Viewing the Development of Digital Capitalism Historically and Dialectically

At present, digitalization and intellectualization are exerting broad and profound impacts on social production and daily life, with digital technology increasingly becoming a resource. At the same time, the influence of digital technology on actual production and daily life has triggered a series of theoretical questions, providing opportunities for the innovation of social critique theory. Consequently, the emergence of digital capitalism and its critique have followed.

当前，数字化、智能化给社会生产生活带来广泛而深刻的影响，数字技术日益成为一种资源。与此同时，数字技术对现实生产生活的影响引发一系列理论问题，为社会批判理论的创新提供机遇，数字资本主义的产生以及对其的批判随之而来。

As a classic theory that critiques society and continuously transforms into practical force, Marxism faces the task of critiquing digital capitalism, becoming a focal topic for many scholars. Some scholars argue that the emergence of a new form of capital accumulation under the support of digital technology—the accumulation of digital capital—transcends Marxism’s definition of capitalism, questioning the applicability of Marx’s labor theory of value in the era of digital capitalism. However, in fact, Marxism still possesses explanatory power and vitality; only Marxist theory can provide a scientific answer to the developmental logic of digital capitalism and offer practical guidance.

作为社会批判且不断转化为现实力量的经典理论，马克思主义面临数字资本主义的批判任务，成为不少学者关注的焦点话题。一些学者认为，数字技术加持下的新资本积累形式——数字资本积累的出现，超越了马克思主义对资本主义的界定，质疑马克思的劳动价值论在数字资本主义时代的适用性。但事实上，马克思主义仍具有解释力和生命力，只有马克思主义理论才能对数字资本主义的发展逻辑予以科学的解答并给予实践的指导。

Analyzing conceptually, when we speak of digital capitalism, we must clarify the essence to which it refers. Indeed, digital capitalism has become a key term for describing new characteristics of capitalist development, following financial capitalism and industrial capitalism. Many scholars have made in-depth progress in critiquing digital capitalism in light of actual conditions. From a Marxist perspective, penetrating the concept of digital capitalism requires at least clarifying the relationship between digital capital and capitalism. As a term in political economy, the concept of digital capitalism was proposed long ago by American professor Dan Schiller in his 1999 book *Digital Capitalism*. He argued that, under the influence of an expansionary market logic, the internet is driving the political economy toward so-called digital capitalism. With the deepening of practice and the development of theory, digital capitalism is no longer limited to the political-economic sphere; it also exerts influence in fields such as philosophy, even gradually becoming a cross-disciplinary concept, and to some extent can describe the new form of contemporary capitalist development. The prerequisite for the capitalization of digital is that digital becomes a new factor of production and participates in the process of economic development, playing a role in accelerating capital circulation in the links of production, exchange, distribution, and consumption. In Marxist theory, a commodity is not only a product of labor but also something that can be exchanged, because digital can also become a product of labor. Those digital items that, after processing, can enter market circulation become commodities, embodying undifferentiated human abstract labor, entering the fields of production, circulation, and consumption, and realizing their own value. So-called digital capitalism actually refers to a production system that uses digital technology to discover, utilize, and create differences in order to obtain profit and pursue the continuous accumulation of capital. Digital capitalism emphasizes a form of capitalist development distinct from industrial capitalism, financial capitalism, etc., and has limitations relative to digital capital itself. These limitations are manifested in the fact that digital or digital capital can be a universal phenomenon of modernization. Digital capitalism is merely one form of capitalist society; when emphasizing the context of digital capital’s new exploitation of people, it refers to the operational logic of capitalist society. The emergence or development of capital is merely a universal phenomenon in human society; only when capital can occupy a dominant position in society and is accompanied by the establishment of private property does a capitalist society arise. Whether in socialist modernization or capitalist modernization, digital capital will appear, but digital capitalism exists only under the private ownership of capitalism and is also a developmental characteristic of the new stage of capitalist modernization.

