Total Subsumption: A New Feature of Platform Capitalism’s Exploitation

In order to explain the historical process by which capital’s appropriation of labour in large-scale industry shifted from absolute surplus value to relative surplus value, Marx creatively put forward the concepts of “formal subsumption” and “real subsumption” in the *Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863*. His main purpose was to depict the changes capital imposes on the labour process and to use this pair of concepts to clarify the different modes of exploitation of labour by capital. In the twenty-first century today, with the spread of the internet and cheap, high-capacity storage, the technological leap based on information technology and big data has profoundly changed the forms of social organisation, modes of labour, and the ways value is created and realised. When the production model constantly breaks down the rigid divisions on which Fordism was built and shifts toward the blurring of boundaries characteristic of post-Fordism, not only has the labour process of the large-industry era itself undergone enormous changes, but the relationship between capital and labour, as well as between capital and other social elements, has also changed. Therefore, how to use the methodology of Marxist political economy to analyse the new problems brought by this technological leap, which has swept through almost the entire society, in the areas of labour and production is the theoretical mission of contemporary Marxist philosophy researchers.

为了阐释大工业生产中资本对劳动的占有从绝对剩余价值向相对剩余价值变迁的历史过程，马克思在《1861—1863年经济学手稿》中创造性地提出了“形式吸纳”（formal subsumption） 和“实质吸纳”（real subsumption）的概念，其主要目的是为了刻画资本对劳动过程的改变，并运用这一对概念阐明资本对劳动的不同剥削方式。在21世纪的今天，随着互联网和廉价高容量存储的普及，以信息技术和大数据为基础的技术飞跃极大地改变了社会的组织形式、劳动方式和价值创造及实现方式。当生产模式不断地打破福特制所赖以建立的刚性划分而转向后福特制的界限消弭时，不但大工业时代的劳动过程本身发生了巨大变化，资本与劳动以及其他诸社会要素的关系也发生了变化。因此，如何以马克思主义政治经济学的方法论来分析这种几乎席卷了整个社会的技术飞跃在劳动及生产方面带来的新问题，是当代马克思主义哲学研究者的理论使命。

In recent years, the development of the digital platform economy has triggered multi-dimensional discussions involving labour forms, capital forms, modes of exploitation, modes of distribution, and even power discourse. In fact, the digital mode has not only reshaped almost every aspect of individual existence but also restructured the relationship between capital and labour; in some dimensions, this restructuring is even subversive. In addition to continuously subsuming labour in the sphere of production, capital has even achieved the subsumption of the public sphere. This has brought capital to an unprecedented height in contemporary economic development: total subsumption.

近年来，数字平台经济的发展引发了涉及劳动形式、资本形态、剥削方式、分配方式甚或权力话语等方面的多维度讨论。事实上，数字化方式不仅重塑了个体生存的几乎所有方面，也重构了资本与劳动的关系，这种重构在某些维度上甚至是颠覆性的。除持续吸纳生产领域的劳动外，资本甚至实现了对公共性的吸纳。这使得资本在当代经济发展中达到了一个前所未有的高度：总体吸纳（total subsumption）。

I. Platform Connection: Decentralisation and Strong Centralisation Coexisting

一、平台连接：去中心化与强中心化并存

Compared with all previous technological innovations, the impact of digitalisation on human society is, in terms of breadth, depth, and complexity, beyond anything previously attainable. It has not only greatly changed the way we face the world but also restructured the world, or even humanity itself, along with the cognitive pathways related to it. In the digital age, everything about a person is reduced to data. The connection of mobile devices to the internet not only makes “everything can be connected” a reality but also makes all data traces recordable. Scattered data are collected through recording into big data, and the selection and possession of data become a proprietary power. The concentration of the power to record and analyse data must rely on a digital foundation, which has given rise to platforms. Today’s internet economy is a quintessentially platform-based model. A platform is first of all an intermediary; it is an operational mode that uses digital hardware as infrastructure and relies on data and algorithms to guide and control markets and production labour. It facilitates transactions by providing the possibility of exchange between different economic units and substantially reduces transaction costs. However, because it simultaneously possesses a large amount of information from both sides of a transaction, a platform is not entirely an intermediary; it can exploit the asymmetry of data and secretly use algorithms to deprive the rights of users who are attached to the network but dispersed. It is a new contemporary economic phenomenon, and because of the highly interconnected digital pathways, it has achieved a systemic reshaping.

与之前所有的技术革新相比，数字化对人类社会的影响，无论从广度、深度还是复杂程度上来说，都是以往不可企及的。它不仅极大地改变了我们面对世界的方式，同时也重构了世界甚或人类自身以及与之相关的认知途径。在数字化时代，人的一切被还原为数据。移动设备接入互联网不但使得“万物皆可连”正在成为现实，同时也使得所有的数据痕迹都可被记录。零散的数据通过被记录而汇集为大数据，对数据的选择和占有则成为专有的权力。记录和分析数据的权力的集中必须依赖于数字化的基础，这催生出了平台。当今的互联网经济是极为典型的平台模式。平台首先是一个中介，它是借助数字硬件作为基础设施，依赖数据和算法对市场和生产劳动进行引领和控制的运作方式。它以在不同的经济单元之间提供交易的可能性来促使交易实现，并大幅度地降低了交易成本。然而，因同时占有交易双方的大量信息，平台又不完全是一个中介，它可以利用数据上的不对称，借用算法暗中剥夺依附于网络却分散的用户的权利。它是当代新的经济现象，更因高度互联的数字化途径实现了体系的重塑。

The economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter, when describing the impact of the capitalist system on the original economic structure, used the term “creative destruction” to emphasise overall structural disruption and reconstruction. He wrote: “The process of industrial mutation … incessantly revolutionises the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one … This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.” Harvey later defined this term as the essential characteristic of modernity. In *Paris, Capital of Modernity*, he took the massive project of rebuilding old Paris carried out by Baron Haussmann in the mid-to-late nineteenth century as a concrete embodiment of this “creative destruction.” Paris, as the capital of modernity, was not only a work but also an event; it resolutely and non-linearly covered over the smooth evolution of the past with a vision of modernity that burst onto the scene. “It treats the world as a blank slate and inscribes the new upon it without any reference to the past—and if, in the process of inscription, it finds the past standing in the way, it obliterates the past entirely.”

经济学家约瑟夫·熊彼特（Joseph Alois Schumpeter）在描述资本主义制度对原有的经济结构所形成的冲击时曾使用“创造性的毁灭”一词，用以强调整体的结构性颠覆与重构。他写道：“产业突变的过程……不断地从内部革着经济结构的命，不断地破坏着旧的经济结构，不断地创造着新的经济结构……必须看到创造性毁灭这个永久风暴（在这个过程中）发挥的作用。”哈维后来把这个术语定义为现代性的本质特征。在《巴黎城记：现代性之都的诞生》一书中，他将19世纪中后叶奥斯曼男爵所推行的巴黎旧城改造的庞大工程当作这种“创造性毁灭”的现实具象。作为现代性之都的巴黎不仅是一个作品，更是一个事件，它以横空出世的现代性愿景决绝地、非线性地覆盖了过去的平滑演进。“它将世界视为白板，并且在完全不指涉过去的状况下，将新事物铭刻在上面——如果在铭刻的过程中，发现有过去横阻其间，便将过去的一切予以抹灭。”

It is entirely appropriate to use such a revolutionary transformation to describe the chain effects brought about by the platform economy. It has produced a truncating effect on the original economic structure: old business models are challenged and decline (or even disappear), while production, distribution, consumption, delivery, distribution, and control systems are reshaped on the basis of new technologies. The fundamentals of many enterprises, and even entire industries, have been shaken.

