From Industrial Machines to Interpretive Machines

The theory of the machine is Marx’s speculative analysis of the history, logic, and operational mechanism of the application of machinery under capitalist conditions. In this theory, Marx both reveals the alienating effect of the application of machinery under capitalist conditions on all of humanity, including the workers, and elucidates the liberating significance of the development of machine application for transforming capitalist society and realizing the free and comprehensive development of the individual, thereby constituting a key link in Marx’s scientific investigation of the capitalist mode of production. Marx’s discussions on the application of machinery in *Capital* and its series of manuscripts are relatively scattered, and his analysis of related issues often occurs in multiple contexts, demonstrating the inherent tension within Marx’s theory of the machine itself. Coupled with the different research approaches of various Marxist theoretical schools after Marx, this has long led to disagreements within Marxist academic circles regarding the substantive content of this theory, resulting in multiple interpretations of Marx’s theory of the machine. Taking the actual development of technology as a clue, tracing the understanding and development of Marx’s theory of the machine by major foreign Marxist schools in different historical contexts, and discerning their theoretical positions and practical roots, is of great significance for applying Marxist theory to examine the real world of the digital capitalist era.

机器理论是马克思对资本主义条件下机器应用的历史、逻辑和运行机制的思辨分析。在这一理论中，马克思既揭示了机器在资本主义条件下的应用对包括劳动者在内的全人类的异化作用，又阐明了机器应用的发展对变革资本主义社会和实现人的自由全面发展的解放意义，从而构成了马克思科学考察资本主义生产方式的关键一环。马克思在《资本论》及其系列手稿中关于机器应用问题的论述相对分散，在分析相关问题时也往往处于多重语境，表现出马克思机器理论本身的内在张力，加之马克思以后的各种马克思主义理论学派的研究路径不同，使得长期以来马克思主义学界在理解这一理论的实质内容方面存在分歧，形成了对马克思机器理论的多元解读。以技术的现实发展为线索，梳理不同的时代背景下国外主要马克思主义学派对马克思机器论的理解和发展，辨析其中的理论立场和实践根源，对于运用马克思主义理论考察数字资本主义时代的现实世界具有重要意义。

I. Affirmation and Negation: The Opposing Attitudes toward “Mechanization” in Soviet Marxism and Early Western Marxism

一、肯定与否定：苏联马克思主义与早期西方马克思主义有关“机械化”的对立态度

After Marx and Engels, Lenin was among the first to pay attention to the issue of machine application. Based on the actual development of capitalism in Russia, he analyzed large-scale machine industry, pointing out that “large-scale machine industry is the highest peak of capitalism, the highest peak of its negative factors and ‘positive factors’.” [1]1 V. I. Lenin, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” *Collected Works*, Vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964), p. 503. On the one hand, large-scale machine industry concentrated all the dark sides of capitalism, with the polarization of society reaching its zenith; on the other hand, large-scale machine industry triggered a thorough transformation of technology, restructuring production on a new rational basis, regulating production in a planned manner, and exercising social supervision over production. Although Lenin objectively pointed out the positive and negative factors of large-scale machine industry, given the domestic need at the time for the rapid recovery and development of mechanized large-scale production, he still emphasized the historical progressive significance of large-scale machine industry.

在马克思和恩格斯之后，列宁较早地关注到了机器应用的问题，他以俄国资本主义的现实发展为依据，对大机器工业展开分析，指出“大机器工业是资本主义的最高峰，是它的消极因素和‘积极因素’的最高峰”。一方面，大机器工业集中了资本主义的一切黑暗面，社会的两极对立达到顶点；另一方面，大机器工业引发了技术的彻底变革，在新的合理的基础上改造生产，有计划地调节生产并对生产进行社会监督。虽然列宁客观地指出了机器大工业的积极因素和消极因素，但鉴于当时国内需要快速恢复和发展机械化大生产，他还是着重强调了机器大工业的历史进步意义。

In the 1930s, Soviet scholars, in the process of interpreting the thought of Marx and Engels, formed a “textbook”-style interpretation of principles. In their research on the theory of the machine, they relied on Marx’s classic formulation in *The Poverty of Philosophy* — “the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill gives you society with the industrial capitalist” — and the distinction in *Capital* between “the machine” and “the capitalist application of the machine” (the contradiction and antagonism do not arise from the machine itself, but from its capitalist application), making the following judgments regarding the essence of the machine and the historical significance of machine technology.

1930年代，苏联学者在阐释马克思恩格斯思想的过程中形成了一种“教科书”式的原理解读。在机器论的研究方面，他们依据马克思在《哲学的贫困》中的经典表述，即“手推磨产生的是封建主的社会，蒸汽磨产生的是工业资本家的社会”，以及《资本论》中对“机器”与“机器的资本主义应用”的区分（矛盾和对抗不是从机器本身产生的，而是从机器的资本主义应用产生的，就机器的本质和机器技术的历史意义作出如下判断。

First, the development of machine technology signifies a certain level of social productive forces, and the level of productive forces in a given historical period determines the social relations of production and labor relations of that period. The development of social productive forces, symbolized by machinery, inevitably leads to changes in specific social relations. For example, Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin believed that technical equipment, that is, a certain system of social labor tools, is a precise material indicator of the relationship between society and nature, reflecting society’s material productive forces and social labor productivity, and that the technical equipment of a specific society determines its labor relations. This understanding is a typical example of the technological determinism of Soviet Marxism.

第一，机器技术的发展标志着一定的社会生产力水平，而一定历史时期的生产力水平决定了这一时期社会的生产关系和劳动关系，以机器为表征的社会生产力的发展必然引起特定社会关系的变革。例如，尼古拉·伊万诺维奇·布哈林就认为，技术装备，即一定的社会劳动工具体系，是社会与自然界相互关系的精确的物质标志，反映了社会的物质生产力和社会劳动生产率，特定社会的技术装备决定了这个社会的劳动关系。这种理解是典型的苏联马克思主义技术决定论的观点。

Second, machine technology, as a means and tool, is itself neutral; the negative consequences of machine application actually stem from the specific social system of capitalism. Machine technology is a necessary means and material foundation for social development and liberation. The task of socialism is to transform the social system while preserving and utilizing the material and technical foundation already developed under capitalism. The early industrialization of the Soviet Union was precisely a practice of this principle, with Stalin and others advocating for the focused development of large-scale machine industry. Moreover, forms of production organization adapted to large-scale machine industry, such as management methods like Taylorism, were also introduced into socialist industrial practice.

