The Social Regulation of Digital Capitalism

I. Introduction

一、引言

Mark Zuckerberg once said in an interview: “In a lot of ways Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company.” Platform companies like Facebook have reached unprecedented levels of power and wealth, forming what Philip J. Stern calls a new form of “corporation-state”: companies not only have the power to regulate trade, but also the power to regulate law, land, and liberty. In short, companies have the power to regulate people’s lives. Platform companies have not turned a blind eye to these powers; instead, they regard such governance as the core of their business model and refer to their users as “citizens.” As major platforms increasingly exercise their digital power as a political force, governments find themselves negotiating face-to-face with platform companies over issues that were once entirely within the domain of democratic decision-making.

马克·扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）在一次采访中曾说道：“在很多方面，脸书更像一个政府，而不是一个传统的公司。”像脸书这样的平台公司，其权力和财富已经达到了前所未有的水平，形成了菲利普·施特恩（Philip J.Stern）所说的“公司—国家”的新形式：公司不仅有权监管贸易，还有权监管法律、土地和自由。总之，公司有权监管人们的生活。平台公司并未对这些权力熟视无睹，而是将这样的治理视为其商业模式的核心，并将自己的用户称为“公民”。随着各大平台纷纷将其数字权力作为一种政治力量而行使，政府发现自己正与平台公司就过去完全属于民主决策领域的问题进行面对面的谈判。

For decades, platforms have continuously sought organizational structures suited to the characteristics of digital technology and have become a dominant mode of operation. The platform model leverages the extraordinary capacity of digital technology to shape life through social infrastructure, engaging in privatized governance. Just as Fordism-Keynesianism emerged after the Great Depression and post-Fordism emerged after the economic crisis of the 1970s, a native digital form of accumulation began to rise after the 2008 financial crisis. In the years that followed, platforms such as Amazon, Alphabet, Airbnb, Facebook, and Uber experienced explosive growth, forming what can now be called the digital ecosystem at the core of contemporary capitalism.

数十年来，平台不断地寻找适合数字技术特性的组织结构，并成为一种占主导地位的运作模式。平台模式利用数字技术的超强能力，通过社会基础设施来塑造生活，以参与私有化治理。正如大萧条之后兴起了福特主义—凯恩斯主义、1970年代的经济危机之后兴起了后福特主义一样，一种原生的数字形式的积累在2008年金融危机之后开始兴起。此后几年，亚马逊、字母表、爱彼迎、脸书和优步等平台出现了爆炸性增长，形成了目前可称之为当代资本主义核心的数字生态系统。

The rise of platforms has attracted considerable scholarly attention, as researchers attempt to explain the significant impacts of this great transformation. Some scholars emphasize its discontinuity, arguing that platformization has spawned a completely new form of capitalism; others emphasize its continuity, arguing that platforms reinforce and accelerate current neoliberal trends.

平台的崛起吸引了大量学者的关注，他们试图解释这一大变革所带来的重大影响。有些学者强调其非连续性，认为平台化滋生了一种全新的资本主义形式；而另一些学者则强调其连续性，认为平台强化和加速了当前的新自由主义趋势。

This article attempts to bridge this divide and uses regulation theory to explain digital capitalism—that is, digital capitalism, as a continuation of capitalist development, produces discontinuities determined by local institutions, but at its core shares a single model: the digitization, privatization, and financialization of market regulation. This article puts forward the following three main arguments.

本文试图弥合这种分歧，并运用调节理论来解释数字资本主义，即数字资本主义作为资本主义发展的延续，产生了非连续性，这是由当地的制度所决定的，但其核心是共享一个模式：市场调节的数字化、私有化和金融化。本文提出了如下三个主要论点。

First, we situate digital capitalism within the history of capitalist transformation, arguing that it is both a continuation of existing trends in financialized capitalism under the neoliberal form and a break from them. The defining characteristic of digital capitalism is the proprietary nature of its markets, which are owned and managed by private companies. This can be seen as a continuation of post-Fordist trends; however, this continuation produces discontinuities, because the operating conditions and pressures of digital proprietary markets are fundamentally different from those of the post-Fordist period.

第一，我们将数字资本主义置于资本主义转型史中，认为它既是新自由主义形式下金融化资本主义的现存趋势的延续，又与之相割裂。数字资本主义的典型特征是其市场的专有性，即由私人公司拥有和管理。这可以被视为后福特主义趋势的延续，然而，这种延续产生了非连续性，因为数字专有市场的运作条件和压力与后福特主义时期有着本质的不同。

Second, the platform business model extracts rent by controlling access to key resources. This model depends on the platform’s ability to monopolistically control the market; possessing this ability allows platforms to compete directly with the state. Platforms attempt to liberate their markets from the control of public institutions in order to operate effectively on the same level as the state. If Fordism was defined by state-regulated national markets, and post-Fordism by state-regulated transnational markets, then digital capitalism is defined by digital proprietary markets owned and regulated by transnational platform companies.

第二，平台的商业模式是通过控制重要资源的访问权来获取租金的，此种商业模式取决于平台对市场的垄断控制能力，拥有这种能力使得平台可以与国家直接展开竞争。平台试图将其市场从公共机构的管控中解放出来，以便有效地在与国家相同的层面上运行。如果说福特主义是由国家调节的国家市场定义的，后福特主义是由国家调节的跨国市场定义的，那么数字资本主义则是由跨国平台公司所拥有和调节的数字专有市场定义的。

Third, due to the new pressures brought by privatization and the new forms of control brought by digitization, platformization changes the mode of social regulation—that is, the institutions, cultural logics, norms, and policy paradigms that underpin accumulation. Just as Fordism brought a modernist, mass-individualist culture characterized by hierarchy and top-down control, and post-Fordism brought the political ideology of neoliberalism, market discipline, and a postmodern consumer culture, digital capitalism is gradually forming a unique superstructure based on the capabilities of digital technology. Here, we attempt to outline some contours of the transformation of the mode of social regulation that follows digital capitalism, examining its capture mechanisms, labor processes, and cultural logic: from neoliberalism to techno-feudalism; from Taylorist hierarchy to algorithmic grouping; from postmodernism to automated consumer culture.

第三，由于私有化带来的新压力和数字化带来的新控制形式，平台化改变了社会调节模式，即为积累提供基础的制度、文化逻辑、规范和政策范式。正如福特主义带来了以等级制度和自上而下的控制为特征的现代主义、大众个人主义文化，后福特主义带来了新自由主义的政治意识形态、市场规律和后现代主义的消费文化，数字资本主义也在逐渐形成一套基于数字技术能力的、独特的上层建筑。在此，我们试图勾勒出紧随数字资本主义而来的社会调节模式转变的一些轮廓，考察其捕获机制、劳动过程和文化逻辑：从新自由主义走向技术封建主义；从泰勒主义等级制度走向算法群组；从后现代主义走向自动化消费文化。

This article will discuss the above three arguments from the threads of existing literature, using a rigorous, typological analytical framework to clarify the structural pressures that form new modes of regulation.

本文将从现有文献的线索中论述以上三个论点，使用严谨的、类型化的分析框架阐明形成新调节形式的结构性压力。

II. Situating Digital Capitalism

二、数字资本主义的定位

Regulation theory focuses on the ways in which the economy is embedded in social, cultural, and political contexts, tracing historical changes in political economy through the two core concepts of “accumulation regime” and “mode of regulation.” The former describes the way in which the organization and expansion of production, circulation, consumption, and distribution of capital occurs; the latter is the set of norms, cultures, and policy paradigms that provide the framework for the accumulation regime. The starting point of regulation theory is that capitalism requires the state, because capitalism generates conflicts and tensions that hinder its own further development. Therefore, capitalism must be constrained by restrictive structures that are not the product of individual rational calculation or competition, but of collective state decision-making, understood here as the local arrangement of institutionalized political power.

