The Political Economy Logic of Developing Service-Oriented Manufacturing

Service-oriented manufacturing refers to a new type of business in which manufacturing enterprises provide users with a series of services—research and development, design, consulting, financing, training, use, maintenance, upgrading, and recycling—throughout the entire life cycle of their products. It is a new form of industry that organically integrates manufacturing and services, and it is also a frontier field in the deep integration of the real economy and the digital economy. This model emerged in the 1980s, aiming to enable manufacturing enterprises to extend their value chains and expand sources of profit amid fierce market competition. In recent years, with the maturation and application of advanced digital technologies such as big data, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence, service-oriented manufacturing has moved toward a stage of digitalization, networking, and intelligence, demonstrating significant advantages in improving quality and efficiency. It plays an important role in promoting new quality productive forces and also possesses rich value for political economy research.

服务型制造是指制造企业在其产品的整个生命周期内为用户提供研发、设计、咨询、融资、培训、使用、维护、升级、回收等一系列服务，是制造与服务有机融合的新型业态，也是实体经济与数字经济深度融合的前沿领域。该模式兴起于20世纪80年代，旨在使制造企业在激烈的市场竞争中延长价值链，扩大利润来源。近年来，随着大数据、物联网、人工智能等先进数字技术的成熟与应用，服务型制造迈向数字化、网络化、智能化阶段，展现出提质增效的显著优势，对发展新质生产力具有重要推动作用，也具有丰富的政治经济学研究价值。

Bearing New Quality Productive Forces

承载新质生产力

Marxist political economy holds that the exertion of productive forces must rely on a certain mode of production. Whether productive forces undergo qualitative change hinges on whether a new mode of production has been formed. The First Industrial Revolution brought enormous progress in productive forces, and the key lay in the formation of large-scale industry as a landmark mode of production. At present, new quality productive forces are accelerating their development, bringing not only new technologies, new factors, and new tools, but inevitably also new modes of production. With the support of advanced digital technologies, service-oriented manufacturing is becoming a new mode of production that bears new quality productive forces. It takes intelligent manufactured products as its terminals, uses the Internet of Things as its medium, collects and analyzes data from product users, and provides users with personalized, diversified services—supporting services with data and obtaining data through services—forming a "data–service" cycle. This achieves the organic integration of manufacturing and services, enhances user loyalty, strengthens the profitability of manufacturing enterprises, and exhibits the characteristics of new quality productive forces: high technology, high efficiency, and high quality. Specifically, this is reflected in the following aspects.

马克思主义政治经济学认为，生产力的发挥必须依托于一定的生产方式。生产力是否发生质的变化，关键在于是否形成了新的生产方式。第一次工业革命带来了生产力的巨大进步，关键就在于形成了大工业这一标志性的生产方式。当前，新质生产力正在加速发展，不只会带来新技术、新要素、新工具，也必然带来新型生产方式。在先进数字技术的支持下，服务型制造正在成为一种承载新质生产力的新型生产方式。它以智能化的制造产品为终端，以物联网为媒介，通过采集、分析产品用户的数据，向用户提供个性化、多样化服务，以数据支持服务，以服务获取数据，形成“数据—服务”循环，实现制造与服务的有机融合，提高了用户的忠诚度，增强了制造企业的盈利能力，展现出新质生产力高科技、高效能、高质量的特征。具体来说，体现在以下方面。

First, service-oriented manufacturing promotes the deep integration of the real economy and the digital economy. At present, the consumer internet is approaching saturation, and traditional manufacturing faces fierce competition. Service-oriented manufacturing, by contrast, attends to both, with broad application scenarios, massive data scale, and obvious economic benefits, opening up vast space for the deep integration of the digital and real economies. The need of service-oriented manufacturing enterprises to collect and analyze data objectively requires them to realize intelligent and flexible manufacturing, thereby creating multiple possibilities for the application of advanced digital technologies in manufacturing. Second, service-oriented manufacturing revolutionizes the process of equipment use and promotes an increase in social production efficiency. Intelligent production equipment is an important product of service-oriented manufacturing, and its users are the micro-enterprises that constitute the entire social production system. Under the traditional model, enterprises invest large amounts of capital to purchase equipment and also face risks such as equipment wear, breakdowns, and depreciation. Under the service-oriented manufacturing model, equipment manufacturing enterprises can optimize the process by which users operate equipment, helping users with automatic maintenance, reducing breakdowns, raising equipment utilization rates, and extending service life; they can also allow users to "replace purchase with leasing" and pay on demand, helping users reduce fixed capital burdens, accelerate capital turnover, and optimize capacity allocation across society. Finally, service-oriented manufacturing is conducive to forming a virtuous cycle between production and consumption. Durable consumer goods such as passenger cars and household appliances are also important categories adopting the service-oriented manufacturing model, and as major expenditure items in residents' consumption demand, they are of great significance for expanding domestic demand. Under the traditional model, durable consumer goods have poor functional expandability, long service lives, and markets that easily become saturated; the consumption model exhibits obvious imitative, wave-like characteristics; industry development shows clear cyclicality; and "price wars" and overcapacity frequently occur. Service-oriented manufacturing takes products as carriers and services as its goal, turning products into interactive, expandable, and upgradable intelligent terminals, continuously meeting consumers' personalized and diversified needs, and opening up broad market space and lasting sources of profit for durable consumer goods manufacturing enterprises.