用这样一种革命性转变来形容平台经济所带来的连锁效应再恰当不过。它对原有经济结构产生了截断性效应：旧的商业模式受到挑战而式微（甚至消亡），生产、分配、消费、交付、配送及控制体系在新技术的基础上被重塑。许多企业甚至行业的基本面发生了动摇。

In Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the “rhizome” and Antonio Negri’s theory of the “multitude,” the internet, with its “decentralised” character, becomes a liberating ideal construct: it can penetrate all dimensions and cross all boundaries. They took the heterogeneity and ungovernability highlighted by the hyperlinks of the internet as a force of the “one” capable of resisting the unifying power of capital, and from this they unfolded the possibility of resistance by the multitude. The “organisational power of the unorganised” formed by network interconnection reduces institutional and organisational costs to near zero, making sharing and collaboration possible on the broadest scale. On the surface, this claim seems to have some plausibility. But in fact, it still reveals an unconsidered optimism from the pre-platform era.

在吉尔·德勒兹（Gilles Louis Réné Deleuze）的“块茎”理论和奈格里的“诸众”理论中，互联网以其“去中心化”的特征而成为解放性的理想建构：它可以渗透至所有维度，穿越一切边界。他们把互联网超文本的链接所凸显出来的异质性和无法统摄性当作了可以对抗资本的统摄性的“一”的力量，并由此布展出诸众抵抗的可能性。网络互联所形成的“无组织的组织力量”使得机构和组织成本趋零，共享和协同在最大的广度上成为可能。从表面上看来，这种主张似乎有一定的合理性。但事实上，它仍然显示出了一种前平台时代的未经深思的乐观。

If Deleuze and Negri’s optimism about the internet was based on its characteristic of breaking through hierarchy through high interconnection, then they clearly did not foresee the prospects brought by the advancement of this connection in scale and depth. In the modern industrial structure since large-scale industry, the value creation process has been linearly distributed, with production as the most central core link. This top-down hierarchical structure, aided by an equally linear supply chain, achieved efficient operation, reflected both in the organisation and completion of production labour and in the process of transferring the final product or service to consumers. This is the object of study of traditional political economy. However, when the deep connectivity achieved by the internet breaks the functional organisational boundaries of stage execution, this linear value creation process, centred on production and aimed at the product, naturally has to be placed within the entire decentralised network. Yet the efficiency problems brought about by this decentralisation once again raise the issue of the “Coasean floor” in the network age. Of course, this time “new tools provide us with methods for organising group action without resorting to hierarchical structures.” Thus, the platform emerged in response.

如果说德勒兹和奈格里对互联网持有的乐观态度是基于它突破层级化的高度互联这一特点，那么他们显然并没有预见到这种连接在规模和深度上的推进所带来的前景。在大工业以降的现代行业结构中，价值创造过程呈线性分布，生产是最主要的核心环节。这种自上而下的层级结构在同样呈线性的供应链的帮助下实现了高效运转，既体现在生产劳动的组织和完成上，也体现在将最终的产品或服务向消费者转移的过程中。这是传统的政治经济学的研究对象。然而，当互联网所实现的纵深连通打破了阶段执行的功能组织边界后，这种以生产为轴心、以产品为目的的线性价值创造过程自然也不得不被置于整个去中心化的网络中。然而，这种去中心化所带来的效率问题却再一次提出了网络时代的“科斯地板”（Coasean floor）问题。当然，这一次“新的工具为我们提供了组织群体行动的方法，而无需诉诸层级结构”。于是，平台应运而生。

The platform model connects two or more mutually independent economic units to enable interaction and mutual benefit between them. In the era of the Internet of Things, this model means that “the aggregator of business strategy is no longer the supply chain or value chain within the company, but the ecosystem of the entire network.” The core of value creation shifts from product production to realizing connections between scattered producers and scattered users, constructing an ecosystem with the platform as the transaction core. This ecosystem strategy alters the balance of power in value creation. An important reason why Nokia lost in competition with iPhone and Google was that Nokia’s persistent Symbian system was inferior in platform-building functionality to iPhone’s iOS system and Google’s developed Android system. In this regard, Nokia’s former CEO Stephen Elop painfully recalled: “We didn’t even choose the right weapon for counterattack; we were still trying to compete in markets at all levels in a ‘device-to-device’ way. Competition in device products has now evolved into a war of ecosystems.” And the platform is the absolute center of the ecosystem it constructs. Moreover, because each node or unit in the distributed flat structure of the network enjoys a high degree of autonomy not subject to hierarchical structure, this center built upon decentralization possesses even stronger control power, and its efficiency largely depends on the radiation range of its power. Either platform, or perish.

平台模式将两个或多个相互独立的经济单元连接起来，以实现它们之间的互动和共赢。在物联网（Internet of Things）时代，这种模式使得“商业战略的聚合器不再是公司内部的供应链或价值链，而是整个网络的生态系统”。价值创造的核心从产品生产转向实现零散的生产者与零散的用户之间的连接，构建出以平台为交易核心的生态系统。这种生态系统战略改变了价值创造中的权力平衡。诺基亚之所以在与iPhone和谷歌的竞争中落败，很重要的一个原因是诺基亚所执着的塞班系统在平台搭建功能方面不敌iPhone的iOS系统以及谷歌开发的安卓系统。对此，诺基亚的前首席执行官史蒂芬·埃洛普（Stephen Elop）痛心疾首地回忆道：“我们甚至没有选对反击的武器，我们仍在试图以一种‘设备对设备’的方式，在各级市场上展开竞争。设备产品的竞争现在已经演变成生态系统的战争。”而平台正是其所建构的生态系统的绝对中心。并且，由于网络的分布式扁平化结构中的每个节点或单元都具有不受制于层级结构的高度自治性，这种去中心化之上的中心就具有了更强的控制权力，它的效率在很大程度上取决于其权力的辐射范围。要么平台，要么消亡。

Unlike traditional economic structures, the platform does not create its own economic units within itself, nor does it manufacture its own products. The only thing it does is continuously expand external resources and devote itself to making each connection step smoother, maximizing the efficiency of the core transaction (of course, this efficiency itself also includes the user experience on different client ends). This assignment of responsibility means that users cede power and privacy to the platform. The greater the responsibility the platform assumes, the more power and privacy it demands. Whether Airbnb or Uber, they have effortlessly achieved an octopus-like development that simultaneously shrinks the operational core and expands rapidly. Take Google, Uber, and Facebook as examples: all of them completed scale expansion in an extremely short time that traditional enterprises dared not aspire to. Even Amazon, a company that started with e-commerce, developed much faster after becoming a platform than before. The most notable feature of the platform model is being “both big and small”: on one hand, a vast user base is the core of its survival and the most intuitive expression of its value and market competitiveness (in financing processes, emphasis on user numbers has always been paramount for emerging platforms); on the other hand, because the core competition between platforms is no longer about comparing their own asset scale, the scale of the platform enterprise’s operational hub continuously shrinks. “Capital loves monopoly, loves the certainty brought by monopolistic work and lifestyle.” The ever-concentrating “unicorn”-type platform enterprises firmly grasp market discourse power.