调节理论聚焦于经济嵌入社会、文化和政治背景的方式，通过“积累体制”和“调节模式”这两个核心概念来追踪政治经济学的历史变化。前者描述了生产、流通、消费和分配组织及扩大资本的方式，后者是为积累体制提供的一套规范、文化和政策范式。调节理论的出发点是资本主义需要国家，因为资本主义会产生阻碍其自身进一步发展的冲突和紧张局势。因此，资本主义必须受到限制性结构的约束，这些结构不是个人理性计算或竞争的产物，而是国家集体决策的产物，在这里被理解为制度化的政治权力在地方上的安排。

One cannot conceive of a capitalist economy without the state playing a clear role, but the relationship between capitalism and the state is an unstable one, characterized by conflictual relations between their competing forces. This conflict often enters periods of temporarily stable power balances, that is, structural coupling between accumulation and social regulation, but is also broken by crises and restructuring, the outcomes of which are shaped and constrained by the basic trends and counter-trends of specific accumulation trajectories, and ultimately determined by political institutions. Regulation theory uses these conflictual relations to explain the developmental trajectory of capitalist societies, focusing on how a series of measures and regulatory structures temporarily contain the internal contradictions of capitalism.

人们无法设想没有国家来发挥明确作用的资本主义经济，但资本主义与国家之间的关系是一种不稳定的关系，特点是其竞争力量之间存在冲突关系。这种冲突往往会进入暂时稳定的权力平衡期，即积累与社会调节之间的结构性耦合，但也会被危机和重组打破，其结果由特定积累轨迹的基本趋势和反趋势所塑造和约束，最终由政治机构所决定。调节理论利用这些冲突关系来解释资本主义社会的发展轨迹，并重点关注一系列的措施和调节结构是如何暂时性地遏制资本主义内部矛盾的。

Fordism was the main accumulation regime adopted from the end of World War II until the mid-1970s. It curbed the trend of increasing inequality through leveraged rapid economic growth, thereby resolving the contradictions of capitalism. However, by the end of the 1960s, the Fordist system of mass production and mass consumption faced pressure, and the accumulation crisis grew increasingly severe. Western Europe and Japan had fully recovered from the war, and their internal markets were becoming saturated, as their “basic needs had almost been met.” Consequently, the inherent contradictions of capitalism became increasingly apparent. The geographical mobility of capital was both a driver and a result of this crisis, as unregulated industries sought to reduce wage costs by investing in low-wage regions, thereby escaping national wage bargaining systems and weakening the power of trade unions. However, due to the lack of transnational institutions and international coordination of the Fordist wage compromise, globalization severed the link between income, demand, and productivity growth, adding a second “demand side” to the crisis.

福特制是自第二次世界大战至1970年代中期采用的主要积累体制，它通过举债经营实现经济的快速增长来遏制不平等加剧的趋势，以解决资本主义的矛盾。然而，到了1960年代末，大规模生产和大规模消费的福特主义体系面临压力，积累危机日益严重。西欧和日本已经完全从战争中恢复过来，它们的内部市场日渐饱和，因为其“基本需求几乎已经得到了满足”。因此，资本主义的内在矛盾变得日益明显。资本的地域流动性既是这场危机的驱动力，也是这场危机的结果，因为不受控制的行业试图通过向低工资地区投资来降低工资成本，以逃避国家工资协商制度，从而削弱工会的力量。但是，由于缺乏跨国机构及对福特制工资妥协的国际协调，全球化切断了收入、需求与生产力增长之间的联系，为危机增加了第二个“需求方”。

The transnational flow of capital brought a new basic logic shaping the role of the state: nation-states no longer operated within the boundaries of national jurisdiction, but competed with other states for freely mobile global capital. Competition between states and regions for global capital triggered a persistent concern about “under-regulation”: states faced pressure to compete for business, while simultaneously treating market regulation as a key condition for their competitive success. In short, globalization meant that the accumulation crisis became a crisis of social regulation, because accumulation became global, while regulation remained national.

资本的跨国流动带来了一种塑造国家角色的新的基本逻辑：即民族国家不再是在国家管辖的边界内运作，而是就自由流动的全球资本与其他国家展开竞争。国家与地区之间对全球资本的竞争引发了对“调节不足”的持续担忧：各国面临着竞争业务的压力，同时将市场调节视为其竞争成功的关键条件。简而言之，全球化意味着积累危机变成了社会调节的危机，因为积累变成了全球性的，而调节仍然是全国性的。

Although Fordism achieved rapid economic growth and temporarily resolved the conflict between democracy and capitalism, post-Fordism did not provide a similar solution. It did not resolve Fordism’s growth crisis but instead shifted the focus from creating wealth to redistributing it. Post-Fordism achieved “financialization of everything” by eliminating the regulatory constraints and barriers that had hitherto limited financial activity, thereby leading to the consolidation of oligarchic, monopolistic, and transnational forces, as well as the intensification of social inequality—trends that make the neoliberal state appear “either as a transitional political form or as an unstable political form.” [5]5 The author cites a characterization of the neoliberal state as a transitional or unstable political form, reflecting debates within Western Marxism on the state’s role under financialized capitalism.

虽然福特主义实现了经济的快速增长，暂时解决了民主与资本主义之间的冲突关系，但后福特主义并没有提供类似的解决方案，它没有解决福特主义的增长危机，而是将重点从创造财富转向重新分配财富。后福特主义通过消除迄今为止限制金融活动的监管约束和障碍来实现“使一切金融化”，因而导致了寡头、垄断和跨国势力的巩固，以及社会不平等的加剧——这些趋势使得新自由主义国家看起来“要么是一种过渡性的政治形式，要么是一种不稳定的政治形式”。

Digitalization first emerged as a component of the macro-trend of capitalist restructuring. Digital technologies provided the infrastructure for the global financial system: financial products are fundamentally predictive mathematical and computational entities. By expanding the range of social phenomena that can be captured, predicted, and controlled, data and algorithms enable new domains of the social world to be financialized and incorporated into capitalism—that is, integrated into areas previously inaccessible to capital—and expand the productive resources available to capital.

数字化首先是作为资本主义重组的宏观趋势的一个组成部分而产生的。数字技术为全球金融体系提供了基础设施：金融产品从根本上说是预测性的数学和计算实体。通过扩大可以捕捉、预测和控制的社会现象的范围，数据和算法使社会世界的新领域金融化且并入资本主义，即融入资本以前无法进入的领域，并扩大了资本可利用的生产资源。

Although digitalization is only one component of the post-Fordist macro-trend, capital soon discovered that digital technologies offered new forms of social control that would provide the framework for a more fundamental transformation of capitalism. The beginnings of these transformations appeared after the 2008 global financial crisis, taking the form of a native digital organization: the platform. Platforms use digital technologies to orchestrate programmable social infrastructure, enabling buyers and sellers to meet—that is, forming a form of proprietary market. Thus, the platform business model can be broadly understood as using digital technologies to privatize the market itself and financialize its ownership and regulation. If Fordism was defined by nationally regulated national markets, and post-Fordism by nationally regulated transnational markets, then digital capitalism is defined by digital proprietary markets owned and regulated by transnational private companies through digital technologies.

虽然数字化只是后福特主义宏观趋势的一个组成部分，但资本很快发现，数字技术提供了社会控制的新形式，这将为更根本的资本主义转型提供框架。这些转变的开端出现在2008年全球金融危机之后，它以原生数字组织——平台的形式而出现。平台利用数字技术来策划可编程的社会基础设施，使买家与卖家能够见面，即形成一种专有市场的形式。因此，平台商业模式可以广义地理解为利用数字技术把市场本身私有化，并将其所有权和监管金融化。如果说福特主义是由国家调节下的国家市场来定义的，后福特主义是由国家调节下的跨国市场来定义的，那么数字资本主义则是由跨国私营公司通过数字技术所拥有和调节的数字专有市场来定义的。

Therefore, the platform model constitutes a convergence of several long-standing post-Fordist trends: neoliberal privatization and the tendency toward “financialization of everything”; the flexible formation of new financial practices; the use of digital code as a means of shaping social institutions, and the use of data as a means of their financialization. In this sense, digital capitalism should be regarded as digital financial capitalism, because digitalization and financialization are so closely intertwined as to be nearly inseparable. Thus, while the platform model naturally builds on existing post-Fordist institutions and digital technologies, it also represents a novel “complex mysterious force that integrates political, social, institutional, and technological components.” [6]6 The phrase “complex mysterious force” is a quotation from the original text, likely referencing a critical analysis of platform capitalism’s hybrid nature.