首先，服务型制造推动实体经济与数字经济深度融合。当前，消费互联网趋于饱和，传统制造业竞争激烈，服务型制造则兼顾两者，应用场景广泛、数据规模庞大、经济效益明显，为数实深度融合开辟了广阔空间。服务型制造企业采集、分析数据的需要客观上要求其自身实现智能化、柔性化制造，从而为先进数字技术在制造业的应用创造出多重可能。其次，服务型制造革新设备使用流程，促进社会生产效率提高。智能化生产设备是服务型制造的重要产品，其用户是构成整个社会生产体系的微观企业。在传统模式下，企业为购买设备投入大量资金，还要面临设备损耗、故障、贬值等风险。在服务型制造模式下，设备制造企业可以优化用户使用设备的流程，帮助用户自动维护、减少故障、提高设备使用率、延长使用寿命；还可以让用户“以租代购”、按需付费，帮助用户降低固定资本负担、加速资本周转，在社会范围内优化产能配置。最后，服务型制造有利于形成生产与消费的良性循环。乘用车、家用电器等耐用消费品也是采用服务型制造模式的重要品类，其作为居民消费需求的支出大项，对扩大内需具有重要意义。在传统模式下，耐用消费品功能扩展性差、使用年限长、市场易饱和，消费模式具有明显的模仿型排浪式特征，行业发展呈现明显的周期性，“价格战”与产能过剩经常发生。服务型制造以产品为载体，以服务为目标，将产品打造为可交互、可扩展、可升级的智能终端，不断满足消费者个性化、多样化的需求，为耐用消费品制造企业开辟广阔的市场空间和持久的利润来源。

Raising the Level of Socialization of Production

提升生产社会化水平

Marxist political economy holds that the degree of socialization of production is an important indicator reflecting the level of development of productive forces. The higher the degree of socialization, the more fully the collaborative nature of social production is brought into play, and the more developed the productive forces. In the stage of large-scale socialized production, large numbers of laborers, under unified organization, jointly use the means of production in a division of labor and collaboration; at the same time, the social division of labor is highly developed, and production units form an intricate social production network through supply–demand relations.

马克思主义政治经济学认为，生产的社会化程度是反映生产力发展水平的重要标志。社会化程度越高，社会生产的协作性发挥越充分，生产力也就越发达。在社会化大生产阶段，大量劳动者在统一组织下共同使用生产资料进行分工协作；同时，社会分工高度发展，生产单位之间通过供求关系形成错综复杂的社会生产网络。

The distinctive significance of service-oriented manufacturing lies in the fact that it markedly raises the level of socialization of production, embodying the qualitative leap of new quality productive forces. Under the traditional model, enterprises, and enterprises and consumers, form supply–demand relations based on "product flows"; under the service-oriented manufacturing model, enterprises not only supply products but also provide services and obtain data, and enterprises, and enterprises and consumers, form "platform–user" relations based on "data flows" and "service flows," making the social production network more intricate. With the generalization of service-oriented manufacturing, every enterprise will become a node in the social production network, on the one hand obtaining data and providing services, and on the other hand also providing data and receiving services. The development of service-oriented manufacturing further brings into play the collaborative nature of social production, making mutual learning and cross-referencing among individuals more generalized and systematic. Service-oriented manufacturing enterprises can also mine information and knowledge from massive user data, aggregating the individual circumstances of different users into production experience that can be promoted, making it easier for local innovations to produce economy-wide efficiency gains. This will fundamentally change the model of industrial innovation and raise the degree of socialization of industrial innovation.

服务型制造的独特意义在于它显著提升了生产的社会化水平，体现出新质生产力质的跃迁。在传统模式下，企业之间、企业与消费者之间基于“产品流”形成供求联系；在服务型制造模式下，企业不仅供给产品，而且提供服务并获取数据，企业之间、企业与消费者之间基于“数据流”与“服务流”形成“平台—用户”联系，社会生产网络更加错综复杂。随着服务型制造的普遍化，每一家企业都将成为社会生产网络中的一个节点，一方面获取数据并提供服务，另一方面也在提供数据并接受服务。服务型制造的发展使社会生产的协作性进一步发挥，个体之间相互学习、交叉借鉴更加普遍化和系统化。服务型制造企业还能从海量用户数据中挖掘信息和知识，将不同用户的个别情况汇聚形成可供推广的生产经验，使局部创新更容易产生全局性的效率提升。这将从根本上改变产业创新的模式，提高产业创新的社会化程度。

In the stage of small-scale production, production techniques were a secret held in the hands of laborers. As Marx said, "only the experienced master reveals the secrets of the business." [1]1 A quotation from Marx's *Capital*, Volume I, Chapter 15, describing the esoteric character of handicraft skill under the guild system. In the stage of large-scale socialized production, science becomes the reference benchmark for technological processes, and enterprises continuously apply scientific achievements to the production process, forming sustained industrial innovation. But science and production remain in a relatively separate state; the use of production practice by scientific research is not sufficiently systematic and complete, and a gap still exists between scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation. With the development of service-oriented manufacturing, user-generated data is increasingly becoming important material for industrial innovation, and data-driven problem discovery, process optimization, and experience sharing will become the norm in industrial innovation.