与传统的经济结构不同，平台并不会在其内部创造自己的经济单元，也不会制造自己的产品，它做的唯一的事情就是不断地扩展外部资源，并致力于使每个连接步骤更加平滑，使核心交易的效率最大化（当然，这种效率本身也包括了不同用户端的体验感）。这种责任的赋予就意味着用户端将权力和隐私让渡给平台。平台所承担的责任越大，它索取的权力和隐私也就越多。无论是爱彼迎（Airbnb）还是优步（Uber），它们都轻而易举地实现了一面不断收缩运营核心、一面飞速扩张的八爪鱼式发展。以谷歌、优步、脸书为例，它们无不是在极短的时间里完成了传统企业不敢企及的规模扩张。即使是亚马逊这样靠电商起家的企业，其平台化后的发展速度也远超之前。平台模式的一个最显著的特征是“既大又小”：一方面，庞大的用户群是其赖以生存的核心，也是其价值和市场竞争力的最直观表现（在融资过程中对于用户数量的强调一直是新兴平台的重中之重）；另一方面，由于平台之间的核心竞争不再是比拼自身所具有的资产规模，因此平台企业运营中枢的规模不断缩小。“资本热爱垄断，喜欢垄断型工作和生活方式带来的确定性。”中心不断凝聚的“独角兽”式的平台企业牢牢地把握住了市场的话语权。

Data is the platform’s most important asset; all traces left by user ends when accessing any terminal of the platform continuously enrich this asset. The platform, according to transaction needs and the principle of profit, extracts and analyzes raw data materials through algorithms and continuously deploys them anonymously. Users, as producers of raw data, have neither the right to know about the data nor ownership rights, nor do they understand the various algorithms used by the platform. Both the raw materials (data) and the production technology (algorithms) are exclusively possessed and monopolized by the platform. This is a one-way-mirror asymmetry: on one side, unlimited power; on the other, unlimited cession. Therefore, although the platform superficially exhibits characteristics of decentralization and openness, in reality, as a super-node for integrating social resources, it has become a new type of digital-technical means for capital’s continuous subsumption. In the process of digitalization, the production logic of platform capitalism becomes a new mode of value valorization. The platform makes total control a reality, even becoming a more intensive form of capitalist monopoly. Through the deployment of power, it establishes an all-encompassing centralized ecosystem, making “the labor process, and hence labor and the worker himself, subject to capital’s supervision and domination in all these respects.” Deleuze’s desiring machines form a relational structure of social production through de-subjectified connections, which is precisely the core of the platform ecosystem. Algorithmic control becomes the structural core of platform manipulation, a new “invisible hand.” When digital systems and services are embedded into all components of political economy, platformization is the key principle of economic control and winning in this era; its connections can form a seamless space of power. The platform model breaks the traditional value chain monopoly and establishes a new monopoly method based on core transactions. From the perspective of the collusion between capital power and technology in the context of social media, the weakening of privacy protection and the dilution of individual expression are also inevitable. The platform’s derivation rule from online to offline (O2O) connects the online and offline into one world. The virtual penetrates the real. In this sense, the rapid development of platform capitalism inevitably profoundly affects the forms of labor organization and social structure in the digital era. The platform no longer plays merely the role of a smiling multilateral intermediary, but rather the decisive ecosystem builder in the market, the hub controller on decentralized homogeneous nodes. The platform not only achieves a monopoly on data through software and hardware facilities but also, by means of algorithms and oligarchic status, controls production and the rules of the game in the market.

数据是平台最重要的资产，所有的用户端在接入平台的一切终端时所留下的痕迹都源源不断地充实了这一资产。平台按照交易需要和利益原则，通过算法对数据原材料进行提取、分析并以匿名的方式不断调用。而用户作为原始数据的生产者，既不对数据拥有知情权，也不具有所有权，更不了解平台所使用的各种算法。无论是原材料（数据）抑或是生产技术（算法），它们都为平台所独占、垄断。这是一种单面玻璃式的不对称：一面是无限权力，另一面是无限让渡。因此，尽管平台在表面上具有去中心化和开放性的特点，但实际上其作为社会资源整合的超级节点已成为资本不断吸纳的新型数字化技术手段。在数字化的进程中，平台资本主义的生产逻辑成为新的价值增殖模式。平台使得全面控制成为现实，甚至成为资本主义更加集约化的垄断形式，它通过权力布展建立起无所不包的中心化生态体系，它使得“劳动过程，从而劳动和工人本身，在所有这些方面都受到资本的监督和支配”。德勒兹的欲望机器以去主体化的连接形成社会生产的关系性结构，这正是平台生态系统的核心。算法控制成为平台操控的结构性核心，是新的“看不见的手”。当数字系统和服务被嵌入政治经济的所有组成部分中，平台化是这个时代经济控制和制胜的关键原则，它的连接能够形成权力的无缝空间。平台模式打破了传统的价值链垄断，建立了以核心交易为基础的新垄断方式。从社交媒体语境中资本权力与技术的合谋来看，隐私保护的弱化与个体表达的稀释也是不可避免的。平台具有的从线上到线下（Online to Offline，O2O）的衍生法则将线上线下联结在一起，成为一个世界。虚拟（the virtual）穿透了实存（the real）。从这个意义上说，平台资本主义的迅猛发展必然深刻影响着数字化时代的劳动组织形式和社会结构。平台所扮演的不再仅仅是笑脸迎人的多边中介角色，而是市场中具有决定性的生态系统的搭建者，是去中心化的匀质节点上的枢纽中控。平台不仅通过软硬件设施实现对数据的垄断，而且借助算法和寡头地位控制着生产以及市场的游戏规则。

In the earlier critical study of platforms, *Platform Capitalism*, Nick Srnicek acutely pointed out that the platform, as a new business production model, became the darling of the 21st century, and the focus of capitalist development consequently shifted to platforms capable of acquiring and manipulating massive amounts of data. Strong centralization makes new platform monopolies more convenient and more thorough than ever before. “Platforms typically arise from the internal need to process data and become an effective way to monopolize, extract, analyze, and use the ever-increasing volume of recorded data.” This largely depends on the number of user ends joining the platform. The platform has the characteristic of shareability: the more users use the platform, the greater its value; the more data the platform can extract, the more use pathways it can generate. Today, most internet users find it difficult to conduct activities without bypassing platforms. This means that platforms seek to bind more and more users into their ecosystems in order to extract more data. At the same time, the richer the platform ecosystem, the stronger its ability to retain users, and the higher its degree of occupation of users’ lived experiential world. Through the logic of “winner-takes-all,” the capitalist economic system has completed a structural digital transformation. Faced with such a centrally controlled, behemoth-like business model, we must ask: What impact does it actually have on the traditional field of labor production?