因此，平台模式构成了几个长期存在的后福特主义趋势的融合：新自由主义私有化，以及“使一切金融化”的倾向；灵活地形成新的金融惯例；使用数字代码作为塑造社会制度的手段，以及使用数据作为其金融化的手段。在此意义上，应该将数字资本主义视为数字金融资本主义，因为数字化与金融化是如此紧密地联系在一起，几乎密不可分。因此，虽然平台模式自然而然地建立在现有的后福特主义制度和数字技术之上，但它同时也代表了一种新颖的“融合了政治、社会、制度和技术成分的复杂的神秘力量”。

III. The State and Platformization

三、国家和平台化

Although platformization began with “sharing economy” platforms such as Airbnb and Uber, over time it was generalized into a broader capitalist logic that leverages the capabilities of digital technologies. The core of the platform model is the use of new mechanisms of monopoly power to control strategic bottlenecks for accumulation, enabling firms to manipulate markets and extract rents from producers by controlling access rights. Fordism pursued profit through wealth creation and production rationalization; post-Fordism pursued profit through financial markets and wealth redistribution; digital capitalism generates profit through the rentier power of controlling access to key resources. Therefore, the key to platform strategy lies in raising barriers to entry through the use of digital and political strategies, making markets uncompetitive in order to extract monopoly rents.

虽然平台化始于爱彼迎和优步等“共享经济”平台，但随着时间的推移，它被概括为一种更广泛的利用数字技术能力的资本主义逻辑。平台模式的核心是利用垄断权力的新机制来控制战略瓶颈进行积累，使企业能够操纵市场，并通过控制准入权来从生产者那里榨取租金。福特主义通过财富创造和生产合理化来追求利润，后福特主义通过金融市场和财富重新分配来追求利润，而数字资本主义则是通过控制关键资源访问权的租借权来产生利润。因此，平台战略的关键就在于通过使用数字和政治战略来提高准入门槛，使市场变得无法竞争，从而获取垄断租金。

The monopoly power of digital capitalism is fundamentally different from the steel and railway monopolies of the Fordist era: companies like Amazon have not even achieved monopoly in retail, yet they can use digital power to dominate key accumulation points and extract monopoly rents. This digital dominance derives mainly from three sources. First, the platform’s strategic use of infrastructure, which generates lock-in: the platform provides stable basic functions, thereby creating user dependence on privatized infrastructure. As Sabeel Rahman and Kathleen Thelen have observed, the concept of the “platform” itself reflects the aspiration to become the basic infrastructure of an industry. Second, the intermediary position conferred by ownership of social infrastructure provides access to data streams and allows platform companies to shape social patterns through a global architecture of behavioral monitoring, analysis, prediction, and modification. The ability to gain advantages from massive data can be scaled at near-zero cost, resulting in so-called “digital monopolies” or “data monopolies.” Third, the strategic use of demand-side economies of scale, i.e., so-called “network effects”: because the value of using a platform is a function of the number of market participants, incumbents are strongly favored, resulting in a “monopoly-generating feedback loop” that leads most mature platform markets to be dominated by one or two giants.

数字资本主义的垄断力量与福特时代的钢铁和铁路垄断有着根本的不同：像亚马逊这样的公司甚至还没有达到垄断零售业的程度，但却能够利用数字力量来主导关键的积累点，以榨取垄断租金。这种数字主导地位主要来源于三个方面。第一，平台对基础设施的战略运用，这种运用能产生锁定，即平台提供稳固的基本功能，从而使用户产生对私有化基础设施的依赖。正如萨比尔·拉赫曼（Sabeel Rahman）和凯瑟琳·西伦（Kathleen Thelen）所观察到的那样，“平台”概念本身就反映了成为一个行业基本的基础设施的愿望。第二，社会基础设施所有权赋予的中介地位提供了访问数据流的途径，并允许平台公司通过行为监测、分析、预测和修改的全球架构来塑造社交模式。从海量数据中获取优势的能力可以以接近零的成本进行扩展，结果就产生了所谓的“数字垄断”或“数据垄断”。第三，战略性地利用需求侧的规模经济，即所谓的“网络效应”：由于使用一个平台的价值是市场参与者数量的函数，因此市场在位者受到强烈的青睐，其结果是“产生垄断的反馈循环”，这导致大多数成熟的平台市场由一两个巨头主导。

Platforms become truly valuable only when they can control access to resources, so competition becomes a winner-take-all turf war systematically favoring capital and economies of scale, in which dominant platforms use their power in one industry to suppress competition in others. Unlike Fordist-era monopolies, the new forms of monopoly power are not based on vertically integrated corporations and direct ownership, but on digital capabilities for market control and manipulation. The result is that firms develop and expand according to a data-centric logic—constantly extending their roots to control the infrastructure on which competitors depend and extending their data extraction to new domains—thereby horizontally occupying and consolidating markets through what Nick Srnicek describes as “rhizomatic integration forms.” [7]7 “Rhizomatic integration forms” refers to Nick Srnicek’s concept in *Platform Capitalism* (2016), describing how digital platforms expand horizontally like a rhizome, integrating diverse markets through data and infrastructure control. The result of this horizontal expansion is that platform companies expand and compete across a range of markets: Amazon (originally a bookstore), Google (originally a search engine), and Meta (originally a social networking site) are currently engaged in turf wars for control of different market segments.

平台只有在能够控制资源的访问权限时才会变得真正有价值，因此竞争就会成为系统性地有利于资本和规模经济的赢家通吃的地盘战争，其中占主导地位的平台利用其在某一行业的权力来压制其他行业的竞争。与福特时代的垄断不同，垄断力量的新形式不是基于垂直整合的公司和直接所有权，而是基于市场控制和操纵的数字能力。结果就是，企业按照以数据为中心的逻辑进行发展和扩张——不断扩展自己的根基，以控制竞争对手所依赖的基础设施，并将其数据提取扩展到新的领域——从而通过尼克·斯尔尼塞克（Nick Srnicek）所描述的“根状整合形式”横向占领并巩固市场。这种横向扩张的结果是，平台公司在一系列的市场中进行扩张和竞争：亚马逊（最初是一家书店）、谷歌（最初是一个搜索引擎）和元宇宙平台公司（Meta，最初是一个社交网站）目前都在为争夺对不同细分市场的控制权而展开地盘争夺战。

Since platforms seek to gain control of monopoly markets, the state effectively becomes part of platform competition: Uber competes with Lyft, but also with ordinary taxis and urban public transport systems. Platforms attempt to use institutional loopholes to escape state control; therefore, the well-documented regulatory and political consequences of platforms can be seen as part of their competition with the state. For example, Uber attempted to exploit regulatory loopholes, mobilizing political and legal forces to avoid state regulation of its operations. Leaked Uber documents reveal how the company violated laws, bypassed regulators, used violence against drivers, and lobbied governments around the world. The core political role for platform companies is that their influence and nature depend heavily on the local institutional environment, as platforms seek to target and exploit specific local regulatory and institutional conditions. For example, Thelen found that Uber’s impact differed significantly in Germany, Sweden, and the United States, because the platform adapted to local regulatory and governance forms in an attempt to identify and exploit loopholes and regulatory gray zones. However, despite significant regional differences in the impact of platformization, these platforms tend to follow common political strategies defined by the use of digital technological power. Here, we briefly outline some key features of platform strategies relative to the state, and how these strategies have shaped different paths of regulatory transformation.

