From Digital Inequality to Returning to Marx

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the development of contemporary capitalism has exhibited multiple distinct trends, with digital technology, communication technology, and intelligent algorithms being applied on a large scale in the industrial, consumer, and logistics sectors. With the entry of smartphones and various terminal devices into people’s daily lives, a large number of apps and platforms are becoming an indispensable part of social life. One result of these trends is that the power of capital has rapidly entered these new fields, giving rise to a new type of capitalism, namely digital capitalism. As Étienne Balibar, a French contemporary Marxist scholar and student of Althusser, pointed out at the beginning of an article published in *Radical Philosophy* in 2021, when the productive forces of capitalism develop to the “total stage,” the life of every individual becomes directly linked to this total productive force. Clearly, Balibar illustrates that, on the one hand, the large-scale abuse of big data, cloud computing, and intelligent technology by capitalism causes these capital-mediated technologies to act directly on the life of every individual, confronting us in an extremely naked manner with capitalist plunder and exploitation. On the other hand, the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have accelerated this process worldwide; capitalism is undergoing a metamorphosis, becoming not only more monopolistic but also infiltrating the power of capital into areas it had not previously touched, such as biological genes, consumption habits, and real-time urban imagery, digitizing all of this and creating more distinct barriers of capitalist inequality. Perhaps, as contemporary critical theorist Nancy Fraser stated in her 2022 new book *Cannibal Capitalism*, capitalism is becoming an ouroboros devouring its own tail, touching its own foundations, and ultimately paving the way for a future socialist society. On this point, perhaps contemporary foreign Marxists are, without prior agreement, turning once again to Marx, believing that only Marxism can resolve the predicament brought about by the technological abuse and plunder of contemporary capitalism.

进入21世纪以来，当代资本主义发展呈现出多种不同的趋势，数字技术、通信技术和智能算法在工业领域、消费领域以及物流领域大规模应用。随着智能手机和各种终端设备进入人们的日常生活，大量App和平台正在成为社会生活不可或缺的一部分。这些趋势带来的一种结果就是，资本的力量迅速进入这些新领域之中，衍生出一种新的资本主义类型，即数字资本主义。正如阿尔都塞的弟子、法国当代马克思主义学者埃蒂安尼·巴里巴尔（Etienne Balibar）于2021年发表在《激进哲学》中的一篇文章开头指出的，资本主义的生产力发展到“总体性阶段”的时候，每一个人的生命都会与这种总体的生产力直接联系在一起。显然，巴里巴尔说明了：一方面，资本主义对大数据、云计算和智能技术的大规模滥用，导致这些被资本所中介的技术直接作用于每一个人的生命，我们以极为赤裸的方式面对资本主义的掠夺和剥削；另一方面，突然来袭的新冠肺炎疫情似乎在全世界范围内加速了这个过程，资本主义正在蜕变，它不仅变得更加垄断，而且将资本的权力渗入其未曾涉足的领域，如生物基因、消费习惯、城市即时图景等，并将这一切都数据化，制造了更明确的资本主义不平等的壁垒。或许，正如当代批判理论家南希·弗雷泽（Nancy Fraser）在2022年的新书《食人资本主义》中说道，资本主义正在变成一条蚕食掉自己尾巴的衔尾蛇，在触动自己的根基，最终为走向未来社会主义铺平道路。或许，在这一点上，当代国外马克思主义都不约而同地再次求助于马克思，认为只有马克思主义才能解决当代资本主义技术滥用和掠夺带来的困局。

Digital Capitalism and Expanded Inequality

数字资本主义与扩大的不平等

In the stage when neoliberalism dominated the 20th century, many liberal and left-wing scholars believed that although capitalism still had various problems, overall, through dialogue, consultation, and democratic procedures, society could become increasingly equal. This is the origin of the discourse ethics and deliberative democracy of Habermas and others. As the second-generation representative of the Frankfurt School, Habermas hoped that within the framework of multiculturalism at the time, people of different classes, races, and genders could achieve deliberative equality under the same procedural dialogue. Giddens, in turn, hoped to replace revolutionary emancipatory politics with reflexive life politics. At that moment, it seemed that a more equal capitalist society was about to be realized on the earth of human society.