在较早的一本以平台为批判性研究对象的著作《平台资本主义》中，尼克·斯尔尼塞克（Nick Srnicek）敏锐地指出，作为新商业生产模式的平台成为21世纪的宠儿，资本主义发展的重点也因此转移到能够获得和操控海量数据的平台上。强中心化使新的平台垄断比过去任何时候都更便捷，也更彻底。“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加的数据量。”而这在很大程度上取决于加入平台的用户端的数量。平台具有的特性是共享性：使用平台的用户越多，平台具有的价值也就越大；平台能够提取的数据越大，其能够产生的使用途径就越多。今天，大多数的互联网使用者已经很难绕过平台进行活动。这也就意味着，平台谋求将越来越多的用户捆绑进其生态系统，以便攫取更多的数据。同时，平台生态系统的丰富性越高，对用户的维持力也就越强大，对用户的生活经验世界的占有度也就越高。通过“赢家通吃”的逻辑，资本主义经济体系完成了结构性的数字化转变。面对这样一个由中心控制的巨无霸式的商业模式，我们必须要追问：它对传统的劳动生产领域到底产生了怎样的影响？

II. Gig Economy: Deepening Real Subsumption

二、零工经济：逐层加深的实质吸纳

From a historical perspective, the gig economy is not a novelty unique to the digital age or the platform model; it is a product of the ongoing development of the free labor market. Yet in the era of the platform economy, this particular form of employment has leaped from a partial, supplementary mode of labor to become a major form of social labor organization. The gig economy in the digital age refers to the rapid matching of supply and demand between freelancers who can offer spare time and corresponding skills, using internet platforms and mobile communication technologies. It mainly includes two forms: “crowdsourcing” through intermediaries and on-demand work via individual applications for orders. It is a component of the modern economic structure that cannot be underestimated. This has been confirmed by economic data. A joint study by Harvard University and Princeton University shows that in the ten years from 2005 to 2015, the proportion of flexibly employed workers in the United States rose from 10% to 15.8%, an increase of over 50%. This figure has continued to rise since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The author of *The Gig Economy* even predicts: “Full-time work is disappearing; many companies will not hire full-time employees unless they absolutely have to.”

从历史的角度来看，零工经济（gig economy）并非数字时代或平台模式下特有的新鲜事物，它是自由劳动力市场不断发展的产物。但在平台经济时代，这种特殊的用工形式从局部的、补偿性的劳动方式一跃成为重要的社会劳动组织形式。数字时代的零工经济是指由可以提供空余时间和相应技能的自由职业者利用互联网平台和移动通信技术快速匹配供需方，主要包括通过中间方“众包”和个体经应用程序接单的按需工作两种形式，是现代经济结构中不可小觑的一个组成部分。这一点已经得到了经济数据上的确证。哈佛大学和普林斯顿大学的一项联合研究表明，在2005年到2015年的10年中，美国灵活就业的从业人员比例由10%上升到15.8%，增幅达到了50%以上。这一数字在新冠肺炎疫情发生后持续上升。《零工经济》一书的作者甚至预言：“全职工作正在消失；许多公司不到万不得已，不会选择雇用全职员工。”

The platform’s greatest function is to provide the conditions for a bilateral relationship between product or service providers and consumers. This means that the platform always faces multilateral demands; it no longer plays the role of production organizer as traditional enterprises do, but instead matches different types of clients by building physical or virtual spaces. In other words, as a powerful intermediary, the platform always faces dispersed user groups—dispersed producers and dispersed consumers. However, since an important aspect of platform competitiveness lies in the number of consumers and their experience, the platform’s transaction evaluation mechanism inevitably tilts toward the consumer side. Under this constraint, the gig workers employed by platform enterprises can hardly avoid increasingly intensified iterations of exploitation. Slavoj Žižek calls this the “user proletariat”: “In the emerging ‘internet politics,’ power and social status are measured by the ability to access key information. Money and material possessions are reduced to a secondary role. The ruled class is no longer the working class, but the userist class (‘user proletariat’)… This shift in power produces an entirely new social logic and ideology. Because information is constantly circulating and changing, there are no stable, long-term hierarchies, but rather a constantly changing network of power relations.”

平台最大的功能是在产品或服务提供者与消费者之间提供达成双边关系的条件。这也就意味着，平台所面对的始终是多边的需求，它不再如传统企业那样扮演生产组织者的角色，而是通过搭建实体或虚拟空间来为不同类型的客户进行配对。也就是说，作为一个强势的中间人，平台所面对的始终是分散的用户群——分散的生产者和分散的消费者，但由于平台竞争力的一个重要方面在于消费者的数量和体验感，因此平台对交易的评价机制也就不可避免地带有了消费端倾向。在这种制约下，平台企业所使用的零工劳动者很难不面对愈演愈烈的剥削迭代。齐泽克将之称为“用户无产者”：“在新出现的‘因特网政治’中，权力和社会地位的衡量是获得关键信息的能力。金钱和物质占有都被降低到次要作用。被统治阶级不再是工人阶级，而是用户主义阶级（“用户无产者”）……这种权力的转变产生了一种全新的社会逻辑和意识形态。因为信息一直在循环和改变，不再有稳定的、长期的等级，而是一种持续变化的权力关系网络。”

The gig labor model built by platforms challenges both the traditional mode of value generation and the way workers are organized, because it achieves this by “dismantling” the responsibilities borne by traditional enterprise organizers. When workers are transformed into users, not only does the labor paradigm shift, but the form of labor organization is also altered. Dispersed labor oriented toward specific clients places labor providers in a de-organized situation, exacerbating their marginalization and turning them into isolated islands. The ubiquitous algorithmic traps and information asymmetry further deepen the user’s dilemma of choice: “Either the algorithm, or nothing.” So-called freedom of choice can only be a tragic gesture in the sense of negation and refusal. At the same time, through overt or covert intelligent monitoring devices, platforms achieve tighter surveillance of workers. Through the application’s positioning system and consumer feedback mechanisms, the platform can monitor workers’ labor trajectories and labor time in real time. As platform capital progressively deepens its substantive absorption of gig workers, “a complete (continuing and repeated) revolution occurs in the mode of production itself, in labor productivity, and in the relationship between capitalist and worker.” Once gig workers attempt to disembed themselves from algorithms and technology, the risks and costs far outweigh the benefits they gain within the algorithm. “Science becomes an independent power opposed to labor and serving capital, generally falling under the category of production conditions becoming an independent power opposed to labor.” In this process, all boundaries of labor in traditional factory production are dissolved. Due to the spatial mobility and temporal dispersion unique to gig labor, not only is the boundary between labor time and leisure time broken, but the process of labor transfer is also strictly confined by algorithms to the path of optimal efficiency. Moreover, each time the algorithm is “optimized,” the encirclement of gig workers tightens further. The platform capital’s accumulation through dispossession enables the simultaneous extraction of relative surplus value and absolute surplus value, with formal absorption and substantive absorption competing for the upper hand.