第二，机器技术作为一种手段和工具，其本身是中立的，机器应用的负面后果实际上来自于资本主义这一特定的社会制度。机器技术是社会发展和解放的必要手段和物质基础，社会主义的任务在于变革社会制度，保留和利用已在资本主义社会中发展起来的物质技术基础。苏联早期的工业化建设正是对这一原理的实践，斯大林等人主张重点发展机器大工业。不仅如此，与机器大工业相适应的生产组织形式，如泰勒制等管理方式，也被引入社会主义工业实践中。

In contrast to the generally affirmative attitude of Soviet Marxism toward large-scale machine industry, early Western Marxist theorists in the 1920s developed another interpretation of Marx’s theory of the machine, focusing on the negative impact of technology on humanity in advanced capitalist societies.

与苏联马克思主义对机器大工业总体上的肯定态度不同，1920年代早期的西方马克思主义理论家针对发达资本主义社会中技术给人类带来的负面影响，发展出了对马克思机器理论的另一种解读。

In his book *History and Class Consciousness*, Georg Lukács proposed the theory of reification. This theory, starting from Marx’s method, i.e., dialectics, regards the machine as a “phenomenon” in the economic development process, a specific social fact. Lukács pointed out that the understanding of the individual phenomenon of “the machine” must be placed within the “totality,” proceeding from the overall process of historical reality. Otherwise, the examination of the machine remains merely a description of the facticity of the individual phenomenon itself. The former is Marx’s exposition of the machine, while the latter is the approach of bourgeois economics. Lukács further elaborated on the capitalist process of “rationalization” based on mechanization, criticizing the capitalist phenomenon of reification. He believed that the development of the labor process from handicrafts, through cooperation and manufacture, to machine industry is a process of “the continuous increase of rationalization, the continuous elimination of the qualitative characteristics of the worker, i.e., the individual characteristics of the human person.” Ultimately, humans are continuously reified in both production and social life.

格奥尔格·卢卡奇在《历史与阶级意识》一书中提出了物化理论，这一理论从马克思的方法即辩证法出发，将机器视为经济发展过程中的一种“现象”，一个特定的社会事实。卢卡奇指出，对“机器”这一个别现象的认识要放在“总体”之中，从历史现实的整体过程出发，否则，对机器的考察始终只是对个别现象的事实性本身的描述，前者是马克思对机器的阐述，后者则是资产阶级经济学的做法。卢卡奇进一步阐述了以机械化为基础的资本主义“合理化”进程，批判了资本主义的物化现象。他认为，劳动过程从手工业经过协作、手工工场到机器工业的发展，是“合理化不断增加，工人的质的特性、即人的个体的特性越来越被消除”的过程。最终，人在生产和社会生活中都将被不断物化。

Following Lukács, the Frankfurt School, along the lines of reification theory, launched a more intense critique of technological domination in advanced industrial society. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno pointed out that in advanced industrial society, the machine has become a reified form of thought. “Where the development of the machine has turned into the control of the machine, the tendencies of technology and social development always intertwine, ultimately leading to the total grasp of the human being.” [2]2 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, *Dialectic of Enlightenment*, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1972), p. 35. Herbert Marcuse agreed with Marx’s prediction of automation as an “explosive prospect.” He believed that, based on Marx’s analysis, the continuous expansion of automation signifies not only a quantitative increase in productive forces but also a qualitative change. “The reification of human labor power, pushed to its extreme, will shatter this reified form by severing the chain that links the individual to the machine.” [3]3 Herbert Marcuse, *One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society* (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), p. 35. However, in advanced industrial society, “the inexorable fact that the machine’s material power surpasses the physical strength of any individual or any specific group makes the machine the most effective political tool of any society whose basic structure is the machine production process.” [4]4 Ibid., p. 3. This shows that Marx’s original vision is being transformed into the technological reality of a new type of domination and enslavement in advanced industrial society, where the machine remains a mechanical system that turns human labor into something that enslaves humans themselves.

在卢卡奇之后，法兰克福学派沿着物化理论的思路对发达工业社会的技术统治展开了更为激烈的批判。马克斯·霍克海默和西奥多·阿多诺指出，在发达的工业社会中，机器已经成为思想的物化形式，“在机器发展已经转化为机器控制的地方，技术和社会的发展趋向总是相互交织在一起，最后导致的是对人的总体把握”。赫伯特·马尔库塞认同马克思对自动化作为“爆炸性前景”的预测。他认为，基于马克思的分析，自动化的不断扩大不仅意味着生产力的量的增长，也代表着一种质变，“被推向极端的人的劳动力的物化，将通过割断把个人与机器联在一起的链环而砸碎这种物化形式”。但是，在发达工业社会，“机器在物质上的威力超过个人的以及任何特定群体的体力这一无情的事实，使得机器成为任何以机器生产程序为基本结构的社会的最有效的政治工具”。这说明，马克思当初的设想正转变为发达工业社会新型统治和奴役的技术现实，机器仍是使人的劳动成为反过来奴役人自身的机械系统。

The affirmative attitude of Soviet Marxism toward large-scale machine industry stands in stark contrast to the reflection of early Western Marxism on the “progressive” connotation of machine technology. The latter’s development of Marx’s theory of the machine adheres to the following basic judgment: the machine itself is not neutral; machine technology carries specific social values. Upon entering advanced industrial society, science and technology become a new form of domination, and the machine has evolved into a political tool. In fact, the reason early Marxist research presented two seemingly opposing attitudes on the issue of the machine lies in the fundamental differences in their respective theoretical perspectives and methods: Soviet Marxism regarded the “machine” as a mere technical means, confining the concept of “machine” within the scope of productive forces for discussion, generally affirming its positive role and progressive significance; early Western Marxism, on the other hand, regarded the “machine” as a specific historical phenomenon of capitalism, grasping the concept of “machine” within the scope of social relations, where the machine is no longer just a material entity but acquires symbolic connotations. Compared with Soviet Marxism, early Western Marxism developed the negative aspect of Marx’s theory of the machine.

苏联马克思主义对机器大工业的肯定态度与早期西方马克思主义对机器技术的“进步”内涵的反思形成鲜明对比，后者对马克思机器理论的发展坚持以下基本判断：机器本身并非是中立的，机器技术负载着特定的社会价值。进入发达工业社会之后，科学技术成为一种新型的统治，而机器也已演变成一种政治工具。实际上，早期马克思主义研究之所以在机器问题上呈现出两种看似对立的态度，在于其各自理论视角和方法的根本不同：苏联马克思主义视“机器”为一种单纯的技术手段，将“机器”概念限定在生产力范围内加以讨论，总体上肯定了机器的积极作用和进步意义；早期西方马克思主义则视“机器”为资本主义的一种特定历史现象，在社会关系范围内对“机器”概念加以把握，机器不再只是一种物质实体，而是具有了象征性内涵。与苏联马克思主义相比，早期西方马克思主义发展了马克思机器论的否定方面。

II. Control and Liberation: The Pluralistic Positions on “Automation” in Labor Process Theory and Autonomous Marxism

二、控制与解放：劳动过程理论和自治主义的马克思主义关于“自动化”的多元立场

After the 1950s, the new scientific-technological revolution developed rapidly, and factors such as information, knowledge, and management played an increasingly important role in material production practice, giving social production a new appearance under the conditions of new science and technology. In the second half of the 20th century, the labor process theory in the United States and the autonomist Marxism in Italy critically analyzed the monopoly “new” capitalist mode of production and the new problems of capitalist machine application contained within it. The former sought to reveal the control of automated machines over workers, while the latter sought to elucidate the possibility of liberation for the laboring subject through automated machines.