由于各平台都在寻求获取垄断市场的控制权，国家实际上就成为了平台竞争的一部分：优步与来福竞争，但也与普通出租车和城市公共交通系统进行竞争。平台试图利用制度上的漏洞来摆脱国家的控制，因此，平台有据可查的监管及政治后果可以被视为其与国家竞争的一部分。例如，优步试图利用监管漏洞，调动政治和法律的力量来避免其业务受到国家的监管。被泄露的优步文件显示了该公司如何违反法律、绕过监管机构、利用暴力侵害司机，并游说世界各地的政府。政治对平台公司的核心作用在于，它们的影响和性质在很大程度上取决于当地的制度环境，因为平台寻求针对和利用特定的地方监管和制度条件。例如，西伦发现，优步在德国、瑞典和美国的影响有很大的不同，因为该平台适应当地的监管和治理形式以试图识别并瞄准漏洞和监管灰色地带。然而，尽管平台化的影响在不同地区有着显著的差异，但这些平台往往遵循着一些共同的政治策略，这些策略是由数字技术力量的运用来界定的。在此，我们将简要概述平台战略相对于国家的一些关键特征，以及这些战略如何形成了调节转型的不同路径。

The platform model implies providing technological solutions to social problems, a phenomenon Evgeny V. Morozov calls “technosolutionism,” which is a strategic means of colonizing the domain of political decision-making: namely, replacing the public and the political with the private and the technological. These platforms use technology to develop regulatory grey zones—engaging in what Gabrielle Hecht calls “technopolitics,” that is, “the strategic practice of designing or using technology to constitute, embody, or enact political goals.” While it is better to view platforms as “regulatory” rather than “technological” entrepreneurs, technological innovation is central to their regulatory pursuits. Although technological innovation always carries political consequences, these consequences have now become the primary purpose of platforms.

平台模式意味着为社会问题提供技术解决方案，叶夫根尼·莫罗佐夫（Evgeny V.Morozov）称之为“技术解决主义”（technosolutionism），这是殖民政治决策领域的战略手段：即使用私有和技术取代公有和政治。这些平台利用技术来开发监管的灰色地带——参与加布丽埃勒·赫克特（Gabrielle Hecht）所说的“技术政治”，即“使用技术来构成、体现或制定政治目标的战略实践”。虽然将平台视为“调节”而非“技术”企业家会更好一些，但技术创新是其调节追求的核心。尽管技术创新总是会带来政治后果，但这些后果在当前已经成为平台的主要目的。

Backed by substantial venture capital, platforms often expand rapidly, enabling them to weaken competitors and quickly build a user base. Although this article understands this as a means of surpassing other platforms, it is simultaneously a strategy directed at the state, because rapid expansion allows platforms to gain political and legal power, hire lawyers and lobbyists, and mobilize their user base as a political force. After establishing operations in regulatory grey zones, the strategy of rapid expansion enables platform companies to present slow-moving legislators with a fait accompli, while mobilizing overwhelming political and legal force to counter any subsequent attempts at regulation.

在大量风险资本的支持下，平台往往会迅速扩张，这使它们能够削弱竞争对手的力量并迅速建立用户群。虽然本文将此理解为超越其他平台的一种手段，但它同时也是一种针对国家的发展战略，因为快速扩张可以使平台获得政治和法律力量，聘请律师和游说者，并将其用户群作为一种政治力量动员起来。在监管灰色地带建立业务后，迅速扩张的战略使平台公司能够向行动迟缓的立法者提供既成事实，同时调动压倒性的政治和法律力量来对抗事后监管的企图。

Platforms seek to expand their foundations in order to control the infrastructure on which states, regulatory agencies, and political elites rely. As platform companies become the “infrastructural core” of the global digital economy, they also become embroiled in geopolitical conflicts, becoming “key pawns in an increasingly hegemonic struggle.” Consequently, states attempt to support the platformization process as a means of gaining geopolitical influence.

平台寻求扩张自己的根基，以控制国家、监管机构和政治精英所依赖的基础设施。随着平台公司成为全球数字经济的“基础设施核心”，它们也卷入了地缘政治冲突，成为“日益加剧的霸权主义斗争中的关键棋子”。因此，各国试图支持平台化进程，以此作为获得地缘政治影响力的手段。

Platforms not only attempt to exert regulatory influence over the state but also seek to realize their own form of sovereignty. While platforms possess powerful control through infrastructure design and data extraction capabilities, they often try to maintain neutrality to avoid assuming regulatory responsibility. For example, Uber uses its algorithmic forms to control workers, yet claims that these workers are not employees but “independent contractors,” and therefore not fully protected by labor law and the welfare state. This means platforms can shift costs and risks onto workers. This is part of a broader strategy in which platforms—from social media to gig work—use technological design to anchor themselves in regulatory grey zones, employ algorithmic governance to shape markets in their own interests, while using the discourse of neutrality to shift legal liability onto users. Platforms act as legal and political fronts for these users—concealing user identities and mobilizing legal and political forces to protect users from regulation. Platforms also attempt to carve out proprietary markets from the larger public market, making participants subject only to the taxation and governance imposed by the platform itself.

平台不仅试图对国家施加调节影响，还试图实现自己的主权形式。虽然平台通过基础设施的设计和数据提取功能拥有了强大的控制力，但他们往往试图保持中立，以避免承担调节责任。例如，优步利用其算法形式控制工人，但却声称它们的工人不是雇员，而是“独立承包商”，因此不完全受劳动法和福利国家的保护。这意味着平台可以将成本和风险转嫁给工人。这是更广泛的战略的一部分，在这个战略中，平台——从社交媒体到零工工作——利用技术设计来锚定监管的灰色地带，利用算法治理来塑造符合其利益的市场，同时利用中立性的话语将法律责任转嫁到用户身上。平台充当了这些用户的法律和政治阵地——隐藏用户的身份，调动法律和政治力量来保护用户，使其免受监管。平台还试图将专有市场从更大的公共市场中剥离出来，使参与者只受制于平台本身施加的税收和治理。

In summary, platforms compete with states for regulatory authority, making platformization a path-dependent and contingent process, driven by enterprises using the social power of digital technology to target institutional and regulatory loopholes. Just as the competitive pressures of post-Fordism among states brought about the rise of neoliberalism through various pathways, the shared model of platformization has gradually emerged from a mixture of diverse, even contradictory, institutional forms and strategies. The overarching pattern of platformization is the digitization, privatization, and financialization of market regulation.

总之，平台与国家争夺调节权，导致平台化成为了一个路径依赖和偶然的过程，这个过程是由企业利用数字技术的社会力量瞄准制度和监管的漏洞来驱动的。正如国家间相互竞争的后福特主义的压力通过各种途径带来了新自由主义的崛起一样，平台化的共享模式也是从多元、甚至相互矛盾的制度形式和策略的混合体中逐渐形成的。平台化的总体模式是市场调节的数字化、私有化和金融化。

IV. The Social Regulation of Digital Capitalism

四、数字资本主义的社会调节

Broadly speaking, platformization can be understood as the adoption of new digital mechanisms to dominate markets, driving a process of privatization and digitization of capitalist regulatory functions that previously capitalism had to rely on the state to achieve. Just as post-Fordism was formed by capital breaking free from the constraints of the Fordist-Keynesian nation-state, digital capitalism is being formed by capital breaking free from the constraints of the minimal neoliberal state. Through market privatization, platformization responds to the contradictions of the neoliberal state by weakening the regulatory role of state institutions over markets. This can be seen in the current use of digital infrastructure by platforms to perform regulatory functions previously undertaken by public institutions: platforms register market participants, set market access conditions, and formulate competition rules. Platforms guarantee customer credit and delivery efficiency, enforce market contracts, and ensure that agreed-upon transactions between parties are fulfilled; they provide and supervise regulatory norms, implement punitive measures such as fines, reputation costs, and even market expulsion; they organize labor relations, determining wages through proprietary algorithms rather than state-provided minimum wages or wage negotiation mechanisms; they centralize and mobilize market information, coordinate markets, adjudicate disputes, and provide the information needed to evaluate the quality of goods.