平台所搭建的零工劳动模式使得传统的劳动价值生成方式和劳动者的组织方式都遭到了挑战，因为它是以“拆卸”传统企业组织者所承担的责任来实现的。当劳动者转变为用户时，不但劳动范式发生了转换，劳动组织形式也被改变了。面向特定客户的分散劳动将劳动提供者置于去组织化的境地，导致其边缘化加剧，成为孤岛。无所不在的算法陷阱和信息不对称更是进一步加深了用户的选择困境：“要么算法，要么乌有。”所谓的选择自由只能是否定和拒绝意义上的悲壮之举。同时，通过公开或隐匿的智能监控设备，平台实现了对劳动者的更严密的监控。通过应用程序的定位系统和消费者反馈机制，平台方能够实时监控劳动者的劳动轨迹和劳动时间。随着平台资本对零工劳动者逐层加深的实质吸纳，“在生产方式本身中，在劳动生产率中，在资本家与工人的关系中，都发生了完全的（不断继续和重复的）革命。”一旦零工劳动者试图脱嵌于算法和技术，其风险和代价将远远高于他在算法中的获益。“科学成为与劳动对立的、服务于资本的独立力量，一般说来属于生产条件成为与劳动相对立的独立力量这一范畴。”在这个过程中，传统工厂生产中劳动的一切界限被消弭。由于零工劳动本身所特有的空间流动性和时间弥散性，不但劳动时间与休闲时间的边界被打破，劳动转移过程也被算法严格限定在效率最优化的途径中。甚至，算法每“优化”一次，对零工劳动者的围剿就紧迫一分。平台资本的剥夺式积累使得相对剩余价值和绝对剩余价值的剥削同时完成，形式吸纳和实质吸纳竞争上游。

Furthermore, the gig economy’s pursuit of efficiency continuously squeezes labor rights. In July 2020, a panel of the UK Supreme Court made a “ruling that could change the gig economy.” They ruled that drivers providing ride-hailing services through the application Uber are employees of Uber and are entitled to all protections provided by UK law for employees, such as minimum wage and paid leave. Previously, Uber had argued that drivers were not employees but independent contractors, whose legal status was that of independent contractors or self-employed persons providing services to passengers based on contracts made with them, and that the company was not required to provide employee benefits. Although this ruling will grant judicial protection to tens of thousands of Uber drivers in the UK, it has not ended the debate between platform enterprises and gig workers. The biggest problem with the “gig economy” is the lack of labor contracts. The gig outsourcing model of the platform economy blurs labor relations: workers have only a contractual relationship with the platform, an employment relationship with the outsourcing company, and many crowdworkers have not even signed an employment contract with the crowdsourcer, in exchange for freedom to quit. Therefore, once an accident occurs, the platform can not only shirk its responsibility to the victim but also its responsibility to the gig worker, making it extremely difficult for workers to defend their rights. Moreover, due to the lack of trade union organizations found in traditional enterprises, workers not only find it hard to obtain help from internal organizational forces and the work-related injury benefits they deserve, but also have to bear all risks independently, with effort and reward out of proportion. A special mode of production—“a mode of production that has changed in both the real nature and the real conditions of the labor process”—the platform capitalist mode of production, has been established. Capital has thus achieved the substantive absorption of social risks.

除此之外，零工经济对效率的追求还不断挤压劳工权益。2020年7月，英国最高法院的合议庭做出了一个“能改变零工经济的判决”。他们裁定：通过应用程序 “优步”（Uber）提供网约车服务的司机属于优步的雇员，享有英国法律为雇员提供的诸如最低工资、带薪假期等在内的一切保障。而此前，优步方面则主张：司机不是雇员，只是独立承揽人，他的法律地位是基于与乘客订立的合同为乘客提供服务的独立承担人或自雇人，公司无需为其提供雇员待遇。尽管这份裁决会使英国数以万计的“优步”司机获得司法保障，但却并未终结平台企业与零工劳动者之间的争论。“零工经济”的最大问题是劳动合同的缺失。平台经济的零工外包方式模糊了劳动关系：工人与平台仅是签约关系，与外包公司是雇佣关系，甚至很多众包工人都没有同众包方签订雇佣关系合同，以换取离职自由。因此，一旦发生事故，平台不但可以推卸其对受害者的责任，也可以推卸其对零工劳动者的责任，这使得劳动者的维权极为困难。并且，由于缺乏传统企业中的工会组织，劳动者不仅很难获得内部组织力量的帮助和应有的工伤待遇，还要独立承担一切风险，付出与获得不成正比。一种特殊的生产方式，“一种在劳动过程的现实性质和现实条件上都发生了变化的生产方式”——平台资本主义生产方式建立了起来。资本，就这样实现了对社会风险的实质吸纳。

Platform enterprises’ obsession with zero marginal cost drives them to pursue asset lightening (including tangible assets and employees), continuously expanding their user base while minimizing the number of employees. This, in a certain sense, confirms the view of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari that “the tool presupposes labor.” The de-organized form of the gig economy creates a bizarre contradiction in the subordination of workers to platform enterprises, and subordination is precisely the core element in determining labor relations. On the one hand, in the traditional labor law theoretical assumptions of linear enterprises, the enterprise has absolute ownership of the means of production, and most means of production are physical entities; workers use the means of production owned by the enterprise and comply with its labor norms. When current labor law determines whether a labor relationship exists, it often needs to examine who provides the means of production. However, platform enterprises mainly use non-materialized data as a factor of production, and the ownership relationship between data and the platform is difficult to fully determine. At the same time, because the management of gig workers is also carried out through digital control models, and the latter is still difficult to regard as management norms at the current stage, the subordinate relationship of gig workers to platform enterprises is difficult to establish within existing legal norms.

平台企业对零边际成本的着迷使得它们致力于资产轻量化（包括有形资产和员工），在不断扩大用户群的同时却尽量减少员工的数量。这在一定意义上印证了德勒兹和菲利克斯·加塔利（Félix Guattari）所主张的“工具预设了劳动”的观点。零工经济的去组织化形式使得平台企业与劳动者的从属性呈现出诡异的矛盾，而从属性正是判定劳动关系的核心要素。一方面，在传统的线性企业的劳动法理论假设中，企业对生产资料享有绝对的所有权，且大多数生产资料均为实体，劳动者使用属于企业所有的生产资料，遵从企业的劳动规范。现行劳动法在裁定劳动关系是否存在时，往往需要考察生产资料由谁提供这一要素。但是，平台企业主要以非实体化的数据为生产要素，数据与平台的所有权关系难以完全认定。同时，由于零工劳动者的管理也是通过数字控制的模式，而后者在现阶段还难以被视为管理规范，这就导致零工劳动者对平台企业的从属关系难以在现有的法律规范中被确定。

But on the other hand, another kind of firm subordinate relationship has been established: that of gig workers’ subordination to the algorithm. This subordinate relationship has not fully manifested itself as algorithmic surveillance of labour providers; it is more often expressed as a social conquest that replaces the machine servitude of the pre-algorithm era. Deleuze and Guattari regard this as the inevitable result of a change in the organic composition of capital. “Automatic control machines and information-processing machines … reconstruct a generalized regime of servitude: reversible and cyclical ‘human–machine’ systems replace the irreversible and non-cyclical ancient relations of conquest between the two; the connection between any machines is realized through intrinsic intercommunication (rather than through use or utility). In the organic composition of capital, variable capital prescribes a regime of conquest over the worker (human surplus value), whose main scope is the enterprise or factory; however, when the proportion of constant capital grows continuously with the process of automation, we discover a new servitude, and at the same time the labour system also changes: surplus value becomes machinic, and its scope expands to the whole of society.”[7]7 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, *Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia*, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 243. The translation here follows the Chinese text’s rendering of the passage. Although Deleuze and Guattari did not see the arrival of the algorithmic era, they already had the penetrating insight to predict the revolutionary impact of human–machine interpenetration on the composition and attributes of labour in the intelligent age. It must be emphasized that when they say “surplus value becomes machinic,” Deleuze and Guattari are pointing to their unique definition of the machine: a relational connection and production. Here, labour is no longer a single process demarcated by the completion of an independent product; the data information generated by continuous labour is constantly captured by the algorithm to realize algorithmic optimization (efficiency maximization is only one direction of algorithmic optimization; it can fully realize optimization in a broader sense). Both the labour process and the algorithm are in constant iteration. According to Marx’s judgment on the core characteristics of real subsumption, “the specifically capitalist mode of production develops, and with it the real subsumption of labour under capital develops”; algorithmic labour and its social consequences undoubtedly belong to real subsumption. It is both capital’s subsumption of labour and one aspect of capital’s subsumption of society. This mutually penetrating subordinate relationship forms a sharp contrast with the ambiguous subordination between platforms and workers; together, they constitute platform capital’s deeper and broader subsumption of labour.