从概念上分析，当我们在说数字资本主义的时候，必须明确所指的本质。的确，数字资本主义成为继金融资本主义、产业资本主义后，对资本主义发展特点新的描述的关键词汇，不少学者把数字化趋势看成数字资本主义新的发展，在结合现实情况对数字资本主义进行批判上取得深入进展。在马克思主义看来，透视数字资本主义概念至少需要厘清数字资本与资本主义的关系。作为政治经济学术语，数字资本主义这一概念早就由美国教授丹·希勒在1999年的著作《数字资本主义》提出，他认为在扩张性市场逻辑的影响下，因特网正在带动政治经济向所谓的数字资本主义转变。随着实践深入和理论发展，数字资本主义已不限于政治经济领域，还在哲学等领域产生影响，甚至逐步成为一个跨领域的概念，并在某种程度上可以描述当前资本主义发展的新的样态。数字资本化的前提是数字成为新的生产要素并参与经济发展的过程，在生产、交换、分配、消费等环节中起到加速资本流动的作用。在马克思主义理论中，商品不仅是劳动产品，而且能够交换，这是因为数字也可以成为劳动产品。那些经过处理能够进入市场流通的数字成为商品，凝结着无差别的人类抽象劳动，进入生产、流通、消费等领域，实现自身的价值。所谓数字资本主义，实际上是指用数字技术发现、利用、创造差异来获取利润，追求资本持续积累的生产体系。数字资本主义强调的是作为与产业资本主义、金融资本主义等相区别的资本主义发展样态，相对于数字资本本身而言具有局限性。这种局限性体现在，数字或者数字资本可以是作为现代化普遍的现象。而数字资本主义仅仅是作为资本主义社会的一种样态，当强调数字资本对人们新的剥削语境时，指的是资本主义社会的运作逻辑。资本的出现或者发展只是人类社会的普遍现象，只有在资本能够占据社会主导地位，并伴随私有制建立时，才会产生资本主义社会。无论是社会主义现代化还是资本主义现代化，都会出现数字资本，但数字资本主义仅是资本主义私有制下才会存在的样态，也是资本主义现代化新阶段的发展特点。

However, digital capitalism has not transcended Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation of capital; this theory enables people to grasp more scientifically the operational logic of the digital capitalist production system and its harms. In traditional modes of production, labor time and space are relatively fixed. Digital capitalism’s breakthrough of time and space is not entirely unrestricted by time and space; time and space have regularity. As a means of production, genuine “leisure time is used for producing for oneself.” Under the capitalist mode of production, people’s leisure time becomes production and consumption time, and surplus value is further extracted. As Marx pointed out, “so-called primitive accumulation is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production.” Digital capitalism’s breakthrough of time and space lies in the distance between digital products and laborers. Under the operation of capital, this distance produces a huge chasm, and capitalists play the role of maximizing profit in this process. For example, in terms of labor forms, precisely because of digital capitalism, capitalists can control social production and reproduction through wage labor and non-wage labor. On one side is the production of digital, and on the other side is the application of various digital platforms. Under wage labor, digital production is manifested in the research, development, and accumulation of various technologies, etc.; regarding digital platforms, it is manifested in the practical application of the entire production and living system, express delivery logistics methods, etc. Both are incorporated into the operational system of digital capitalism seeking value augmentation. In traditional labor, factors such as the age and gender of laborers had a significant impact on the means of production, but digital labor gives the means of production a broader scope, capable of incorporating almost everyone into the digital capital production system. Through “institutional arrangements, technical means, etc., the labor time of non-wage labor is increased, necessary labor time is continuously compressed, and surplus labor time is persistently lengthened. The degree of exploitation of digital labor by digital capital continuously increases, extending from the work sphere to all areas of social life.” It can be said that this reveals, to a certain extent, the technological logic and accumulation logic of digital capitalism.

但是，数字资本主义并未超越马克思主义资本原始积累理论，这一理论让人们更能科学把握数字资本主义生产体系运作的逻辑及其危害。在传统生产方式中，劳动时间和空间是比较固定的，数字资本主义对时空的突破并非完全不受时空的制约，时空具有规律性，作为一种生产手段，真正的“闲暇时间用于为自己生产”。在资本主义生产方式下，人们的闲暇时间变成生产和消费时间，剩余价值进一步被挖掘，正如马克思所指出的，“所谓原始积累只不过是生产者和生产资料分离的历史过程”。数字资本主义对时空的突破在于数字产品与劳动者之间的距离，这种距离在资本的运作下，产生巨大的鸿沟，资本家在这一过程中发挥追求利润最大化的作用。比如，在劳动形式上，正是由于数字资本主义，资本家可以以雇佣劳动和非雇佣劳动的方式控制社会的生产与再生产，一边是数字的生产，另一边是各类数字平台的应用，雇佣劳动下数字生产体现为各种技术等的研发积累，就数字平台而言体现在整个生产生活体系、快递物流方式等的实际应用上，两者都被纳入数字资本主义寻求价值增殖的运行体系中。在传统劳动中，劳动者的年龄、性别等因素对生产要素影响很大，但数字劳动赋予生产要素更广的范围，几乎可以把所有人纳入数字资本生产体系中，通过“制度安排、技术手段等使非雇佣劳动的劳动时间增加，必要劳动时间不断压缩，剩余劳动时间则是被持续拉长，数字资本对于数字劳动的剥削程度不断加大，从工作领域延伸到了社会生活的各个领域”。可以说，这在一定程度上揭示了数字资本主义的技术逻辑和积累逻辑。