在20世纪新自由主义占主导地位的阶段，许多自由派学者和左翼学者都相信，尽管资本主义仍然存在着各种问题，但总体上经过对话协商和民主程序，能够让社会越来越平等。这就是哈贝马斯等人的对话伦理学和协商民主的由来。作为法兰克福学派的第二代代表人物，哈贝马斯希望在当时的多元文化主义框架下，让不同阶级、不同种族、不同性别的人可以在同一个对话程序下，实现协商式的平等。吉登斯则希望用自反性的生活政治学，来取代革命性的解放政治学，在那一刻，似乎一个更为平等的资本主义社会即将在人类社会的大地上实现。

However, with the arrival of digital capitalism, monopolistic digital platforms control enormous data and traffic, and use the intelligent algorithms they develop and monopolize to discipline people’s daily lives. Every individual living within this system feels, without prior agreement, that inequality under capitalist society has not been eliminated but is instead increasingly expanding. In fact, at the very beginning of the birth of the internet and digital technology, some Western left-wing scholars asserted that the widespread use of the internet would further bring about a “digital divide.” Regions that can widely use internet devices and data would form an insurmountable chasm of inequality relative to those areas that are economically impoverished and have backward communication infrastructure. After the wealthy bourgeoisie and middle class enjoy the convenience brought by digital technology, the gap with those who cannot use these applications and technologies will grow ever larger. In other words, digital technology and communication technology represent not only inequality in ownership but also inequality in technical means. In the future, those who possess smart devices and can obtain information instantly will more easily gain various opportunities, accumulate more wealth, and receive better education, while those on the other side of the digital divide will further “fall into the abyss.”

然而，随着数字资本主义的到来，垄断性的数字平台掌控着巨大的数据—流量，并用他们开发和垄断的智能算法，规训着人们的日常生活。每一个生活在其中的个体，都不约而同地感受到资本主义社会下的不平等并没有消除，相反被日益扩大。事实上，在互联网和数字技术诞生之初，就有西方左翼学者断言互联网的广泛使用会进一步带来“数字鸿沟”，能够广泛使用互联网设备和数据的地区，相对于那些经济贫困、通信基础设施落后的地区，会形成一道无法逾越的不平等的鸿沟。在富有的资产阶级和中产阶级利用数字技术带来的便利之后，与那些无法使用这些应用和技术的地域的差距会越来越大。换言之，数字技术和通信技术代表的不仅是所有权上的不平等，更有技术手段上的不平等。未来，拥有智能设备、能够即时获得信息的人更容易获得各种机会，赢取更多的财富，获得更好的教育，而生活在数字鸿沟另一侧的人则进一步“跌入深渊”。

This is merely the prelude to deeper inequality. For example, after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, biological data and medical data have become targets of fierce competition for future capitalism. Databases of viruses, biological DNA data of different races, and physiological data of various diseases provide necessary conditions for the next breakthrough in medicine and biotechnology. But this also means that companies and platforms with capital may further use the DNA and data of healthy people to produce healthier lives, endowing these lives with greater intelligence, physical strength, endurance, and reaction speed. More critically, for the upper class, all of this is purchasable. Harari’s *Homo Deus* has already depicted such a scene: the upper class, by mastering the secrets of genetic data and life data, can use money and privilege to obtain better physical constitutions and longer lifespans. Meanwhile, the races and populations of the lower class become a useless class, unable to enjoy the dividends brought by the rapid advancement of digital technology, artificial intelligence, and life-gene technology, and can only barely get by on short-term gigs and outsourced work. In this sense, they become the precariat class in Guy Standing’s sense. Perhaps, in the era of 20th-century neoliberal capitalism, the distinction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat was still spatial; folded social spaces isolated people of different ranks from each other. But through the biopolitics and digitization of life brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, capitalism can distinguish the bourgeoisie from the proletariat physically and physiologically—shifting from spatial inequality to biological inequality. It is this inequality that has suddenly awakened many foreign Marxist scholars: under the rule of capitalism, inequality among people has not disappeared but has instead become an ever more insurmountable chasm.