但另外一方面，另一种牢固的从属关系却建立起来：这就是零工劳动者对算法的从属。这种从属关系没有完全变现为算法对劳动提供者的监控，更多表现为以一种社会性征服取代了前算法时代的机器役使。德勒兹和加塔利认为，这是资本有机构成发生变化的必然结果。“全自动控制机和信息处理机……重建了一种普遍化的役使机制：可逆的和循环性的‘人—机’系统取代了二者之间的不可逆和非循环的古老的征服关系；任何机器之间的关联是通过内在的互通（而不再是使用或效用）而实现的。在资本的有机构成之中，可变资本规定了一种对于劳动者进行征服的体制（人的剩余价值），其主要范围则是企业或工厂；然而，当不变资本的比例随着自动化的过程而不断增长之时，我们发现了一种新的役使，与此同时，劳动制度也发生了变化，剩余价值变为机器性的，而范围则扩张到整个社会。”尽管德勒兹和加塔利并没有看到算法时代的来临，但他们已经极具洞见性地预言了智能时代人—机互渗对劳动构成及其属性的革命性影响。需要重点指出的是，当他们说“剩余价值变为机器性的”的时候，德勒兹和加塔利所指向的是他们对机器的独特界定：一种关系性的连接和生产。在这里，劳动不再是以独立产品生产的完成而区隔开的单一过程，持续劳动所产生的数据信息不断地被算法捕捉而实现算法的优化（效率最大化只是算法优化的方向之一，它完全可以实现更广泛意义上的优化）。劳动过程和算法都在不断的迭代中。根据马克思对实质吸纳的核心特征的判断，“特殊资本主义生产方式发展起来以及劳动对资本的实际上的从属随着这种生产方式也发展起来”，算法劳动及其社会性的后果无疑属于实质吸纳，它既是资本对劳动的吸纳，也是资本对社会的吸纳的一个侧面。这种互相渗透的从属关系与平台—劳动者之间暧昧的从属形成了强烈的对比，它们共同构成了平台资本对劳动更深、更广的吸纳。

III. The Platform Effect Ladder: Total Subsumption

三、平台效应阶梯：总体吸纳

In the platform model, industrial capital, financial capital, and digital capital are entangled and collude with one another, capturing the entire process from production to consumption (the boundary between consumption and production is also increasingly blurred). At the same time, through data mining and analysis, algorithms predict and guide human behaviour, thereby evaluating and utilizing all originally non-productive fragments of experience, turning them into a non-negligible source of data production, and ultimately making them part of the commercialization of digital platforms. Algorithmic iteration provides a shorter-cycle pathway for social reproduction. Platforms become an important bridge connecting the capital market with social individuals and social life, and as an inseparable part of capital circulation, they are placed within the “total capitalist economy.” Due to the inherent need for expanded reproduction of capital, the closed-source nature of algorithmic control, efficiency priority, seamless monitoring, and the privatization and commodification of information data and social relations in social media will push the internet-mediated society characterized by information exchange toward monopolistic platform capitalism. Thus, all social experience in the platform era belongs, in essence, to the category of political economy.

在平台模式中，产业资本、金融资本与数字资本相互纠缠合谋，对从生产到消费（消费和生产的界限也日益消弭）的全过程进行捕捉。同时，算法通过数据挖掘与分析而对人类的行为作出预测和引导，从而对所有原本非生产性的经验片段进行估值和利用，将其转变为数据生产不可小觑的来源，并最终成为数字平台商业化发展的一部分。算法迭代为社会再生产提供了周期更短的路径。平台成为沟通资本市场与社会个体以及社会生活之间的重要桥梁，作为资本流通中不可分割的一部分置于“总体资本主义经济”（total capitalist economy）之中。由于资本扩大再生产的内在性需求，算法控制的闭源化、效率优先、无缝监测，以及社交媒体中信息数据、社交关系的私有化与商品化，都将把以信息交互为特征的互联网媒介社会推向具有垄断性质的平台资本主义。于是，平台时代下的一切社会经验从本质上而言都属于政治经济学范畴。

Marx pointed out that capital “at first only subordinates [the labour process] formally to itself, without changing its technological character in any way,” but with the development of capitalism, capital “not only subordinates the labour process formally to itself, but also changes this process, giving the mode of production itself a new form, and thus for the first time creates the mode of production peculiar to it.” Hardt and Negri affirm the role of Marx’s paired concepts of “formal subsumption” and “real subsumption” in demonstrating the diversity of capitalist domination. But they also propose that in contemporary political economy research, “what is first needed is to extend from Marx’s analysis of the real subsumption of labour under capital to the real subsumption of society under capital,” because this real subsumption has already gone beyond the multiple cycles of capital valorization, continuously expanding inward and encroaching upon previously non-capitalized domains. The specific approach is: “We must conceive of the function of capital at the social level; at this level, we must identify the forms of value production, exploitation, and extraction of surplus value; at this level and in this domain, we must understand the modes of struggle between labour and capital.”

马克思指出，对于劳动过程，资本“最初只是在形式上使它从属于自己，丝毫也不改变它在工艺上的规定性”，但是随着资本主义的发展，资本“不仅在形式上使劳动过程从属于自己，而且改变了这个过程，赋予生产方式本身以新的形式，从而第一次创造出它所特有的生产方式”。哈特和奈格里肯定了马克思的“形式吸纳”和“实质吸纳”这对概念在展现资本主义统治的多样性方面的作用。但他们也提出，在当代政治经济学研究中，“首先需要做的是从马克思所分析的资本统治下的劳动的实质吸纳扩展到对资本统治下的社会的实质吸纳”，因为这种实质吸纳已经超出了资本增殖的多重循环，不断向内扩展，蚕食了原先非资本化的领域。具体的做法是：“我们必须设想资本在社会层面的职能，在这个层面，我们必须确认价值生产、剥削和榨取剩余价值的形式；在这个层面以及这个领域，我们必须理解劳动力与资本进行斗争的模式”。

This formulation is certainly not wrong. In a broad sense, these phenomena certainly belong to the real subsumption of society. But on the one hand, the current iteration and optimization of algorithms often lead to the negative consequence of technology becoming disembedded from society; on the other hand, if the reference of social subsumption is too broad, it is neither sufficient to accurately describe the structural restructuring and embedding trend of totalization brought about by the platform economy, nor can it reflect the hierarchical chain of extraction formed within different forms of capital. Therefore, “total subsumption” is a more expressive concept, forming a corresponding relationship with the “total capitalist economy.”