从广义上来说，平台化可以被理解为采用新的数字机制来主导市场，以推动资本主义调节职能私有化和数字化的进程，而在这以前，资本主义不得不依赖国家来实现这一目的。就像后福特主义是由资本打破福特主义—凯恩斯主义民族国家的束缚而形成的那样，数字资本主义也是由资本打破极小的新自由主义国家的束缚而形成的。借助于市场私有化，平台化通过削弱国家机构对市场的调节作用来应对新自由主义国家的矛盾，这一点可以从当前平台使用数字基础设施来履行以前由公共机构承担的调节职能中看出：平台登记市场参与者，设定市场准入条件，制定竞争规则。平台保障了客户的信誉和交付效率，执行市场合同，保证双方约定的交易会得到履行；提供并监督调节准则，实施诸如罚款、支付声誉成本、甚至市场驱逐等惩罚措施；组织劳动关系，通过专有的算法、而非国家提供的最低工资或工资谈判机制来确定工资；集中并调动市场信息，协调市场，裁决纠纷，并提供评估商品质量所需的信息。

Although platformization emerges as a continuation of long-term trends and is embedded within existing institutional arrangements, it is supported by what regulation theorists call the fact of endogenous metabolism: the endogenous tensions within the platform architecture may lead to further institutional transformation. These endogenous tensions mainly stem from two factors: first, proprietary markets are shaped by different relationships between regulators and markets, thereby generating new forces that shape their social regulation; second, the governance of digital technology produces a particular way of seeing the governed. James C. Scott describes how the modernist state exercises power through a top-down, population-based epistemology, through hierarchical command and control, making the social world legible and subject to state power. Zygmunt Bauman traces this top-down epistemology of the Fordist-Keynesian state back to the Fordist factory, with its hierarchies and strict boundaries. As platforms are poised to replace the Fordist factory as the primary “epistemological construction site” of contemporary capitalism, a new way of seeing is born, made legible through big data and implemented through programmable social infrastructure. Petter Törnberg and Justus Uitermark, Engin F. Isin, and Evelyn Ruppert situate this digital form of control within Michel Foucault’s history of power, arguing that it marks a shift in regulatory power from a top-down “ordinary person” data epistemology to a power shaped by the epistemological characteristics of big data: cluster-based, relational, interactive, fluid, and ostensibly bottom-up power—in short, the complex.

虽然平台化是作为长期趋势的延续而出现的，并被纳入现有的制度安排中，但有调节理论学家所称的内生代谢的事实作为支撑：平台架构内的内生张力可能导致进一步的制度转型。这些内生张力主要源于两个因素：第一，专有市场是由监管机构与市场之间的不同关系塑造的，从而产生了塑造其社会调节的新力量；第二，数字技术的治理产生了一种看待被治理者的特殊方式。詹姆斯·斯科特（James C.Scott）描述了现代主义国家如何通过自上而下的基于人口的认识论，通过等级命令和控制来行使权力，使社会世界易于辨认并服从国家权力。齐格蒙特·鲍曼（Zygmunt Bauman）将福特主义—凯恩斯主义国家的这种自上而下的认识论追溯到福特主义工厂，那里有等级制度和严格的边界。随着平台即将取代福特主义工厂，成为当代资本主义的主要“认识论建筑工地”，一种新的观察方式诞生了，这种观察方式通过大数据可清晰辨别，并通过可编程的社会基础设施来实施控制。彼得·特恩贝里（Petter Törnberg）和贾斯特斯·尤特马克（Justus Uitermark）、恩金·伊辛（Engin F.Isin）和伊夫琳·鲁珀特（Evelyn Ruppert）将这种数字形式的控制置于米歇尔·福柯（Michel Foucault）提出的权力史中，认为它标志着调节权力从自上而下的“普通人”数据认识论，转向由大数据的认识论特征所塑造的权力：基于集群的、关系的、互动的、流动的和表面上自下而上的权力——简而言之，复合体。

Therefore, platformization heralds a new logic of governance, thereby providing the foundational market ideology, discipline, and rationality for post-Fordist social regulation. Just as Foucault’s modern disciplinary power was reshaped by the biopolitical power imposed by neoliberal rationality, now neoliberal biopolitical power is itself being transformed by the complex power brought by digital technology. Just as neoliberal rationality came with a related ideology and belief in the legitimacy of market rationality in regulating all aspects of human life, this complex control comes with a related ideology, which Thomas M. Malaby calls “technoliberalism,” defined by a trust in the legitimacy of emergent effects, that is, “the emergent properties of complex interactions are, precisely because they are emergent, in some sense correct.”

因此，平台化给一种新的治理逻辑带来了希望，从而为后福特主义的社会调节提供基础性的基本市场意识形态、纪律和理性。就像福柯提出的现代学科权力被新自由主义理性施加的生命政治权力所重塑一样，现在新自由主义的生命政治权力也正在被数字技术带来的复杂权力所改变。正如新自由主义理性伴随着相关的意识形态和对市场理性在调节人类生活各方面合法性的信仰而来，这种复杂的控制也伴随着相关的意识形态而来，即托马斯·马拉比（Thomas M.Malaby）所说的“技术自由主义”，其定义体现了对涌现效应合法性的信任，也就是说，“复杂互动的涌现属性正因为是涌现的，所以在某种程度上是正确的”。

The following text will examine three aspects of the impact of this transformation on social regulation, treating each discontinuity as part of a longer-term continuity—from Fordism to post-Fordism and then to digital capitalism.

下文将研究这种转变对社会调节的三方面影响，将每一个非连续性都视为更长期趋势——从福特主义到后福特主义，再到数字资本主义——的连续性的一部分。

(I) From Neoliberalism to Techno-Feudalism

（一）从新自由主义到技术封建主义

In an analysis of post-Fordist regulation, David Harvey describes how historical modes of market governance were shaped by democratic forces and competitive pressures. Harvey argues that during the Fordist period, democratic pressure meant that the state had a “managerial” relationship with its market: the state sought to embed, manage, and shape the market through welfare provisions, active intervention, and development for the benefit of citizens. As we have already discussed, post-Fordism meant that this managerial system was undermined by globalization, forcing states to compete for transnational capital. This led to what Harvey calls an “entrepreneurial” mode of market regulation, as states sought to improve their competitive position by providing favorable conditions for capital.

在一篇关于后福特主义调节的分析中，大卫·哈维（David Harvey）描述了历史上的市场治理模式是如何被民主力量和竞争的压力所塑造的。哈维认为，在福特主义时期，民主压力意味着国家对其市场具有“管理性”：国家试图通过福利规定、积极干预和发展来嵌入、管理和塑造市场，以造福公民。正如我们已经讨论过的，后福特主义意味着这种管理体系受到了全球化的破坏，迫使各国争夺跨国资本。这就导致了哈维所说的市场调节的“企业型”模式，因为国家试图通过为资本提供有利条件来提高其竞争地位。

When platforms successfully replace the state as regulators and occupy a dominant monopoly position, they come under pressure from market competition and democratic forces. In terms of the market, these platforms are neither managerial nor entrepreneurial, but rather a governance mode described by Andy Merrifield as “parasitic” and by Cédric Durand as “predatory”—a form of governance implemented primarily for the pursuit of self-interest. If the managerial state managed and shaped the market for the benefit of its citizens, and the entrepreneurial state sought to provide attractive conditions for transnational capital, then proprietary platform markets are designed to maximize platform profits.

当平台成功地取代国家成为调节者，并占据垄断主导地位时，它会受到来自市场竞争和民主力量的压力。就市场而言，这些平台既不是管理型的，也不是企业型的，而是一种被安迪·梅里菲尔德（Andy Merrifield）描述为“寄生型”的治理模式，塞德里克·杜兰德（Cédric Durand）则将其描述为“掠夺型”治理模式，即一种主要为追求自身利益而实施的治理形式。如果说管理型国家是为了其公民的利益而去管理和塑造市场，企业型国家是寻求为跨国资本提供有吸引力的条件，那么专有平台市场的设计则是为了实现平台利润的最大化。

Therefore, these proprietary markets will not be neoliberal markets in the traditional sense. Although platform owners tend to believe that they merely embody the invisible hand of the market through algorithms and data, providing neutral infrastructure for market forces, they are also incentivized to design and regulate markets according to their own profit motives—rather than neoliberal ideological principles. Platforms design market transaction rules according to their own interests, which often break and suspend the principle of fair exchange. While the privatization of regulation can be seen as a continuation of the neoliberal agenda to expand market mechanisms, the outcome looks less like a neoliberal power mechanism and “more like serfs in a feudal manor—always at the mercy of the lord, who can expropriate their livelihood without compensation.” Durand similarly compares platform capitalism to a form of “techno-feudalism,” because its predatory accumulation regime is realized through expropriation and non-productive rent-seeking, protected by extra-economic forms of coercive power.