1950年代以后，新科学技术革命迅速发展，信息、知识、管理等要素在物质生产实践中愈发重要的作用使社会生产在新的科学技术条件下拥有了新的面貌。20世纪下半叶，美国的劳动过程理论以及意大利的自治主义的马克思主义对垄断“新型”资本主义生产方式及其所包含的资本主义机器应用的新问题进行了批判分析，前者力图揭示自动化机器对劳动者的控制，后者力图阐明自动化机器之于劳动主体的解放可能。

Harry Braverman is a representative figure of Western labor process theory. His book *Labor and Monopoly Capital* had a significant impact on Marxist scholarship in the second half of the 20th century. As Andrew Feenberg stated, Marx’s method was “reborn through labor process theory.” Braverman examined the actual production process during the period of monopoly capitalism and pointed out that, in the new stage of scientific-technological development, the essence of the labor process under the conditions of capital had not changed. In his view, besides the technical function of increasing labor productivity, machines also “under the capitalist system have the function of making the mass of workers unable to control their own labor.” With the spread of machine application to places such as offices, capital’s control over production and labor, achieved through machines, deepened further, expanding from within the factory to broader fields. However, Braverman explicitly opposed mechanical technological determinism. He argued that specific technologies are intrinsically linked to specific social relations, maintaining that “we must by no means simply accept what the designers, owners, and managers of machines tell us about machines, but must make our own independent evaluation of machines and modern industry in the factory and the office.” Braverman was also among the first scholars to examine numerical control. In the 1960s, most machines adopted the form of numerical control, meaning that the machine’s technological process was handed over to another component, which received external instructions, converted information into signals to start the power unit, and controlled the entire mechanical process. Thus, control over the machine was transferred to the machine itself, the degree of automation in the production process deepened further, and the skills and knowledge workers needed to master became fewer and fewer, leading to a general devaluation of labor power. The application of numerically controlled machines made the labor process more “complex” than in the past, but the workers’ abilities and knowledge did not increase accordingly; instead, they were continuously simplified. The “deskilling” process revealed by Marx was still occurring. Braverman’s conclusion was consistent with Marx’s: the more complex the machine, as a product of human intelligence, the less workers can control and understand it, and the more science is incorporated into the labor process, the less workers understand that process.

哈里·布雷弗曼是西方劳动过程理论的代表人物，他的《劳动与垄断资本》一书在20世纪下半叶的马克思主义学界产生了重要影响。如安德鲁·芬伯格（Andrew Feenberg）所言，马克思的方法通过“劳动过程理论获得了新生”。布雷弗曼考察了垄断资本主义时期的现实生产过程并指出，在科学技术发展的新阶段，资本条件下劳动过程的本质并未改变。在他看来，机器除了具有提高劳动生产率的技术职能之外，“在资本主义制度下还具有使工人群众不能控制他们自己的劳动的职能”。随着机器应用在办公室等场所的普及，资本借由机器完成的对生产和劳动的控制进一步深化，由工厂内部扩展至更广阔的领域。但是，布雷弗曼明确反对机械的技术决定论，他主张特定的技术与一定的社会关系是内在关联的，认为“切不可简单地接受机器的设计者、所有者和经纪人员告诉我们的关于机器的话，而必须在工厂里和办公室里对机器和现代工业作出自己的独立的评价”。布雷弗曼也是最早一批考察数字控制的学者之一。1960年代，多数机器都采取了数字控制的形式，这意味着机器的工艺过程交由另一个部件控制，该部件接受外在的指令，将信息转化为信号来开动动力装置并控制整个机械过程。由此，对机器的控制被转交给机器本身，生产过程的自动化程度进一步加深，而劳动者所需掌握的技能和知识则越来越少，劳动力普遍贬值。数控机器的应用使劳动过程比过去更加“复杂”，但工人的能力和知识并未随之提高，而是不断被简化，马克思揭示的“去技能化”过程仍在发生。布雷弗曼与马克思的结论是一致的，即认为作为人的智力产物的机器越是复杂，工人就越不能控制和理解这种机器，而科学越是被纳入劳动过程之中，工人也就越不了解这种过程。

Following Braverman’s path, the American scholar David Noble, in his book *Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation*, examined in detail the history of the development of automation technology in American society, reiterating a fundamental proposition from *Capital*: “The instrument of labor is not only a measure of the development of human labor power but also an indicator of the social relations through which labor is carried out.” By tracing the changes in the design and use of automated control machine tools, Noble discovered that specific social powers influence and determine the ideas in inventors’ minds, all the way through to the entire process of workshop production. The capitalist system intervenes in the choices of scientific researchers in an unobtrusive way. “This criterion is deeply embedded in the engineer’s ‘craft’ and determines the design path from the very beginning—the engineer himself is not even aware of it.” Capital’s choice of numerical control technology confirms this. The application of numerically controlled machines reduced the influence of skilled workers on production and effectively lowered the risk of workers interrupting the production process. The problems of capital’s valorization process were thereby resolved, while workers were further deprived of control over the production process. Thus, numerical control technology actually emerged as a huge advantage and technical solution for capital. Consequently, labor process theory challenged a popular view of technology: the typical capitalist “machine” ideology holds that the development of machines follows solely the internal logic of technology, a view that severs the intrinsic connection between specific technological choices and specific social relations. As Noble stated, abstractly discussing the competition between humans and machines while distancing oneself from the struggle between labor and capital causes the capital logic behind “technological progress” to be overlooked, and “it precisely confuses and obscures the more serious issues of control and power.”