这仅仅是更加深入不平等的序幕而已。例如，在新冠肺炎疫情暴发后，生物数据和医疗数据成为未来资本主义竞相争夺的目标，病毒的数据库、不同人种的生物DNA数据，以及各种疾病的生理数据为下一次医学和生物技术的突破提供了必要条件。但这也意味着，拥有资本的公司和平台或许进一步将健康人的DNA和数据用于生产更健康的生命，让这些生命具有更强的智力、体力、耐力、反应力，而更关键的是，对于上层阶级而言，这一切都是可以购买的。赫拉利的《未来简史》已经给我们描绘出这样的场景，即上层阶级由于掌握了基因数据和生命数据的奥秘，可以用金钱和特权获得更好的生命体质和寿命。而那些下层阶级的种族和人群变成了无用阶级，无法享受数字技术、人工智能和生命基因技术突飞猛进带来的红利，只能依靠短暂的零工和外包工作勉强度日。在这个意义上，他们变成了居伊·斯坦丁（Guy Standing）意义上的流众（precariat）阶级。或许，在20世纪新自由主义资本主义时代，资产阶级和无产者之间的区别还是空间性的，折叠的社会空间让不同等级的人群彼此隔绝。但通过新冠肺炎疫情带来的生命政治和生命数据化，可以让资本主义从身体和生理上将资产者和无产者区别开来，即从空间不平等转向生物不平等。正是这种不平等，让许多国外马克思主义学者突然觉醒，在资本主义的统治下，人们之间的不平等不仅没有消弭，反而越来越成为无法跨越的鸿沟。

The Scorched Earth of Life under Digital Capitalism

数字资本主义下的生命焦土

The greatest problem with capitalist development under contemporary digital conditions is not only the increasingly expanded inequality but, more importantly, the fact that digital technology and biopolitics are stripping away the foundations of people’s existence, ontologically turning humans into part of the apparatus of capitalist digital technology and biopolitics. Look at the lifestyle of people under modern digital capitalism, and all this becomes clear. People’s eyes are fixed tightly on various screens; they constantly swipe with their fingers or mice, as if everything on the interface is their life. Yet their bodies are confined to a cramped room; their work and social interactions can all be completed through a computer and a smartphone. The individual life under contemporary digital capitalism is highly dependent on the interface behind the screen. Individuals are users of major platforms, fans of various virtual idols, warriors charging into battle in various games, but in real space, they are solitary homebodies. This is the lifestyle of people under digital capitalism, corresponding to the gradual withering and desolation of the real world. In the words of Jonathan Crary, this is a scorched earth.

当代数字技术条件下的资本主义发展，最大的问题不仅是日益扩大的不平等，更重要的是数字技术和生命政治正在剥除人们生存的根基，从存在论上将人变成资本主义数字技术和生命政治装置的一部分。看看现代数字资本主义下人们的生活方式，这一切便昭然若揭。人们的双眼紧紧盯着各种屏幕，他们用手指或鼠标不停地滑动着，仿佛界面中的一切就是他们的人生。他们的身体却处于一个逼仄的房间里，他们的工作和社会交往都可以通过一台电脑和一部智能手机来完成。当代数字资本主义下的个人生命高度依赖于屏幕背后的界面，个人是各大平台的用户，是各个虚拟偶像的拥趸，是各种游戏中冲锋陷阵的战士，但却是现实空间中孑然一身的宅居族。这就是数字资本主义下人们的生活方式，与之对应的是真实世界的逐渐凋零和荒芜，用乔纳森·克拉里的话来说，这是一片焦土。

Perhaps this is why Crary named his 2022 book *Scorched Earth*! In fact, in his earlier work *24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep*, Crary had already turned his attention to the fate of human subjects under the biopolitical technological control of capitalism. Under new biotechnologies and medical technologies, for example, drugs can be invented to reduce a person’s daily sleep time, allowing employed workers more labor and working hours to serve the capitalist system. Capitalist biopolitical control is no longer limited to control within the eight-hour workday in factories and offices, nor to control over people’s consumption and leisure time while awake; it has become total control around the clock, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Biopolitics has thus entered an unprecedented state of total control, namely 24/7 full-time control. Under the 24/7 capitalist system, with the intervention of this new biopolitical technology, capital can directly invade the individual’s biological body, turning the laborer’s body into a body with greater productive capacity, while the subject becomes a docile subject that accepts the control of these new biotechnologies.

或许，这就是克拉里将他2022年的新书命名为《焦土》的原因吧!实际上，在之前的《24/7：晚期资本主义与睡眠的终结》一书中，克拉里已经将注意力转向资本主义的生命政治技术控制下的人类主体的命运。新的生物技术和医学技术之下，例如可以发明药物来减少人一天的睡眠时间，让被雇佣的工人有更多的劳动和工作时间，从而为资本主义体制来服务。资本主义的生命政治控制不再局限于工厂和写字楼里8小时之内的控制，也不局限于人们在清醒状态下的消费和娱乐时间的控制，而是变成一周七天、一天24小时的全面控制。生命政治由此进入一个前所未有的全面控制状态，即24/7的全时间控制。在24/7的资本主义体制下，由于这种新的生命政治技术的介入，资本主义可以直接侵入个体的生物性身体，让劳动者的身体成为具有更大产能的身体，而主体变成了接受这些新生物技术控制的百依百顺的主体。