这种提法当然没错。从广义上讲，它们当然属于对社会的实质吸纳，但一方面，目前算法的迭代和优化在很多时候导致了技术脱嵌社会的消极后果；另一方面，如果社会吸纳的指代过于宽泛，那么它既不足以准确描述平台经济所带来的结构性重构和嵌入的总体化趋势，也不能体现不同的资本形态内部形成的等级链收割关系。因此，总体吸纳是一个更具有表述力的概念，它与“总体资本主义经济”形成对应关系。

The first prominent manifestation of total subsumption is financial capital’s control over and division of industrial capital’s profits. Unlike industrial capital, which directly subsumes labour, financial capital obtains indirect but decisive control over labour through its claim on physical assets. Such a form of capital accumulation is not a new product of the platform economy. John Bellamy Foster, in his article “Monopoly-Finance Capital,” pointed out that the excessive development of financial markets has given financial capital dominance over the economy, thereby overturning the structure and function of the real economy previously dominated by monopoly enterprises; manufacturing money gradually replaces manufacturing products. This is a feature of monopoly capitalism. However, when this feature is combined with the platform model, which can theoretically achieve unlimited expansion on the basis of zero marginal cost, its harm to total social production becomes prominent. An extremely paradoxical fact is that, contrary to the gratifying picture of booming internet platform enterprises and continuously rising total revenues, almost the vast majority of platforms are in a state of massive losses. If the nature of capital is to pursue profit, why would platform enterprises choose to continue? And on what basis do they continue?

总体吸纳的第一个突出表现是金融资本对产业资本利润的控制与分割。与产业资本直接吸纳劳动的方式不同，金融资本通过对实物资产的索取权获得对劳动间接的、但却决定性的控制。这样一种资本积累形态也并非平台经济的新产物。约翰·贝拉米·福斯特（John Bellamy Foster）就曾在其《垄断金融资本》一文中指出，金融市场的过度发展使金融资本掌握了对经济的主导权，从而颠覆了此前由垄断企业主导的实体经济的结构和功能，制造货币逐渐代替制造产品。这是垄断资本主义的一个特征。但是，当这一特点与依靠零边际成本理论上可以实现无限扩张的平台模式相结合的时候，它对社会总生产的危害性就凸显出来了。一个无比吊诡的事实在于，与互联网平台企业蓬勃发展、总收入不断创新高的喜人景象相反，几乎绝大多数平台都处于巨额亏损的状态之中。如果说资本的本性在于追逐利润，平台企业何以会选择继续下去呢？它们又凭借什么继续下去呢？

Most internet platform economy projects share a strikingly similar growth history. At the start, a project relies on a keen market sense to precisely capture potential market demand hotspots, while financial capital (venture capital) also uses its keen sense to capture various projects. Once venture capital quickly locks onto an investment target and completes financing, the project is launched into the market with a high profile in a short time, using loss-leading methods such as price wars and high subsidies to rapidly expand market share and lock in a large user base. This vast user base is precisely the platform’s core competitiveness; these user groups and the continuously rising total operating revenue they generate are also the key on which the platform relies to continue obtaining venture capital in the financial investment market, and even to be listed on the securities market. In this process, the platform’s main purpose is not to profit from real transactions, but to use them as a means to profit in the financial market. This is essentially identical to the phenomenon Marx criticized, where capitalists care nothing about what use-value they produce as long as they can profit. The only difference here is that absolute decision-making power lies in the hands of financial capital. Although financial capital does not produce surplus value, it harvests the value created by industrial capital through the operation of the intergenerational market. Moreover, because financial capital is, to a certain extent, speculative, it tends to favor industries with short cycles, low marginal costs, and high profit margins. This is why in recent years venture capital has mainly targeted service-oriented e-commerce platforms. In contrast, traditional physical industries, especially manufacturing, are not favored by venture capital due to their high marginal costs and long investment return cycles. This investment method clearly has limited effect on genuinely increasing total social value. The capital accumulation method of realizing capital增殖 [n8] through increasing financial assets has led to the phenomenon of “high transactions, zero production,” which Harvey summarizes as “the production of ephemeral spectacles.” Along with this false prosperity in production, financial capital completes the entire process from simple accumulation to the super-exploitation of surplus value across various industries more quickly.

大多数互联网平台经济项目都经历了这样一个高度相似的成长史：一开始，项目凭借敏锐的市场嗅觉精准捕捉到潜在的市场需求热点，金融资本（风险投资）也以其敏锐的嗅觉捕捉各类项目。当风投迅速锚定了投资对象并完成融资后，项目会在短时间内高调投入市场，并采用价格战、高额补贴等逆盈利方式急速扩大市场占有率并锁定大量用户群体。而庞大的用户群正是平台的核心竞争力，这些用户群及其带来的不断上涨的总营业收入也是平台赖以依恃进而在金融投资市场继续获得风投、甚至在证券市场上市的关键。在这个过程中，平台的主要目的并非从真实的交易中盈利，而是以之为手段在金融市场获利。这在本质上同马克思所批判的资本家为了盈利不在乎生产何种使用价值的现象如出一辙。只不过在这里，绝对的决定权在金融资本的手中。金融资本虽不生产剩余价值，但却通过代际市场的运作收割了产业资本所创造的价值。并且，由于金融资本在一定程度上的投机性，它更倾向于周期短、边际成本低、利润率高的行业，这也是为什么近些年风险投资的主要目标集中在服务性电商平台上的原因。相比之下，传统的实体行业、尤其是制造业则由于边际成本高、投资回报周期长，而不受风投的青睐。这种投资方式对真正提高社会总价值的作用显然有限。通过增加金融资产来实现资本增殖的资本积累方式导致了“高交易、零生产”现象的出现，哈维将之概括为“生产昙花一现的奇观”。伴随着生产的这种假性繁荣，金融资本更加快速地完成了从简单积累到对各行业剩余价值进行超量剥削的全过程。

Another manifestation of total subsumption is capital’s use of the platform to subsume the public sphere. The reshaping of social relations by the development of the platform economy is reflected not only in many phenomena in the field of political economy, but also in the reshaping of the mode of human existence itself and the relationship between humans and the world. Apart from the previously discussed gradual optimization of algorithms that deepens control over gig workers, as market competition intensifies, using the data at hand to analyze and predict user behavior is almost a necessary tool for internet platform enterprises. Among these, data prediction is the core of big data methods and the key to platforms carrying out precision marketing.

总体吸纳的另一个表现是资本借助平台对公共性进行吸纳。平台经济的发展对社会关系的重塑不仅体现在政治经济学领域的诸多现象，同时也体现在人类自身的存在方式及其与世界的关系的重塑上。除之前谈到的逐渐优化的算法不断加深了对零工劳动者的控制外，随着市场竞争的白热化，利用所掌握的数据来分析与预测用户行为几乎是互联网平台企业必备的手段，其中，数据预测是大数据方法的核心，也是平台展开精准营销的关键。

Shoshana Zuboff, a professor of cyberpsychology at Harvard Business School, puts forward a more radical view in her book *The Age of Surveillance Capitalism*. She argues that the comprehensive recording of data traces unique to the big data era has ushered humanity into the “age of surveillance capitalism.” Making users psychologically dependent on the platform is merely the first step that platform controllers (whom she calls surveillance capitalists) hope to achieve. Their next, more advanced goal is to make target populations adapt to algorithmic inertia and automation, becoming qualified products of “instrumentarianism”: after the platform becomes familiar with users’ behavior patterns through massive data, it can adopt targeted inducement strategies (time, environment, content, method) to guide users into making the behaviors the algorithm desires, and to correct their behaviors, causing them to change their habitual ways of acting to perform behaviors that satisfy others’ needs. The platform can “use the surplus personal information on Facebook to shape your behavior patterns, for example, inducing you to buy acne cream at 5:45 p.m. on a Friday; inducing you to click the ‘confirm order’ button to buy a new pair of running shoes when endorphins are rushing through your brain after your Sunday morning run; or even, they can influence your voting choices next week.”