沿着布雷弗曼的路径，美国学者戴维·诺布尔在《生产力：工业自动化的社会史》一书中详细考察了美国社会自动化技术的发展史，重申了《资本论》中的一个基本主张：“劳动资料不仅是人类劳动力发展的测量器，而且是劳动借以进行的社会关系的指示器。”通过追踪自动化控制机床的设计和用途的变迁过程，诺布尔发现，特定的社会权力影响并决定着发明者头脑中的观念，直至车间生产的全部过程，资本主义制度正以一种不明显的方式干预科研人员的选择。“这种准则深深地蕴含在工程师的‘手艺’之中，并从一开始就决定了设计路线——工程师本人甚至都没有意识到这一点。”资本对数字控制技术的选择印证了这一点。数控机器的应用减少了熟练技工对生产的影响，并有效降低了工人打断生产过程的风险，资本价值增殖过程中的问题借此得到解决，工人则被进一步剥夺了对生产过程的控制权。因此，数控技术实际上是作为资本的一种巨大优势和技术方案而出现的。由此，劳动过程理论向一种流行的技术观提出了质疑，即典型的资本主义“机器”意识形态认为机器的发展仅仅依据技术的内在逻辑，这种观点割裂了特定的技术选择与特定的社会关系之间的内在关联。如诺布尔所言，远离劳动与资本的斗争而抽象地谈论人与机器的竞争，使得“技术进步”背后的资本逻辑被忽视，而“它恰恰混淆并掩盖了更为严重的有关控制和权力的问题”。

Unlike labor process theory’s emphasis on the control imposed on workers by automated machines, Italian autonomist Marxism focuses on the latest developments in “immaterial labor” and informational production under the conditions of the new scientific-technological revolution, emphasizing the possibilities that the application of automated machines creates for the revolutionary action and liberation of the laboring subject. Its analysis is carried out through three levels.

不同于劳动过程理论对自动化机器强加于工人身上的控制的强调，意大利自治主义的马克思主义着眼于新科学技术条件下“非物质劳动”和信息化生产的最新发展，强调自动化机器的应用为劳动主体的革命行动和解放创造了可能。其分析通过三个层面完成。

First, it confirms the development in the contemporary era of what Marx called the “general intellect,” arguing that this development creates the conditions for redefining the value of labor. In the *Grundrisse*, Marx pointed out a developmental trend in capitalist society: with the development of fixed capital, “general social knowledge” becomes a “direct force of production,” and the conditions of the social life process itself “come under the control of the general intellect and are transformed in accordance with it.” In Marx’s view, the machine is essentially “objectified knowledge power.” This means that, with the development of the automated machine system itself, the “general intellect” will also become a reality in the development of the information society and the knowledge economy. In this regard, Hardt and Negri argue that although the emergence of the general intellect does not directly lead to the complete liberation of human labor, and contemporary scientific-technological labor and knowledge production are still, to a certain extent, under the domination of the logic of capital, the development of the “general intellect” provides a real basis for redefining the connotation of labor and thereby subverting the existing determination of the value of labor power. In their view, the general intellect is a collective, social intelligence created by accumulated knowledge, skills, and techniques. “The value of labor is thus realized by a new universal and concrete labor power through its appropriation and free use of the new forces of production. What Marx saw as the future is our era. This radical transformation of labor power and the incorporation of science, communication, and language into the forces of production have already redefined the entire phenomenology of labor and the global landscape of production.”

第一，确认了由马克思提出的“一般智力”（general intellect）在当代的发展，认为这一发展为重新定义劳动的价值创造了条件。马克思在《政治经济学批判大纲》中指出了资本主义社会的一种发展趋势，即随着固定资本的发展，“一般社会知识”将变成“直接的生产力”，社会生活过程的条件本身“受到一般智力的控制并按照这种智力得到改造”。在马克思看来，机器本质上是“对象化的知识力量”，这意味着，随着自动化机器体系本身的发展，“一般智力”也将在信息社会和知识经济发展中成为现实。对此，哈特和奈格里认为，尽管一般智力的出现并不直接导致人类劳动的彻底解放，当代的科技劳动和知识生产在一定程度上仍处于资本逻辑的支配之下，但是“一般智力”的发展为重新定义劳动的内涵、从而颠覆现有的劳动力价值规定提供了现实基础。在他们看来，一般智力是由累积起来的知识、技能和技巧所创造出的一种集体的、社会的智力。“劳动的价值由此被一种新的普遍而具体的劳动力经过占用及自由使用新型生产力加以实现。马克思所视为未来的正是我们的时代。劳动力的这种激烈的转换和将科学、交流与语言融入生产力的行为业已重新定义了整个劳动的现象学和全世界的生产景象。”

Second, it is proposed that “immaterial labour” has become a new mode of labour in the information age, holding significant implications for the revolutionary action and liberation of the labouring subject. With the development of the computer and information revolution, the degree of automation and computerisation in production has deepened continuously, and the capitalist mode of production has gradually shifted from large-scale, standardised production such as Taylorism and Fordism towards a post-Fordist mode of production. Negri argues that in the new mode of production, it is no longer homogeneous, standardised, fragmented labour that predominates, but rather capacities such as affect, communication, and cooperation that play a major role as core elements of the new mode of labour production. This is “immaterial labour” in the service sector based on the continuous exchange of information and knowledge, which “produces an immaterial commodity, such as a service, a cultural product, knowledge, or communication”. [6]6 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, *Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire* (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), p. 108. Formerly, workers acted like machines centred on the factory, whereas today people think like computers; communication technologies and their modes of interaction increasingly become the centre of living labour, and continuous interaction has become a universal characteristic of contemporary productive activity. This means that labour practice has been transformed; capital increasingly requires more advanced capacities of the labour force and devotes itself to incorporating these capacities into capital’s own valorisation mechanism. At the same time, the labouring subject also generates a collective productive force characterised by autonomy, cooperation, and creativity. In this sense, although the development of “general intellect” has not directly brought about the collapse of capitalism, it enables the labouring subject to exert its own power in the sense of “reappropriating objectified labour”.

第二，提出“非物质劳动”已成为信息时代的新型劳动方式，对劳动主体的革命行动和解放具有重要意义。随着计算机和信息革命的发展，生产的自动化和计算化程度不断加深，资本主义生产方式已经从泰勒制和福特制等大规模、标准化的生产逐渐转向一种后福特制的生产方式。奈格里认为，在新的生产方式中，不再是同质的、标准化的、分解了的劳动占主导地位，而是情感、交流、合作等能力作为新的劳动生产方式的核心要素发挥主要作用，这就是以信息和知识的持续交换为基础的服务部门中的“非物质劳动”，它“生产一种非物质商品的劳动，如一种服务，一个文化产品、知识或交流”。以前的工人以工厂为中心像机器一样活动，而如今的人们像计算机一样思考，通讯技术及其互动模式日益成为活劳动的中心，持续的互动成为当代生产活动的一个普遍特点。这意味着，劳动实践已经得到改造，资本越来越需要劳动力的更加高级的能力，并致力于将这些能力纳入资本自身的价值增殖机制。与此同时，劳动主体也生发出一种自主性、合作性、创造性的集体生产力。在这个意义上，尽管“一般智力”的发展并未直接带来资本主义的崩溃，却能够使劳动主体在“重新占有对象化劳动”的意义上施展自身的力量。