在小生产阶段，生产技术是掌握在劳动者手中的一种秘诀。正如马克思所言，“只有经验丰富的内行才能洞悉其中的奥妙”。在社会化大生产阶段，科学成为工艺流程的参照基准，企业不断将科学成果应用到生产过程中，形成持续的产业创新。但科学与生产处于相对分离的状态，科学研究对生产实践的利用不够系统和完备，科技创新与产业创新之间还存在隔阂。随着服务型制造的发展，用户生成的数据日益成为产业创新的重要素材，数据驱动下的问题发现、流程优化、经验共享将成为产业创新的常态。

Calling for New Relations of Production

呼唤新型生产关系

The basic principle that productive forces determine relations of production emphasizes that productive forces determine the mode of division of labor and collaboration among people in the production process, and thus determine the form taken by relations of production. Therefore, it is necessary to explore relations of production suited to new quality productive forces in connection with the specific modes of production that bear them. As an important carrier of new quality productive forces, service-oriented manufacturing places new demands on relations of production.

生产力决定生产关系的基本原理强调，生产力决定了人们在生产过程中的分工协作方式，从而决定了生产关系所采取的形式。因此，必须结合承载新质生产力的具体生产方式以探索适应新质生产力的生产关系。作为新质生产力的重要载体，服务型制造对生产关系提出了新的要求。

First, clarify the attribution of data and its reasonable mode of use. Data is the key resource under the service-oriented manufacturing model. Users continuously transmit data to manufacturing enterprises, and manufacturing enterprises and users form a long-term mutually beneficial and symbiotic relationship, with the boundary between them becoming blurred. Users include both consumers and a large number of enterprises. By comparison, data generated by enterprise users has higher use value and greater sensitivity, and more readily gives rise to problems of benefit distribution. It is necessary to improve laws and regulations, clarify the attribution of rights, and stipulate the bottom line of rights for win-win cooperation among stakeholders.

第一，明确数据归属及其合理的利用方式。数据是服务型制造模式下的关键资源。用户不断向制造企业输送数据，制造企业与用户形成互利共生的长期关系，二者之间的界限模糊化。用户当中既包括消费者，也包括大量企业。相较而言，企业用户生成的数据可利用价值更高、敏感性更强，更容易引发利益分配问题。必须完善法律法规，明确权利归属，为利益相关方的合作共赢规定权利底线。

Second, promote the establishment of mutually beneficial and win-win cooperative relations between technology enterprises and manufacturing enterprises. The service-oriented transformation of manufacturing enterprises requires technical support from technology enterprises. This creates an opportunity for the deep integration of technology enterprises and manufacturing enterprises, but it also strengthens the bargaining power of technology enterprises; yet it may also lead to unequal dependent relations, severely constraining the accumulation capacity and research and development capacity of manufacturing enterprises. Therefore, it is necessary to guide technology enterprises to serve the real economy, curb the monopoly and abuse by technology enterprises of key resources such as data and computing power, and form organizational forms and distribution models conducive to the long-term development of the real economy.

第二，推动科技企业与制造企业建立互利共赢的合作关系。制造企业的服务化转型需要科技企业予以技术支持。这为科技企业与制造企业的深度融合创造了契机，也增强了科技企业的议价能力；但这也可能导致不平等的依附关系，严重制约制造企业的积累能力和研发能力。因此，必须引导科技企业服务实体经济，抑制科技企业对数据、算力等关键资源的垄断和滥用，形成有利于实体经济长远发展的组织形式和分配模式。

Third, strengthen patient capital to support the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing enterprises. The service-oriented transformation of manufacturing requires exploring suitable application scenarios in light of local conditions and establishing stable profit models based on industry characteristics. Unlike the rapid development of consumer internet, the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing enterprises involves high upfront investment, long return cycles, and significant uncertainty, which necessarily requires long-term sustained financial support. It is essential to improve the venture capital system, enhance capital patience, and prevent capital from one-sidedly pursuing financial market value and short-term returns, thereby promoting finance to tackle hard problems and make major achievements in serving the real economy.

第三，壮大耐心资本，支持制造企业转型升级。制造业的服务化转型需要因地制宜探索合适的应用场景，结合行业特点建立稳定的盈利模式。与消费互联网的迅猛发展有所不同，制造企业的转型升级前期投入高、回报周期长、不确定性大，必然需要长期持续的金融支持。必须完善风投制度，提升资本耐心，防止资本片面追求金融市值和短期回报，从而推动金融在服务实体经济方面啃下硬骨头、做出大文章。

(The author is an associate professor at the School of Economics, Renmin University of China)

（作者系中国人民大学经济学院副教授）

Online editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