In Crary’s view, when people in digital capitalist society turn their attention to various mobile phone and computer screens, replacing real daily interactions with digital networks, they undergo a new round of abstraction. That digital network, branded with the stamp of capitalism, is causing everyone within it to further detach from the bonds of the real world. They are not only abstract lives in subway networks and office cubicles, forced by capitalist bosses using “996”[8]8 “996” refers to a work schedule common in Chinese tech companies: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. and drug stimulation to continuously produce lives that accept the control of the capitalist biopolitical system; they are also, within digital networks, increasingly stripping away bodily existence, allowing individuals to enter, as users and virtual entities, a virtual world completely dominated by capitalist digital platforms. The rules of that world have long been defined according to the principles of finance and profit, and all subjects entering this application interface can only timidly shuffle along on the interface. The digitization and abstraction of life further separate life from its foundation in the earth. Life becomes rootless life, wandering everywhere, drifting and unstable, unable to take root in the earth, only able to become a virtual entity composed of a set of data in the digital network. People no longer dwell on the earth but place their lives in that constantly flowing, apparatus-like digital network. Through this apparatus, capitalism has implanted its means of control into every body. Blochian hope[9]9 Ernst Bloch, a German Marxist philosopher, developed a concept of hope as a utopian principle oriented toward a not-yet-realized future. has gradually degenerated into the traffic and attention of internet celebrities. There, everything becomes traffic, everything becomes the capitalist profit brought by traffic.

在克拉里看来，在数字资本主义社会中的人们将注意力转向各种手机和电脑的屏幕时，用数字化网络来代替现实的日常交往时，经历了新一轮的抽象化，那个被烙上了资本主义烙印的数字化网络，正在让每个身处其中的人进一步脱离现实世界的羁绊。他们不仅是地铁网络和办公楼格子间里的抽象生命，被资本主义老板用“996”和药物刺激不断生产着接受资本主义生命政治体制控制的生命，更是在数字网络中不断将身体存在祛除，让个人以用户和虚体进入完全被资本主义数字平台支配的虚拟世界之中。那个世界的规则早已经按照金融和利润的法则界定，所有进入这个应用界面的主体只能唯唯诺诺地在界面上踽踽而行。生命的数字化和抽象化，让生命进一步与大地的根基相剥离。生命变成了无根的生命，到处流浪，飘忽不定，无法在大地上扎根，只能在数字网络中变成一组由数据组成的虚体。人们不再寓居在大地上，而是将生命置于那个不断流动的装置化的数字网络之中。通过这个装置，资本主义已经将其控制的手段植入每一具身体里，布洛赫式的希望已经逐步堕落成网红们的流量和关注度。在那里，一切都变成了流量，一切都变成流量带来的资本主义的利润。

Returning to Marx in the Digital Age

在数字时代重新呼唤马克思

How to resolve the growing inequality of digital capitalism? How to avoid future capitalism turning our lives into scorched earth? Perhaps only by returning to Marx, returning to the questions Marx raised in the *Communist Manifesto*, returning to the path of critique of political economy presented in *Capital* and its manuscripts, can we find a way out of capitalism.

如何解决数字资本主义日益扩大的不平等？如何避免未来资本主义将我们化为生命的焦土？或许只有重新回到马克思那里，回到马克思在《共产党宣言》中提出的问题，回到《资本论》及其手稿中提出的政治经济学批判路径，才能找到一条走出资本主义的道路。

In September 2022, contemporary French Marxist thinker Alain Badiou published “Thirteen Theses on Contemporary Politics” in *Le Nouvel Observateur*, pointing out that after the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, the baptism of imperialist wars, and the trade war brazenly launched by the US capitalist government, we must return to Marx’s *Communist Manifesto*: “In all these movements, they emphasize the property question as the basic question of the movement, regardless of the degree of its development.” The reason Badiou again cites Marx is not only that he has always insisted on communism as the ideal concept for which the European left and Marxism strive, but also that he has once again clarified that the core issue in the struggle against contemporary capitalism is unequal ownership of the means of production, even in the era of digital capitalism, the spear of struggle must be directed at capitalist ownership. In other words, in Badiou’s view, the real problem is not digital technology. Whether digital technology or artificial intelligence technology, they merely fully expose the greedy nature and inequality secrets of contemporary capitalism. The application of digital technology and the construction of communication infrastructure are not themselves problems; these technologies and applications actually serve all of humanity, serving social stability and development. The problem lies in the intervention of capital, especially financial capital, which monopolizes various data and algorithms, thereby becoming a means for certain big capitals to profit. When they extract more value from biological data, intelligent algorithms, and the like, it is precisely when the lower-level multitude class sinks deeper into an abyss of no return.