Third, it is argued that the rule of capital in the information age follows the logic of “biopolitics”. This new form of exploitation encompasses both a deep subsumption of the subject and the possibility of the subject’s awakening and subversion. For Hardt and Negri, the scientific, affective, and linguistic powers of the multitude are profoundly altering the conditions of social production; “ecological power” becomes a medium of production, and the forces of contemporary capitalist production are in fact entirely “biopolitical”. Exploitation, or the subsumption of labour by capital, no longer manifests merely as the incorporation of the worker’s abstract, one-sided labour into capital’s own valorisation process, but rather as the incorporation of the worker’s entire life into the logic of capital’s own reproduction. Thus, capital produces not only commodities but also subjectivity. However, if every production of subjectivity by capital implies a deeper control over the labouring subject, then while workers suffer a greater degree of exploitation, they also possess more possibilities for subverting capitalist production. Because humans and machines are more closely integrated, labourers can achieve an “escape” (fleeing capitalist control) together with machines: “the multitude not only uses machines to produce, but itself becomes increasingly mechanised, while the mode of production is continuously incorporated into the brains and bodies of the multitude.” [7]7 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, *Empire* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 364. Autonomism sees capital exercising comprehensive control and real subsumption over workers through new technological conditions, but it places greater emphasis on the significance of labour’s resistance to capital for liberation, for only when the labouring subject becomes aware of the development of its own capacities and uses this collective productive force to struggle against capital can it truly achieve the subversion of capitalism.

第三，主张信息时代的资本统治遵循“生命政治”的逻辑。这种新型的剥削形式既包含对主体的深度吸纳，也包含着主体觉醒和颠覆的可能性。在哈特和奈格里看来，民众的科学、情感和语言的力量正强烈地改变着社会生产的条件，“生态力量”成为一种生产的中介，当今资本主义生产的力量事实上全是“生态政治”的。剥削，或者说资本对劳动的吸纳，不再仅仅表现为将工人的抽象的、片面的劳动纳入自身价值增殖过程中，而是将工人的整个生命吸纳到自身再生产的逻辑之中，由此，资本生产出来的不仅是商品，而且是主体性。但是，如果说资本的每一次主体性生产都意味着对劳动主体更深度的管控，那么工人在遭受更大程度的剥削的同时也具有了颠覆资本主义生产的更多可能性。由于人与机器更紧密地结合在一起，劳动者可以实现与机器的一同“出逃”（逃离资本主义的控制），“民众不仅使用机器来生产，而且自身变得愈加机械化，同时生产方式不断地被融入民众的大脑与身体之中。自治主义看到了资本借由新的技术条件对工人实行全面的管控和真正吸纳，但更加强调劳动对资本的反抗之于解放的意义，因为只有劳动主体意识到自身能力的发展，并利用这种集体性的生产力量与资本作斗争，才有可能真正实现对资本主义的颠覆。

III. Reform and Transcendence: The Different Paths of Accelerationist Theory and Interpreting Machine Theory in Response to “Digitalisation”

三、改良与超越：加速主义理论和解释机器理论针对“数字化”的不同路

The machine theories of the latter half of the 20th century, due to their historical context, focused their attention on the field of industrial production, lacking an adequate response to the rapidly developing digital technologies of the 21st century and the myth of artificial intelligence they have generated. It is precisely this point that has confronted contemporary capitalist critique with new theoretical difficulties. In response, contemporary Western left accelerationist theory and the “interpreting machine” theory of British New Left scholar Larry Lohmann, [8]8 Larry Lohmann is a British scholar associated with the New Left and a critic of neoliberal economics and technology, known for his work on the political economy of knowledge and the environment. addressing the new developments of digital technology and intelligent machines under neoliberalism and the corresponding digital contradictions of capitalism, grasp the intrinsic connection between technological change and social development in the New Era from the perspectives of the acceleration of productive forces and the critique of relations of production, respectively.

20世纪下半叶的机器理论因其时代性而把关注重点放到工业生产领域，对21世纪快速发展起来的数字技术及其带来的人工智能神话缺乏充分的回应，而正是这一点使当代资本主义批判遇到了新的理论难题。对此，当代西方左翼加速主义理论和英国新左翼学者拉里·罗曼的“解释机器”理论针对新自由主义背景下数字技术和智能机器的新发展，以及相应的资本主义数字化矛盾，分别从生产力加速和生产关系批判的角度把握了新时代技术变革与社会发展之间的内在关联。

Accelerationist theory germinated in the 1970s from the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and others, built upon the prosperous capitalist economy of the post-war period and the neoliberal wave in Western capitalist societies beginning in the 1990s. It advocates for the transition to post-capitalism by developing technological productive forces within the framework of the capitalist system. Its representative text is the *Accelerationist Political Manifesto* (2013) co-authored by Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek. [9]9 Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek, “#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics,” in *#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader*, ed. Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2014), pp. 347-362. Upon its publication, the manifesto sparked considerable debate within Marxist academic circles. In the view of accelerationist scholars, Marx is a “quintessential accelerationist thinker”. To achieve the transition to a post-capitalist society, one should return to the basic historical materialist position that productive forces determine relations of production and that the development of productive forces will ultimately break through the fetters of capitalist relations of production. This involves shifting from criticising technology to embracing technology, unleashing the maximum potential of modern science and technology within the existing capitalist system, and achieving the ultimate goal of surpassing capitalism by vigorously promoting the development of productive forces. As a theoretical support, they also cite Lenin’s assertion in *“Left-Wing” Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality*: “Without large-scale capitalist technology built on the latest achievements of modern science… socialism is inconceivable.” [10]10 V. I. Lenin, *“Left-Wing” Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality* (1918), in which Lenin argued that socialism must inherit and build upon the technological and organisational achievements of advanced capitalism.