哈佛大学商学院网络心理学教授肖莎娜·祖博夫（Shoshana Zuboff）在《监控资本主义时代》一书中提出了一个更为激进的观点。她认为，大数据时代所特有的全方位数据痕迹的记录让人类进入了“监控资本主义时代”，而让用户对平台产生依赖心理仅仅是平台操控者（她称之为监控资本家）希望做到的第一步，接下来，他们更进一步的目标是让目标人群顺应算法产生惯性自动化，成为“机器控制主义”（instrumentarianism）的合格制品：平台通过海量数据对用户的行为模式熟悉之后，可以采取针对性的诱导策略（时间、环境、内容、方式）引导用户做出算法希望的行为，并对其行为加以修正，使其改变自己惯常的行为方式以做出满足他者需求的行为。平台可以做到“利用脸书（Facebook）上过剩的个人资讯形塑你的行为模式，例如诱使你在周五下午5点45分购买痘痘药膏；在你周日晨跑结束，脑内啡在脑中极速流窜时，诱使你点下‘同意下单’的按键，购入一双新的慢跑鞋；甚至，他们还能影响你下周投票时的选择”。

This instrumentarianism has broken through the traditional customer strategy of “catering to preferences,” instead controlling user behavior and altering the composition and rules of social relations. The “information cocoons” and “data sovereignty” issues frequently criticized by observers are merely the tip of the iceberg that has surfaced earliest. In the near future, this instrumentarianism may comprehensively rewrite social rules (for example, for coffee lovers, time-limited coupons can be used to adjust the periodic customer flow of a coffee shop) and reshape the reproduction of social relations. Relational production is precisely an extremely important aspect of the public sphere. A key point in contemporary society is that the production of the public sphere has not only become the main content of social production and reproduction, but also the material basis on which political subjects are shaped. So in fact, the public sphere, as a theory of articulation, is the relative relationship between individual existence and the world.

这种机器控制主义已经突破了传统的“投其所好”的客户战略，转而控制用户的行为，并改变社会关系的构成和规则。屡屡被观察者批评的“信息茧房”和“数据主权”问题是最早浮上水面的冰山一角，在不远的将来，这种机器控制主义可能全面改写社会规则（例如，对于咖啡爱好者，可以通过限时使用的优惠券调整咖啡店的阶段性客流），重塑社会关系的再生产。而关系性生产正是公共性的一个极为重要的方面。当代社会的一个关键在于，公共性的生产不但成为社会生产和再生产的主要内容，同时也是政治主体得以塑型的物质基础。所以实际上，公共性作为一种连接理论（theory of articulation），它是个体存在与世界之间的相对关系。

Platform capital uses profits and convenience to tempt users, wresting from their hands the discourse power over rules, and continuously disciplines originally diverse needs according to the principle of calculability. The instrumentalism [n9] embraced by modernity is polarized by algorithms and reverse-disciplined into “instrumentarianism.” Once these mechanisms are implemented, they enter inertial operation, thereby steering towards the maximization of capital interests. Individuality, particularity, and even privacy—such personalized topics discussed by humanism—become old-fashioned things that hinder the achievement of data smoothness and freedom, and thus hinder efficiency. It is conceivable that the future of this instrumentarianism will inevitably make the entire world submit to technological authority. Whoever controls the data, whoever uses the data, whoever determines the algorithm, holds all the power of discourse construction. It is from this perspective that Bernard Stiegler denounces digital capitalism for destroying human thinking ability, arguing that it will plunge humanity into “systematic stupidity.” But in fact, what is stupid is not humanity, but the behavior pattern of treating algorithms as the sole pathway to the world.

平台资本利用利润和便捷性诱惑用户，从其手中获得对规则的话语权，以可计算性的原则不断规训本来形态各异的需求。现代性所信奉的工具主义（instrumentalism）被算法极化并逆规训成为“机器控制主义”。这些机制一旦被实施，就会进入惯性的运转，从而导向资本利益的最大化。人本主义所谈论的个体性、特殊性乃至隐私这样的个性化话题成了妨碍实现数据平滑和自由、进而妨碍效率的古着。可以想像，这种机器控制主义的未来必将使整个世界臣服于技术权威，谁掌握数据、谁使用数据、谁决定算法，谁就掌握了话语建构的全部权力。也正是从这个角度而言，贝尔纳·斯蒂格勒（Bernard Stiegler）指斥数字资本主义对人类思考能力的摧毁，认为其将使人类进入“系统性愚昧”。但事实上，愚昧的不是人类，而是将算法唯一化为面对世界的全部途径的行为模式。

Undeniably, the platform economy model is the most dynamic and promising part of the contemporary digital economy. Although the platform’s own technical characteristics and political-economic attributes inevitably endow it with some problems that have not yet fully unfolded, when digital systems and services are embedded in all components of the political economy, platformization becomes the key principle of economic control in this era. Its connections can form a seamless space of power, thereby forming a centralized ecosystem. The new monopoly method of platforms, based on core transactions, not only makes total control a reality, but can even become a more intensive form of monopoly for capital operation. Furthermore, judging from the result of the collusion between capital power and technology in the context of social media, the weakening of privacy protection and the dilution of individual expression are also inevitable. The continuous iteration of algorithms further deprives workers of their freedom of choice. While these aspects continuously accelerate platform expansion, they also become uncertain factors in the development of the platform economy.

不可否认，平台经济模式是当代数字经济中最具有活力和发展前景的一部分。尽管平台本身的技术特征和政治经济学属性使它不可避免地带有一些至今还未全部展开的问题，但当数字系统和服务被嵌入政治经济的所有组成部分时，平台化就成了这个时代经济控制的关键原则，它的连接能够形成权力的无缝空间，从而形成中心化的生态系统。平台以核心交易为基础的新的垄断方式，不仅使得全面控制成为现实，甚至可以成为资本运行更加集约化的垄断形式。此外，从社交媒体语境中资本权力与技术合谋的结果来看，隐私保护的弱化与个体表达的稀释也是不可避免的，算法的不断迭代进一步剥夺了劳动者的选择自由。这些方面在不断加速平台扩张的同时，也成为平台经济发展中的不确定因素。

(Author: Wu Jing, Department of Philosophy, Nanjing Normal University)

（作者：吴静，南京师范大学哲学系）

(This article is a phased result of the National Social Science Fund General Project “Research on Western Platform Capitalism from the Perspective of Deleuze’s Critique of Capital” (20BZX011))

（本文系国家社会科学基金一般项目“德勒兹资本批判视域下的西方平台资本主义研究”（20BZX011）的阶段性成果）

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