From the perspective of the developmental laws of digital capitalism, under the environment of capitalist private ownership, the privatization of digital capital is inevitable, that is, the capitalist’s possession of digital, and it will continuously trigger the alienation of labor. Marx described the phenomenon of alienated labor in the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844*: “this labor is not his own, but someone else’s; it does not belong to him; in it he does not belong to himself but to another.” Similarly, in the era of digital capitalism, digital becomes alienated. Capitalist private ownership’s appropriation of labor and even the worker is more thorough, encompassing not only mental but also physical labor, and even the production system arising from the enhancement of mental labor will revolve around the production and reproduction of digital capital. From a historical development perspective, digital capital is a historical concept. In the era of Marx and Engels, maintaining the development of the capitalist production system through appropriating the surplus value of laborers had very distinct characteristics of the times. But capital’s pursuit of profit does not stop; the evolution of capital logic makes capitalist society itself continuously seek new ways of augmentation to maintain the operation of society. In this situation, digital capital can provide new space for capitalist society to achieve new development; this is a completely new factor of production compared to the past. Capitalists can not only control the mode of social operation through digital capital but also predict production costs and investment risks through digital technology, better reducing the blindness of production and investment. Although this is a labor characteristic different from past eras, the underlying principle has not changed.

从数字资本主义的发展规律看，在资本主义私有制环境下，数字资本私有化是必然的，即资本家对数字的占有，并且会持续引发对劳动的异化。马克思在《1844年经济学哲学手稿》中对劳动异化现象进行描述，“这种劳动不是他自己的，而是别人的；劳动不属于他；他在劳动中也不属于他自己，而是属于别人”。同样地，在数字资本主义时代，数字产生异化，资本主义私有制对劳动乃至工人的占有更加彻底，不仅有脑力的还有体力的，乃至围绕脑力劳动提升而产生出的生产体系，都将围绕数字资本的生产与再生产展开。从历史发展的观点看，数字资本是一个历史的概念，在马克思恩格斯所处的时代，通过占有劳动者的剩余价值维系资本主义生产体系的发展，具有非常明显的时代特征。但资本对利润的追求并不会止步，资本逻辑的演变使资本主义社会本身不断寻找新的增殖方式，以维系社会的运转。在这种情况下，数字资本能够为资本主义社会实现新的发展提供新的空间，这是相对于过去完全崭新的生产要素。资本家不仅能够通过数字资本控制社会运行的模式，还可以通过数字技术对生产成本以及投资风险等进行预测，更好地减少生产和投资的盲目性，这虽是不同于过去时代的劳动特点，但蕴含的道理并没有改变。

In summary, comprehensively revealing the essential logic of digital capitalism, seeking pathways to make good use of digital capital, and promoting the better service of digital technology to the development of human society are important propositions of contemporary Marxist research. As General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized, "Although the era we live in has undergone enormous and profound changes compared with the era in which Marx lived, from the broad perspective of 500 years of world socialism, we are still in the historical era indicated by Marxism." [1]1 "World socialism 500 years" refers to the historical narrative, officially promoted by the CPC, that traces the origins of socialist thought from Thomas More's *Utopia* (1516) through the development of scientific socialism to the present day. China is currently building a Digital China; this is a digital era under the background of Chinese-path modernization. It is necessary to leverage the positive role of digital technology, guard against the influence of the alienated phenomena of digital capitalism, pay greater attention to fairness, balance, and sharing, give full play to the institutional advantages of socialism, allow digital capital to serve the development of new quality productive forces, achieve high-quality economic and social development, and create more well-being for the people.

综上所述，全面地揭示数字资本主义的本质逻辑，寻求用好数字资本的路径，推动数字更好地服务人类社会发展，是当代马克思主义研究的重要命题。正如习近平总书记所强调的，“尽管我们所处的时代同马克思所处的时代相比发生了巨大而深刻的变化，但从世界社会主义500年的大视野来看，我们依然处在马克思主义所指明的历史时代”。我国正在建设数字中国，这是中国式现代化背景下的数字时代，需要发挥数字技术的积极作用，警惕数字资本主义异化现象的影响，更加注重公平性、均衡性和共享性，充分发挥社会主义制度优势，让数字资本服务于新质生产力的发展，实现经济社会高质量发展，为人民创造更多福祉。

(The author is an Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Party School of the Yunnan Provincial Committee of the CPC.)

（作者系中共云南省委党校哲学教研部副教授）

Online Editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