加速主义理论萌芽于1970年代吉尔·德勒兹等人的相关思想，建基于战后繁荣的资本主义经济和始于1990年代西方资本主义社会的新自由主义浪潮，主张通过发展资本主义制度框架内的技术生产力来实现向后资本主义的过渡，其代表性文本见于2013年由阿列克斯·威廉姆斯和尼克·斯尔尼塞克合著的《加速主义政治宣言》一文。该文一经发表，便引发了马克思主义学界的诸多讨论。在加速主义学者看来，马克思是一位“典型的加速主义思想家”，要实现向后资本主义社会的转变，应当回到马克思主义关于生产力决定生产关系、生产力的发展终将突破资本主义生产关系的桎梏这一历史唯物主义的基本立场，从批判技术转向拥抱技术，在既有的资本主义制度下释放现代科学技术的最大潜能，通过大力推动生产力发展实现超越资本主义的最终目标。作为一种理论支撑，他们还援引了列宁在《论“左派”幼稚性和小资产阶级性》一文中的论断，即“没有建筑在现代科学最新成就基础上的大资本主义技术……社会主义就无从设想”。

In the accelerationist view, the traditional strategy of Western leftists resisting capitalism by boycotting modern technology has become ineffective. The new strategy for surpassing capitalism should not directly confront the existing capitalist economic structure but should instead regard the liberatory potential of digital technology and its productive forces, which have already grown enormously within the established capitalist framework, as the basis and hope for change. Capitalism itself, as an obstacle, limits the development of technological change. To break through this obstacle, one can only fully promote the modern productive forces developed under these conditions. Thus, accelerationism advocates distinguishing between technology itself and its specific applications, proposing that to achieve the redemocratisation of technology, a radical political stance must be adopted to transform the way the existing economic base controls digital technology. The specific measures and pathways envisioned by accelerationism include: seizing technological leadership of material platforms, establishing public digital platforms relying on government, expanding democratic participation in technological research and development, and collectively controlling the distribution of data resources.

在加速主义看来，传统的西方左翼通过抵制现代技术来反抗资本主义的传统策略已经失效，超越资本主义的新策略不应该直接对抗已有的资本主义经济结构，而应将在既定的资本主义框架下已经极大成长起来的数字技术及其生产力的解放潜能视为变革的基础和希望。资本主义本身作为一种障碍限制了技术变革的发展，要突破这一障碍，只能全力推动在此条件下发展起来的现代生产力。由此，加速主义主张区分技术本身与技术的特定应用，提出要实现对技术的重新民主化利用必须采取一种激进的政治立场，以转变现有经济基础对数字技术的控制方式。加速主义设想的具体措施和途径包括：夺取物质平台的技术领导权，依托政府建立公共数字平台，扩大技术研发的民主参与，集体控制数据资源分配，等等。

Following this line of thought, Williams and Srnicek, in their later works *Inventing the Future* and *Platform Capitalism*, examine and analyse digital capitalism, continuing their accelerationist propositions. Contemporary left accelerationism draws important theoretical resources from Marx’s *Grundrisse*. [11]11 The *Grundrisse* is a series of notebooks written by Karl Marx in 1857-1858, containing extensive drafts on political economy, including the famous “Fragment on Machines” which discusses the role of technology and general intellect in capitalist development. Arman Avanessian and Robin Mackay even regard the “Fragment on Machines” in the *Grundrisse* as Marx’s “most openly accelerationist work”. [12]12 Armen Avanessian and Robin Mackay, “Introduction,” in *#Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader*, p. 7. By drawing on Marx’s argument in the “Fragment on Machines” that “general intellect” becomes a direct productive force, leading to the collapse of the capitalist value system, accelerationism finds a theoretical basis for its analysis of digital contradictions and its critique of platform capitalism. It argues that digital capitalism and its latest form, platform capitalism, have driven a new round of capital accumulation and achieved the exploitation of new forms of labour such as “digital labour”. Accelerationists keenly perceive that the real subsumption of labour under capital in the digital economy is deepening day by day, which harbours a new round of capitalist economic crisis brought about by the application of digital technology. Accelerationism confirms the importance of the reproduction of capitalist relations of production through the digital paradox, but its basic proposition lies in accelerating the transcendence of capitalism by developing digital productive forces under the existing social relations of production.

沿着这一思路，威廉姆斯和斯尔尼塞克在其后来的著作《发明未来》和《平台资本主义》中考察并分析了数字资本主义，延续了其加速主义的主张。当代左翼加速主义从马克思的《政治经济学批判大纲》中汲取了重要的理论资源。阿尔曼·阿瓦内森和罗宾·麦凯更是将《政治经济学批判大纲》中的“机器论片段”视为马克思“最为公开的加速主义著作”。借助马克思在“机器论片段”中有关“一般智力”成为直接生产力从而导致资本主义价值体系崩溃的论点，加速主义为其数字化矛盾分析和平台资本主义批判找到了理论依据，认为数字资本主义及其最新形式平台资本主义推动了资本的新一轮积累并实现了对诸如“数字劳动”等新型劳动形式的剥削。他们敏锐地发现了数字经济领域内劳动对资本的实际从属程度正日益加深，其中蕴含了由数字技术应用带来的新一轮资本主义经济危机。加速主义通过数字悖论确认了资本主义生产关系再生产的重要性，但其基本主张在于通过发展既定社会生产关系下的数字生产力来加速实现对资本主义的超越。

If accelerationism advocates surpassing capitalism by accelerating the development of productive forces, thereby responding to the myth of artificial intelligence in digital capitalism, then Lohmann’s interpreting machine theory, from the perspective of the critique of relations of production, elaborates on the capital logic behind the myth of artificial intelligence and the new forms of expression of capital’s inherent contradictions in the digital age.

如果说加速主义主张通过加速生产力的发展来超越资本主义，以回应数字资本主义的人工智能神话，那么罗曼的解释机器理论则从生产关系批判的角度出发阐述了人工智能神话背后的资本逻辑及资本的内在矛盾在数字时代的新表现形式。

As a scholar of the new generation of the British New Left, Roman’s purpose in thinking about artificial intelligence is not to prove the legitimacy of contemporary capitalism, but to stand on the Marxist critique of capitalism and reflect on the similarities and differences between today’s digital age and the industrial age in which Marx lived, thereby revealing the capitalist nature of the current digital age and the essence of capital’s exploitation of the working class concealed under the discourse of artificial intelligence. Since the Industrial Revolution, “intelligence” has been regarded as a property embodied solely in machines, divorced from workers. Such a bias leads to the continuous neglect of the intellectual elements of the proletariat and the rationalization of social surveillance. The mainstream ideology of political economy even sets the intelligence of machines (artificial intelligence) in opposition to human intelligence (human intelligence), arguing that the development of artificial intelligence will cause the gap between the two to widen continuously. In reality, from a Marxist perspective, machines are fundamentally the objectified essential power of human beings, the external extension of the human brain and hands. As a technological existence, humanity must always manifest its own cognitive and expressive abilities through various artifacts. In Roman’s view, the “artificial intelligence” of the 21st century is the mechanization of human interpretive ability; although it is no longer the mechanization of manual operations, it remains the decomposition and recombination of inherent human skills. Therefore, compared with the “industrial machines” of the industrial age, Roman creatively uses “interpreting machines” to replace the concept of “artificial intelligence,” revealing the continuity between the industrial age and the intelligent age.