2022年9月，当代法国马克思主义思想家阿兰·巴迪欧（Alain Badiou）在《新观察家》发表了《当今政治十三论》，指出在经过了新冠肺炎疫情的混乱、帝国主义战争的洗礼、美国资本主义政府悍然发动的贸易战之后，我们必须重新回到马克思的《共产党宣言》，“在所有这些运动中，他们都强调所有制问题是运动的基本问题，不管这个问题的发展程度如何”。巴迪欧之所以再次引述马克思，不仅仅因为他始终坚持将共产主义作为欧洲左翼和马克思主义奋斗的理想观念，而且在于他再次澄清了与当代资本主义斗争的核心问题就是不平等的所有制，即便在数字资本主义时代，都必须将斗争的矛头指向资本主义所有制。换言之，在巴迪欧看来，真正出问题的不是数字技术，无论是数字技术还是人工智能技术，无非将当代资本主义贪婪的本质和不平等的秘密充分暴露了出来，数字技术的应用、通信基础设施的建设，本身不是问题，这些技术和应用实际上都是为全人类服务的、为社会稳定和发展服务的，问题在于资本尤其是金融资本的介入，垄断了各种数据和算法，从而成为某些大资本牟利的手段。当他们从生物数据、智能算法等方面榨取更多的价值之时，也正是处于下层的流众阶级更深地陷入万劫不复深渊的时候。

Therefore, Nancy Fraser emphasizes in *Cannibal Capitalism* that capitalism’s greed turns itself into an ouroboros eating its own tail, because capitalism is devouring the social foundations it should not consume—that is, devouring the vast multitude class excluded by capitalist biopolitics and digital platforms. In this sense, Fraser, once a feminist critical theorist, has abandoned the strategy of understanding feminist liberation from a purely identity-based standpoint, because she has discovered that even if Hillary Clinton became US President, it would not bring a shred of hope for the improvement and liberation of the living conditions of lower-class proletarian women. In this sense, Fraser has chosen to return to Marx. She believes that only by returning to Marx’s critique of political economy, returning to the exposure of the mechanisms of capitalist exploitation, plunder, and oppression, can the calamities suffered by those impoverished strata living below the poverty line, those multitude class who possess nothing, be truly resolved. This is also the position advocated by Christian Fuchs in his book *Re-Reading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism*: by re-reading Marx, understanding how capitalism, under the dual oppression of digital platforms and biopolitics, forms a scorched earth of life. Only by breaking capitalist private ownership of property, allowing people to equally share the benefits brought by digital technology and artificial intelligence technology, can we emerge from the gloom of capitalism and see the hope for humanity’s future.

所以，南希·弗雷泽在《食人资本主义》中强调，资本主义的贪婪将自己变成吃掉自己尾巴的衔尾蛇，因为资本主义正在蚕食不应该吞噬的社会基础，即吞噬掉那些被资本主义生命政治和数字平台所排斥的广大的流众阶级。在这个意义上，曾经作为女性主义批判理论家的弗雷泽，抛弃了从纯粹身份立场来理解女性主义解放的策略，因为她发现，即便希拉里·克林顿当上美国总统，对于底层无产阶级妇女的生活环境的改善和解放也不会带来一丁点希望。在这个意义上，弗雷泽选择了回到马克思，她认为只有回到马克思的政治经济学批判，回到对资本主义剥削、掠夺和压迫机制的揭露，才能真正解决那些生活在赤贫线以下的贫民阶层、那些一无所有的流众阶级所遭遇的劫难。这也是克里斯蒂安·福克斯（Christian Fuchs）的《在数字资本主义时代重读马克思》一书所主张的立场，即通过重读马克思，了解资本主义在数字平台和生命政治的双重压迫下，形成生命的焦土。只有打破资本主义的财产私有制，让人们平等地共享数字技术和人工智能技术带来的福利，才能走出资本主义的阴霾，看到人类未来的希望。

Online Editor: Zhang Jian

网络编辑：张剑