因此，这些专有市场将不是传统意义上的新自由主义市场。虽然平台所有者倾向于认为，他们只是通过算法和数据来体现市场的无形之手，并为市场力量提供中立的基础设施，但他们也会因受到激励而根据自己的盈利动机——而非新自由主义的意识形态原则——来设计和调节市场。平台根据自身利益来设计市场交易规则，而这往往会打破和中止公平交易原则。虽然调节的私有化可以被视为新自由主义扩大市场机制议程的延续，但其结果看起来不太像新自由主义的权力机制，而“更像是封建庄园里的农奴——总是受领主的摆布，且领主可以无偿占有他们的生计”。杜兰德同样将平台资本主义与某种形式的“技术封建主义”相提并论，因为它的掠夺性积累体制是通过占有和非生产性租赁实现的，并受超经济的强权形式的保护。

(II) From Taylorist Hierarchy to Algorithmic Grouping

（二）从泰勒主义的等级制度到算法群组

Fordism was characterized by the adoption of Taylorist production modes, centered on economies of scale, and the efficient mass production of relatively homogeneous goods through highly hierarchical organizations. In contrast, post-Fordism emphasized flexibility, innovation, and economies of scope.

福特主义的特点是采用泰勒主义的生产模式，以实现规模经济为中心，并通过高度等级化的组织对相对同质的商品进行高效的大规模生产。相比之下，后福特主义强调的是灵活性、创新性和范围经济。

Platformization means the continuation and expansion of the post-Fordist production mode, but with qualitative changes, as programmable social infrastructure is used as a means of precisely controlling workers. The neoliberal market model is replaced by programmable proprietary markets, which use algorithms, data, and artificial intelligence to shape worker behavior in a precise yet seemingly general manner. Platforms control their workforce through dynamic ratings and scores, while also conducting automatic monitoring and management of workers through data flows and algorithmic management. The neoliberal “market governance system” thus transforms into a system that is not only marketized but also technologized, shaping workers’ techno-liberal subjectivity, which can be molded according to corporate needs.

平台化意味着后福特主义生产模式的延续和扩展，但其中也有质的变化，因为可编程的社会基础设施被用作精确控制工人的手段。新自由主义的市场模式被可编程的专有市场所取代，它利用算法、数据和人工智能，以一种精确、但看起来十分一般的方式来塑造工人的行为。平台通过动态评级和评分来控制其工作人员，同时还通过数据流和算法管理来对工作人员进行自动监控和管理。新自由主义的“市场治理制度”因此转变为一种不仅市场化而且技术化的制度，塑造了工人的技术自由主义的主体性，这种主体性可以根据企业的需求来塑造。

Antoinette Rouvroy and Thomas Berns describe “algorithmic rationality”: a rationality “based on the automatic collection, aggregation, and analysis of big data, in order to model, predict, and pre-emptively influence future behavior.” For example, by having workers interact in the market as competitors rather than collaborators within a team, and by designing interfaces that prevent workers from communicating or learning from each other, platforms can prevent the emergence of key political subjects, thereby reducing the possibility of collective action. Platforms further shape worker subjectivity by: first, gamifying performance; second, using review metrics and performance evaluation results from customers and peers to create horizontal peer-to-peer control systems. Accordingly, labor regulations combine the precise control of Taylorism with the flexibility and informal precarious labor contracts of the neoliberal market model, undermining the mobilization of labor and thus reducing the possibility of platform workers’ re-embedding.

安托瓦妮特·鲁弗鲁瓦（Antoinette Rouvroy）和托马斯·伯恩斯（Thomas Berns）描述了“算法理性”：一种“建立在自动收集、聚合和分析大数据基础上的理性，以便对未来行为进行建模、预测和预先影响”。例如，通过让工人在市场中以竞争对手而非团队中的合作者的身份进行互动，并设计阻止工人相互交流或学习的界面，平台可以阻止关键政治主体的出现，从而减少集体行动的可能性。平台还通过以下方式进一步塑造员工的主体性：一是将绩效游戏化；二是利用来自客户和同行的评论指标和绩效评估结果创建横向的点对点控制系统。据此，劳动法规将泰勒主义的精确控制与新自由主义市场模式的灵活性和非正式的不稳定劳动合同结合起来，破坏了劳动力的动员，从而减少了平台工人重新嵌入的可能性。

(III) Toward an Automated Consumer Culture

（三）走向自动化的消费文化

The cultural logic of Fordism was characterized by mass consumption and mass individuality, increasing demand for standardized goods. As noted above, the Fordist accumulation crisis began as a demand crisis, because these “basic needs had been largely satisfied.” Post-Fordism is characterized by a shift toward personalization, targeting specific consumer niches, and shaping a culture that differentiates consumers through distinction.

福特主义的文化逻辑以大众消费和大众个性为特征，增加了大众对标准化商品的需求。如上所述，福特主义的积累危机始于需求危机，因为这些“基本需求几乎已经得到了满足”。后福特主义的特点是转向个性化，针对特定的消费者利基，并塑造一种能够通过差异化区分消费者的文化。

Although we tend to think of technological innovation as a means of increasing productivity, since the Fordist crisis the main direction of investment in technological innovation has been financialization and demand creation, rather than maximizing productivity—a result of weak demand on the post-Fordist side. Since the 1970s, there has been debate over whether the application of digital technology has made a significant contribution to productivity development. While much attention on AI and digital automation focuses on their potential impact on labor, digitalization remains characterized by the rationalization of consumption, rather than the rationalization of production: companies like Alphabet and Meta Platforms are essentially advertising platforms, which extract personal data and use complex AI to predict, guide, and manipulate consumer behavior. The development of such platforms benefits from their promise of predictable consumption creation, thereby enabling financialization.

虽然我们往往倾向于认为技术创新是提高生产力的手段，但自福特主义危机以来，技术创新投资的主要方向是金融化和创造需求，而不是最大限度地提高生产力，这是后福特主义需求侧疲软的结果。自1970年代以来，关于数字技术的运用是否对生产力的发展作出了重大贡献仍存在争议。虽然人们对人工智能和数字自动化的关注大都集中在其对劳动力的潜在影响上，但数字化的特点仍然是消费的合理化，而不是生产的合理化：像字母表和元宇宙平台这样的公司本质上是广告平台，它们通过提取个人数据，利用复杂的人工智能来预测、引导和操纵消费者的行为。这类平台的发展得益于其可预测的创造消费的承诺，从而有可能实现金融化。

Thus, digital capitalism is beginning to shape a consumer culture of its own. If the cultural logic of Fordism was characterized by mass individuality, and post-Fordism by postmodernity and subcultures, then digital capitalism is characterized by a cultural logic emerging around manipulation based on digital control. From Fordist economies of scale to post-Fordist economies of scope, we see an initial shift toward an economy of action. In this shift, marketing increasingly has the ability to shape consumer demand through the plasticity of identity and difference. This brings about a unique consumption regime brought by platformization, characterized by increasingly unfree forms of control, domination, and manipulation, using consumers’ social insecurity and anxiety to shape their consumption demands. Therefore, platformization appears to be part of a movement toward the culmination of alienation, in which digital power allows the market system to take on a life of its own.