作为英国新左翼的新生代学者，罗曼思考人工智能的目的，不是为当代资本主义的合法性作证明，而是站在马克思资本主义批判的立场上反思当今数字时代与马克思所处工业时代的异同，以揭示当今数字时代的资本主义性质以及人工智能话语下掩盖的资本对工人阶级的剥削实质。工业革命以来，“智能”（intelligence）一直被视为脱离工人而仅仅体现在机器之中的属性。这样的偏见导致无产阶级的智力要素被持续无视，社会监控被合理化。主流的政治经济学意识形态更是将机器的智能（人工智能）与人类的智力（人类智能）对立起来，认为人工智能的发展将导致二者之间的差距不断扩大。实际上，从马克思主义的观点来看，机器根本上是人的对象化本质力量，是人脑和人手的外部延伸。作为一种技术性存在，人类始终要通过各种人造物来展现自身的认知和表达能力。在罗曼看来，21世纪的“人工智能”是对人的解释能力的机械化，尽管它不再是对人手操作的机械化，却依旧是对人类固有技能的分解与重组。因此，相比于工业时代的“工业机器”，罗曼创造性地使用“解释机器”取代“人工智能”概念，揭示了工业时代和智能时代的连续性。

On the one hand, Roman fully affirms the positive significance of the development of artificial intelligence for humanity’s ability to interpret the world. Human interpretive skills are divided into multiple types, possessing cognitive, symbolic, and emotional connotations; they not only function in daily activities but also constitute the core elements of living labor. Over the past decade, human interpretive abilities have been automated to varying degrees, such as facial and speech recognition, Google Translate programs, global positioning systems, and machine learning programs. With the widespread application of these technologies, interpreting machines have been defined as a new kind of “infrastructure,” becoming a new mechanism for enhancing global capitalist activity.

一方面，罗曼充分肯定了人工智能发展对于人类解释世界能力的积极意义。人的解释技巧分为多种类型，具有认知、象征、情感的内涵，不仅在日常活动中发挥作用，也构成活劳动的核心要素。在过去10年里，人类的解释能力在不同程度上实现了自动化，如面部语音识别、谷歌翻译程序、全球定位系统、机器学习程序等。随着这些技术的广泛应用，解释机器被定义为一种新的“基础设施”，成为增强全球资本主义活动的新机制。

On the other hand, Roman recognizes that the arrival of the digital age has not resolved any of the contradictions of the industrial age; rather, under the logic of capital, it has brought these inherent contradictions into the contemporary era. “Mechanization” has always been an important means of capitalist production. Early industrial machines advanced the division of labor, decomposing the overall skills of craftsmen into simpler, more controllable components, thereby enabling capitalists to purchase large quantities of low-skilled labor and reduce costs, while the price of labor power became relatively cheaper and easier to replace. The interpreting machines of the 21st century concentrate “intelligence” and its ownership into the hands of capital in the same way. The similarity between industrial machines and interpreting machines lies in the fact that neither imitates human activities nor replicates human skills; rather, they identify and isolate specific fragments of human behavior, then use the comprehensive “energy” of thermodynamic organization to amplify and replicate these fragments at high speed and repeatedly, producing a large volume of uniform output. This is the process by which capitalism fragments human activity and reinvigorates fragmented, stereotypical repetitive activities. At the same time, compared with traditional industrial machines, today’s interpreting machines (artificial intelligence) have not made living labor “obsolete.” Google Translate, like a spinning machine, also requires electrical power and generates large amounts of waste, both of which require additional human work to sustain. Therefore, it is entirely wrong to oppose interpreting machines to living labor.

另一方面，罗曼认识到数字时代的到来并没有解决工业时代的任何矛盾，而是在资本逻辑的主导下把这些固有的矛盾带到了当代。一直以来，“机械化”都是资本主义生产的重要手段。早期的工业机器推进了劳动分工，分解了工匠的整体技艺并将其转变为更简单可控的组件，由此资本家能够大量购买低技能劳动力并减少费用支出，而劳动力的价格则相对更便宜、更容易被替换。21世纪的解释机器以同样的方式使“智力”及其所有权被集中到资本手中。工业机器与解释机器之间的相似性在于，它们都不是模仿人类活动或复制人的技能，而是识别并分离出人类行为的特定片段，再利用热力学组织的综合“能量”高速、重复地放大和复制这些片段，以产生大量均匀的输出，这是资本主义分裂人类活动并使碎片化的刻板重复活动重新充满活力的过程。同时,比起传统的工业机器，今天的解释机器（人工智能）并没有让活劳动“过时”，谷歌翻译同纺纱机一样，也需要电力驱动并产生大量的废弃物，而这都需要额外的人类工作来支撑。因此，把解释机器与活劳动对立起来是完全错误的。

Roman’s theory of interpreting machines shows that under the new wave of interpretive mechanization, the inherent contradictions of capital remain unavoidable. Interpreting machines process vast amounts of data through artificial neural networks in an endless, energy-intensive manner, but this data itself is generated by labor-intensive processes continuously carried out around the world. By means of “deep learning” algorithms, fast processors, and advanced surveillance technologies, coupled with cheap thermodynamic energy, capital can directly collect more comprehensive interpretive skills from the global population at every moment, and by converting them into big data, add them to capital’s “profit elements.” No matter how capital defines workers’ skills and intelligence, with more machine applications and the consequent tendency for the rate of profit to fall, capital will generate demand for a larger quantity of living labor in another area of the system. From this perspective, the progress of interpreting machines (artificial intelligence) is not a step toward “full automation,” but rather embodies a more complex “heterogenization” strategy of capital, namely, extracting economic value from low-cost or free labor within computer-mediated networks. The mission of interpreting machines such as Facebook, Uber, and Google Translate under capitalist conditions is to increase the free living labor of users of the machines and conceal this unpaid labor, thereby creating a fetishism of artificial intelligence and an ideology of “full automation.”

