proletarian movement cannot be completed, nor can the rule of the bourgeoisie be truly defeated. In his book *Logiques des mondes*, Badiou uses the example of the Spartacus uprising to emphasize the necessary position of the vanguard in realizing revolutionary movements: “For example, the slaves led by Spartacus formed a special military detachment to face the Roman cavalry. This is why we say that the element of the body is precisely what is incorporated into the evental present.” Jodi Dean, for her part, explicitly raises the need for a party, especially a communist party representing the contemporary precariat proletariat: “The communist party has the capacity to expand the world. Its unconscious association opens up new spaces for communist political subjectivity and produces constantly unfulfilled demands. Frankly, the communist party must see itself as changing the world, making resolute demands on you, without any excuses. This is what communists want, and we should do it, so we must face these costs. The stronger the political organization we build, the greater our hope.” It can be said that contemporary Marxists’ turn back to party organization, and their renewed hope for building a strong communist party to lead the world Marxist revolution, has become a notable feature of the overseas Marxist movement in the 21st century. The reason for needing a communist party is also very simple: only the communist party can unite the already highly individualized precariat to jointly resist the fate of being enslaved by the bourgeoisie. (Notes omitted)

另一种抵抗态度来自于巴迪欧和迪恩这一类更为激进的思想家。他们认为没有一个先锋队的领导，实际上无法完成有效的无产阶级运动，也无法真正打败资产阶级的统治。在《世界的逻辑》( Logiques des mondes) 一书中，巴迪欧以斯巴达克斯起义为例，强调了先锋队在实现革命运动的必要地位: “例如，斯巴达克斯所领导的奴隶组成一支特殊的军事先遣队(détachement)去面对罗马骑兵。这就是为什么我们说身体的要素就是合体(incorporé)到事件性的当下之中的东西。”而约迪·迪恩认为 将需要一个政党，尤其是代表当代流众无产阶级的共产党的需求开宗明义地提了出来: “共产党有能力扩大世界。其无意识关联为共产主义政治主体性开辟了新的空间，并产生了不断地尚未实现的要求。坦白说，共产党要将自己视为改变世界的人，对你们提出坚决的要求，不能带有任何借口。这就是共产党人想要的，我们应该这样做，那么我们就得面对这些代价。我们建立的政治组织越强大，我们的希望也就越大。”可以说，当代马克思主义者重新转向党组织，重新希望建立一个强大的共产党来领导 世界马克思主义的革命，这已经成为21世纪国外马克思主义运动的一个显著特征。而需要一个共产党的理由也十分简单，只有共产党才能将已经被高度个体化的流众团结起来，共同抵抗被资产阶级奴役的命运。（注释略）

Online editor: Zhang Jian

网络编辑：张剑