因此，数字资本主义正在开始塑造一种属于自己的消费文化。如果说福特主义的文化逻辑以大众—个体性为特征，后福特主义以后现代性和亚文化为特征，那么数字资本主义则以围绕着基于数字控制的操纵而出现的文化逻辑为特征。从福特主义的规模经济到后福特主义的范围经济，我们看到的是向行动经济的初步转变。在这种转变中，营销日益有能力通过从身份和差异的可塑性来塑造消费者的需求。这使得平台化带来了一种独特的消费制度，其特点是采用越来越不自由的控制、统治和操纵形式，利用消费者的社会不安全感和焦虑感来塑造其消费需求。因此，平台化似乎是走向异化高潮的一部分，在这一过程中，数字力量允许市场系统拥有自己的生命。

V. Discussion

五、讨论

The Fordist-Keynesian state was a container for the domestic market, playing a “managerial” role. But after the accumulation crisis of the 1970s, capital burst out of the boundaries of the nation-state, and the state became the “neoliberal” or “entrepreneurial” state. While Fordism temporarily resolved the inherent tension between democracy and capitalism by preventing the intensification of inequality through rapid economic growth, post-Fordism and neoliberalism experienced a rapid increase in social inequality, indicating that Fordism was an unstable or transitional political form. This laid the foundation for the emergence of digital capitalism.

福特主义—凯恩斯主义国家是国内市场的容器，扮演着“管理”的角色。但在1970年代积累危机之后，资本冲出了民族国家的边界，国家成了“新自由主义”或“企业型”国家。虽然福特主义通过经济的快速增长来阻止不平等的加剧，暂时解决了民主与资本主义之间固有的紧张关系，但后福特主义和新自由主义经历了社会不平等的快速加剧，这表明福特主义是一种不稳定的或过渡性的政治形式。这就为数字资本主义的产生奠定了基础。

Platforms are techno-political actors that constitute, embody, or enact political goals through technology, striving to use digital power to monopolize governance. Therefore, platformization can be seen as the continuous use of digital power for social control in contemporary capitalist society. Just as the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism, platformization is a slow, gradual, and diversified path-dependent process. In this process, different platforms strategically adapt to local institutions, seeking to identify and exploit their loopholes and weaknesses. However, platformization has a common feature: capital actively intervenes politically in the state, attempting to transfer decision-making power from electoral institutions to private companies.

平台是技术政治行为体，通过技术来构成、体现或制定政治目标，力图运用数字力量来垄断治理。因此，平台化可以视为在当代资本主义社会中不断地使用数字力量来进行社会控制。正如从福特主义到后福特主义的转变一样，平台化过程是一个缓慢、渐进、多样化的路径依赖过程。在这个过程中，不同的平台战略性适应当地的制度，力图识别和利用其漏洞和弱点。然而，平台化有一个共同的特点，那就是资本对国家进行积极的政治干预，试图将决策权从选举机构转移到私人公司。

Thus, under digital capitalism, markets are proprietary, and platform companies are competing with public institutions for regulatory roles, even seeking to replace them. Digital capitalism is built on complex forms of control based on digital technology, which is forming an accumulation model grounded in new forms of domination. By privatizing market regulation, digital capitalism resolves the neoliberal tension between democracy and market forces. In this way, state institutions and collective decision-making associated with market regulation become obsolete. Therefore, digital capitalism is founded on the privatization, digitalization, and financialization of market regulation.

因此，在数字资本主义条件下，市场是专有的，就调节作用而言，平台公司正在与公共机构竞争，甚至想要取而代之。数字资本主义建立在数字技术复杂的控制形式的基础上，而数字技术正在形成一种基于新的统治形式的积累模式。通过将市场调节私有化，数字资本主义解决了民主与市场力量之间的新自由主义紧张关系。如此一来，与市场调节相关的国家机构和集体决策就变得过时了。因此，数字资本主义是建立在市场调节的私有化、数字化和金融化的基础之上的。

Fordism pursued profit through the rationalization of production, post-Fordism through financialization and appropriation, while digital capitalism pursues profit through coercive accumulation—that is, using digital power to maintain a stranglehold on key points of accumulation to amass profit, and using the threat of exclusion to extract monopoly rents. In the post-Fordist period, globalization drove manufacturing overseas, thereby weakening labor and putting pressure on states to deregulate markets, pushing wealthy economies toward services. Platformization is a continuation of this trajectory, as platforms in practice constitute a privatized and deterritorialized tax haven, enabling service-sector work to be digitally offshored. This intensifies the competitive pressure states face, forcing them to offer markets attractive to capital through forms of “regulatory weakening” via privatization, while giving enterprises ways to evade regulation by unions and the state.

福特主义通过生产的合理化来追求利润，后福特主义通过金融化和占有来追求利润，而数字资本主义则是通过强制积累来追求利润，即利用数字力量来保持对积累关键点的扼制以积累利润，并利用排斥的威胁来榨取垄断租金。在后福特主义时期，全球化促使制造业转移到海外，从而削弱了劳动力，并给国家带来了放松市场管制的压力，使富裕经济体转向服务业。平台化是这一轨迹的延续，因为平台在实践中构成了一种私有化和去地域化的避税天堂，使服务部门的工作能够通过数字方式转移到海外。这就加大了国家所面对的竞争压力，迫使国家通过私有化形式的“监管削弱”来提供对资本来说有吸引力的市场，同时使企业有办法逃避工会和国家的监管。

Digital capitalism brings a new mode of social regulation, as capital is using code to rewrite law and employing digital technological media to replace the role of state institutions.

数字资本主义带来了一种新的社会调节模式，因为资本正在使用代码来重写法律，并利用数字技术媒介来取代国家机构的作用。

First, the privatization of markets can be seen as a continuation of the neoliberal agenda, as it is an expansion of market forces into new domains. Platforms formulate the rules of interaction and competition, designing market mechanisms according to their own interests, which often runs counter to the ideal of free-market competition. If the contradiction of the neoliberal state is the contradiction between democracy and market forces, then the contradiction of digital capitalism is the contradiction between market participants and the platform.

首先，市场的私有化可以被视为新自由主义议题的延续，因为它是市场力量向新领域的扩张。平台制定了互动和竞争的规则，根据其自身的利益来设计市场机制，这往往与自由市场竞争的理想背道而驰。如果说新自由主义国家的矛盾是民主与市场力量之间的矛盾，那么数字资本主义的矛盾则是市场参与者与平台之间的矛盾。

Second, platforms are based on the use of programmable social infrastructure to control social outcomes, which appear to emerge organically from individual interactions. Through code and data, governance is depoliticized and privatized, forming proprietary algorithms that use vast amounts of behavioral data to alter social systems through the design of infrastructure—turning social problems into technical problems that can be solved by private means. Platformization means using privatized technology as the basis of governance to replace the political life of the community. In this sense, platformization embodies politics after the “end of politics,” stripping its actions from dimensions such as politics, conflict, and power, and presenting them as inevitable and natural. Since neoliberal ideology is based on trust in the inherent legitimacy of market logic, these cybernetic systems are subject to their own techno-liberal ideology: trust in the invisible hand of the platform algorithm.

其次，平台的基础是使用可编程的社会基础设施来控制社会结果（social outcomes），这些结果似乎是从个人互动中有机产生的。通过代码和数据，治理被去政治化和私有化，形成专有的算法，这种算法利用大量的行为数据，通过基础设施的设计来改变社会系统——把社会问题变成了可以通过私人手段来解决的技术问题。平台化意味着运用私有化的技术作为治理的基础来取代共同体的政治生活。从这个意义上讲，平台化体现了“政治终结”后的政治，将其行动的结果从政治、冲突和权力等维度中剥离出来，并将其视为不可避免的和自然的。由于新自由主义意识形态是基于对市场逻辑固有的合法性的信任，因此这些控制论系统受制于自己的技术自由主义意识形态：对平台算法这只无形之手的信任。

VI. Conclusion

六、结论

This article uses regulation theory to study the continuities and discontinuities associated with the rise of digital capitalism. Digitalization first emerged as part of the macro-trend of capitalist restructuring in response to the post-Fordist crisis, and also as a complement to the neoliberal regime of financialization. However, digitalization also poses challenges to existing institutions: since digital goods are not scarce and can be reproduced at near-zero marginal cost, they present a contentious challenge to capitalist accumulation—even leading some scholars to speculate that digitalization will bring about the arrival of a post-capitalist utopia. Capitalism’s solution to this dilemma is the platform, because platforms can use digital technology to centralize and control access to resources, artificially creating scarcity. The platform model is ultimately built on a predatory regime of accumulation through unproductive rent extraction, guaranteed by forms of extra-economic coercion. Therefore, some scholars argue that digitalization will not bring post-capitalism; instead, it may bring pre-capitalism, sharing more in common with feudalism than with socialism.