罗曼的解释机器理论表明，在新一轮的解释机械化浪潮下，资本的内在矛盾依旧不可避免。解释机器通过人工神经网络对大量数据进行无休止的能源密集型处理，但这些数据本身是由世界各地不断进行的劳动密集型过程产生的。借助“深度学习”算法、快速处理器和先进的监控技术，配之以廉价的热力学能源，资本每时每刻都能直接收集全球人口更多的综合解释技能，并通过将其转化为大数据，把它们加入到资本的“利润元素”中。无论资本如何定义劳动者的技能和智力，随着更多的机器应用和由此而来的利润率下降趋势，资本将在体系内的另一区域产生对更大量的活劳动的需求。从这个角度来看，解释机器（人工智能）的进步并非朝向“完全自动化”的迈步，而是体现了资本的一种更加复杂的“异质化”策略，即在以计算机为媒介的网络中从低成本或免费的劳动力中榨取经济价值。脸书、优步、谷歌翻译等解释机器在资本主义条件下的使命就在于，增加了使用机器的用户的免费活劳动并隐藏了这种无酬劳动，从而打造出对人工智能的拜物教和“完全自动化”的意识形态。

IV. Conclusion and Implications

四、结论与启示

Over the past century, the study of Marx’s theory of machines in Marxist academia has undergone a process of continuous expansion of its domain and transformation of its themes, demonstrating the powerful explanatory capacity of Marx’s theory of machines. In this historical change and theoretical development, the discussions surrounding the basic viewpoints of Marx’s theory of machines and the critiques extended by real technological transformations fully reflect the two threads of “change and constancy.” On the one hand, what changes is the development of machine technology itself from “mechanization” to “automation” and then to “digitalization.” With changes in the form of machine technology, machines originally mainly applied in the production sphere have gradually spread to all areas of human life and interaction. Humanity is step by step entering a technological age, and “total technological control” has become the theme of the present era. On the other hand, what remains unchanged is that from the traditional industrial machine age to today’s interpreting machine age, capital has always occupied a leading and dominant position in the application and development of machines. No matter how much the new machines, baptized by the new scientific and technological revolution and the rise of digital technology, differ from those of Marx’s time, the fundamental logic behind them remains the law of capital production and reproduction. What prevails is still the logic of capital; what changes is merely the expansion of the scope of capital’s domination.

百余年来，马克思主义学界对马克思机器理论的研究经过了论域不断扩大、主题不断转换的过程，表现出马克思机器理论的强大阐释力。在这一历史变迁与理论发展的过程中，围绕马克思机器理论的基本观点所展开的讨论和由现实的技术变革所延伸出的批判充分体现出“变与不变”两条线索。一方面，变化的是机器技术本身从“机械化”到“自动化”、再到“数字化”的时代发展，随着机器技术形式的变化，原本主要应用于生产领域的机器逐渐蔓延到人类生活和交往的各个领域，人类正一步步进入技术时代，“技术的全面控制”成为当今时代的主题。另一方面，不变的是从传统的工业机器时代到今天的解释机器时代，资本在机器应用及其发展过程中始终占据着引领和主导地位。无论经过新科学技术革命和数字技术崛起之洗礼的新型机器较之马克思所处的时代有多大不同，其背后的根本逻辑仍是资本生产与再生产的规律，大行其道的依然是资本逻辑，变化的不过是资本统治范围的扩大。

Since entering the 21st century, faced with global challenges brought by digital technology, artificial intelligence, and immaterial labor, more and more scholars have chosen to return to Marx’s texts and methods, “critically revealing the structural contradictions of capitalism, as well as the contradictions of the mode of production, class contradictions, and social contradictions, and conducting in-depth analyses of capitalist crises, the evolutionary process of capitalism, and the new forms and essence of capitalism,” providing useful references for us to correctly understand the development trends and fate of capitalism, accurately grasp the new changes and new features of contemporary capitalism, and deepen our understanding of the trends of change in contemporary capitalism. An overall grasp of the century-long study of Marx’s theory of machines shows that this theory still possesses truth value today. The technological reality of contemporary Western society has not transcended the domain of Marx’s theory, and Marxist theory remains fundamentally significant for our response to the challenges posed by neoliberalism and digital capitalism.

进入21世纪以来，面对数字技术、人工智能、非物质劳动等带来的世界性难题，越来越多的学者选择回到马克思的文本和方法，“对资本主义结构性矛盾以及生产方式矛盾、阶级矛盾、社会矛盾等进行了批判性揭示，对资本主义危机、资本主义演进过程、资本主义新形态及本质进行了深入分析”，为我们正确认识资本主义发展趋势和命运，准确把握当代资本主义新变化新特征，加深对当代资本主义变化趋势的理解，提供了有益的参考。对百年来马克思机器理论研究的整体把握表明，这一理论在今天依然具有真理价值。当今西方社会的技术现实没有超越马克思理论的论域，马克思主义理论对于我们回应新自由主义和数字资本主义带来的挑战依然具有基础性意义。

The development of digital technology and interpretive machines (artificial intelligence) in the 21st century has brought new difficulties to contemporary capitalist critique. In 1856, Marx pointed out in his speech at the anniversary celebration of the *People’s Paper*: “Machines possess the wonderful power of reducing human labor and making it more fruitful, yet they cause hunger and excessive fatigue. … All our inventions and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.” [14]14 Karl Marx, “Speech at the Anniversary Celebration of the *People’s Paper*,” April 14, 1856. From Marx’s perspective, the root of the problem lies not in the coexistence of the dual effects of machines, but in the economic structure of capitalist society that generates and perpetuates these dual effects. Just as Marx in the 19th century used mature political economy critique to make a scientific judgment on industrial machines and their capitalist application, today’s Marxist machine theory research also needs to use scientific methods to conduct a deeper exploration of the new technological reality.

21世纪数字技术和解释机器（人工智能）的发展给当代的资本主义批判带来了新的难题。1856年，马克思在《人民报》创刊纪念会上的演说中曾经指出：“机器具有减少人类劳动和使劳动更有成效的神奇力量，然而却引起了饥饿和过度的疲劳。……我们的一切发明和进步，似乎结果是使物质力量成为有智慧的生命，而人的生命则化为愚钝的物质力量。”从马克思的观点出发，问题的根本不在于机器的双重效应并存，而在于使机器的双重效应得以产生并持续下去的那种资本主义社会的经济结构。正如马克思在19世纪运用成熟的政治经济学批判对工业机器及其资本主义应用作出了科学的研判，今天的马克思主义机器理论研究也需要运用科学的方法对全新的技术现实进行更加深入的探索。

(Authors: Zhu Chunyan, Gao Qin, School of Marxism, Northeastern University)

（作者：朱春艳、高琴，东北大学马克思主义学院）

(This article is a phased result of the Liaoning Provincial Social Science Fund project “Research on the Generation Mechanism and Resolution Path of the Paradox of Digital Labor from the Perspective of Historical Materialism” and the Northeastern University Chen Changshu Philosophy of Technology Development Fund project “Research on the Historical Evolution and Inheritance Development of China’s Craftsmanship Spirit.”)

（本文系辽宁省社会科学基金项目“唯物史观视域下数字劳动悖论的生成机理与消解路径研究”、东北大学陈昌曙技术哲学发展基金“我国工匠精神的历史演进与传承发展研究”的阶段性成果）

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