本文运用调节理论研究了与数字资本主义的崛起相关的连续性和非连续性。数字化首先是作为应对后福特主义危机的资本主义重组的宏观趋势的一部分而出现的，也是对金融化新自由主义制度的补充。然而，数字化也给现有的制度带来了挑战：由于数字商品并不稀缺，而且可以以接近零的边际成本进行再生产，数字商品给资本主义积累带来了一个备受争议的挑战——这甚至导致一些学者猜测：数字化将带来后资本主义乌托邦的到来。资本主义针对这一困境给出的解决方案是平台，因为平台能够利用数字技术来集中并控制资源的获取，人为地制造稀缺性。而平台模式最终建立在通过非生产性租赁积累的掠夺性体制上，并由超经济的强权形式予以保证。因此，有学者认为，数字化不会带来后资本主义，相反，它可能会带来前资本主义，也就是与封建主义、而非社会主义有更多的共同之处。

This transformation involves not only a transition from one accumulation regime to another, but also an entirely new production system. At the same time, this pseudo-feudal form of accumulation is currently placed within a larger institutional hierarchy that closely resembles the neoliberal accumulation regime of financialization. The combination of old and new institutions indicates that we are in what Gramsci called a “transitional period”: an uncertain moment when the new is just beginning to sprout from the ashes of the old. Although we have outlined how platformization exerts pressure on existing institutions and social regulation, the resulting regulatory institutions and institutional configuration of digital capitalism are still in the making. As regulation theorists emphasize, although the outcome at this moment is constrained and bound by more capitalist trajectories, it is ultimately determined by political processes. At this crossroads, we can roughly sketch three possible paths forward.

这种转变不仅涉及从一种积累体制向另一种积累体制的过渡，还涉及全新的生产制度。与此同时，这种伪封建形式的积累目前被置于一种更大的制度等级中，这种等级制度与金融化的新自由主义积累体制极为相似。新旧制度的结合表明，我们正处于葛兰西所说的“过渡期”：在这个不确定的时刻，新事物刚刚开始从旧事物的灰烬中萌芽。虽然我们已经概述了平台化如何对现有的制度和社会调节施加压力，但由此产生的调节制度和数字资本主义的机构配置仍在酝酿之中。正如调节理论的研究者所强调的那样，尽管此刻的结果受到更多的资本主义轨迹的制约和束缚，但最终是由政治进程决定的。在这个岔路口，我们可以大致勾勒出三条可能的前进道路。

The first path is the continuation of the current relatively laissez-faire platform capitalism, which has so far dominated in the West. This path means that new forms of accumulation will be realized through old governance mechanisms and driven by geopolitical interests, while platform companies may continue to grow and consolidate, giving rise to an elite class capable of manipulating social, political, and economic conditions. Platforms may acquire increasing governance capacity through digital surveillance and control—“in functional areas from renting housing to transportation to commerce, people will increasingly be controlled by corporations rather than the state.”

第一条道路是目前相对自由放任的平台资本主义的延续，这种资本主义迄今为止在西方占主导地位。这条道路意味着新的积累形式会由旧的治理机制来实现，并受到地缘政治利益的驱动，同时，平台公司有可能会继续增长和巩固，一个有能力操纵社会、政治和经济条件的精英阶层将崛起。平台可能会通过数字监视和控制来获取越来越多的治理能力——“在从出租房屋到交通运输、再到商业的功能领域，人们将越来越多地受到公司而非国家的控制”。

The second path is a potential one. The control capabilities and data extraction functions of the platform model enhance the state’s control capacity, which may penetrate deeply into the social, political, and economic dimensions of citizens’ daily lives.

第二条道路是一条潜在的路径。平台模式的控制能力和数据提取功能增强了国家的控制能力，而国家的控制能力有可能深入到公民日常生活的社会、政治和经济层面。

The third path requires treating the social infrastructure of platforms in the same way as other public infrastructure, but this still lacks examples. This path would subject platform infrastructure to strict regulation, and platform design would be subject to political and democratic decision-making, thereby serving the public interest. This model might include a “platform cooperativism” model, in which non-market actors develop platforms, building them on non-market values such as solidarity and democratic ownership, and seeking to achieve fair labor conditions through digital forms of collective bargaining. Although technically feasible, without strong state support and a matching regulatory framework, such platform cooperative enterprises are unlikely to compete with private quasi-monopolies built on nearly inexhaustible financial investment. This suggests that it may be beneficial to think in terms of more fundamental social transformation.

第三条道路则需要以对待其他公共基础设施的方式来对待平台的社会基础设施，但这仍缺乏实例。这条道路将使平台基础设施受到严格的监管，平台设计也将受制于政治和民主决策，从而服务于公共利益。这种模式可能包括“平台合作主义”模式，在这种模式下，非市场行为者负责开发平台，将其建立在团结、民主所有权等非市场价值观的基础上，并通过进行数字形式的集体谈判来寻求实现公平的劳动条件。虽然这在技术上是可行的，但如果没有强有力的国家支持和与之相匹配的监管框架，这种平台合作企业不太可能与建立在几乎取之不尽的金融投资基础上的私营准垄断企业竞争。这表明，从更根本的社会转变的角度来思考问题可能是有益的。

Although platformization originates from the continuous improvement of technological governance capacity, the road ahead remains open. While it is not without reason that early technological utopianism has been replaced by technological dystopianism, it is important to recognize that the high hopes placed on digitalization have not been misplaced. Today, digital technology may undermine democratic rights, weaken public services, lead to labor instability, violate privacy, and destabilize world democracy, but its political possibilities can also help realize new forms of democratic governance. We can envision digital technology supporting transnational regulatory governance institutions, thereby providing new institutionalized solutions to the long-standing Fordist crisis. However, realizing this optimistic vision requires us to exercise political imagination. Although our political strength has atrophied over decades of neoliberal hegemony, we must still recognize that we have the capacity to take control of affairs. Code is institution, code is regulation, code is politics, and therefore code must be subordinate to political life. Platformization is both a political process and a contingent process. This article hopes to contribute, however modestly, to achieving this goal.

尽管平台化源自于技术治理能力的不断提高，但前方的道路仍然是开放的。尽管早期的技术乌托邦主义被技术反乌托邦主义取代并非没有道理，但重要的是要认识到，对数字化寄予的厚望并没有错付。今天，数字技术可能会破坏民主权利，削弱公共服务，导致劳动力不稳定，侵犯隐私，并破坏世界民主的稳定，但其政治可能性也会有助于实现新的民主治理形式。我们可以设想数字技术支持跨国调节治理机构，从而为解决长期存在的福特主义危机提供新的制度化解决方案。然而，实现这种乐观的愿景需要我们发挥政治想象力。尽管在几十年的新自由主义霸权中，我们的政治力量已经萎缩，但还是要认识到我们有能力掌控事态。代码是制度，代码是调节，代码是政治，因此代码必须服从于政治生活。平台化既是一个政治过程，也是一个或然的过程。本文希望能对实现这一目标有所贡献，尽管这一贡献是微不足道的。

(Author: Petter Törnberg, Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam; Translators: Zhou Yanyun, Kang Wenyu, Wang Lin, School of Marxism, Xi’an Jiaotong University)

（作者：彼得·特恩贝里（Petter Törnberg），荷兰阿姆斯特丹大学社会科学研究所；译者：周延云、康文钰、王琳，西安交通大学马克思主义学院）

Online editor: Tongxin

网络编辑：同心