Digital Commodities, Digital Labor, and Digital Capital in the Perspective of Contemporary Western Left-Wing Scholars

Digital commodities, digital labor, and digital capital are the core elements in contemporary Western left-wing scholars' research on digital capitalism. On this issue, the representative research schools include: the political economy of communication school represented by Mosco, Fuchs, and Dan Schiller; the Italian autonomist school represented by Hardt and Negri; and the left-acceleracionist school represented by Srnicek and Williams. Although their research content is rich, researchers have not formed a unified consensus, and there is a phenomenon of confusion and overgeneralization in concepts and categories. Among these, is data a commodity? How is the concept of digital labor to be determined? In particular, are non-employed digital labor forms such as prosumer labor and gig labor "productive labor"? How can digital capital be capital? What is its relationship with functional capital and interest-bearing capital? These questions not only involve the essential content and movement logic of digital capitalism, but also concern the contemporary application of the principles of Marxist political economy. Therefore, it is necessary to return to Marx's critique of political economy, and to critique and differentiate the three major concepts of digital commodities, digital labor, and digital capital in the perspective of Western left-wing scholars.

数字商品、数字劳动和数字资本是当代西方左翼学者研究数字资本主义的核心要素。在该问题上，代表性研究学派包括：以莫斯可、福克斯和丹·希勒为代表的传播政治经济学派，以哈特、奈格里为代表的意大利自治主义学派以及以斯尔尼塞克、威廉姆斯为代表的左翼加速主义学派。尽管其研究内容丰富，但研究者们并未形成统一的共识，且有在概念和范畴上混淆和泛用的现象。其中，数据是否是商品？数字劳动的概念如何判定？特别是产消劳动、零工劳动等非雇佣型数字劳动是否是“生产劳动”？数字资本何以是资本？它与职能资本、生息资本的关系是什么？这些问题不仅涉及数字资本主义的本质内容和运动逻辑，更关系到马克思主义政治经济学原理的当代运用。因此有必要回到马克思的政治经济学批判，对西方左翼学者视域中的数字商品、数字劳动和数字资本三大概念进行批判和辨析。

I. The Proposal and Definition of the Concept of Digital Commodities

一、数字商品概念的提出与界定

At the beginning of *Capital*, Marx points out that the commodity is the cell of the capitalist economy, constituting the logical starting point of the capitalist economy: "The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an 'immense collection of commodities'; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form." [1]1 Karl Marx, *Capital*, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin, 1976), p. 125. Compared with the era of large-scale industry in which Marx lived, the commodity form in the era of digital capitalism has undergone tremendous changes. Commodity forms manifested in abstract digital form are increasingly present, and even data itself has become a new commodity collected, processed, and sold by digital platforms.

马克思在《资本论》的开篇就指出，商品是资本主义经济的细胞，构成资本主义经济的逻辑起点，“资本主义生产方式占统治地位的社会的财富，表现为‘庞大的商品堆积’，单个的商品表现为这种财富的元素形式”。相比马克思所处的大工业时代，数字资本主义时代的商品形态发生了巨大的变化，以抽象数字形态表现的商品形态愈益呈现，甚至数据本身也成了被数字平台收集、处理并出售的新的商品。

1. The Proposal of the Concept of Digital Commodities

1.数字商品概念的提出

In the era of digital capitalism, data has become an important medium for capitalist production and circulation, and the concept of the digital commodity has also been formally proposed. The concept of the digital commodity can be traced back to the audience commodity theory of Smythe, a pioneer of the political economy of communication. In his article "Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism," he formally proposed that the audience's "attention" to media programs is a commodity that can be analyzed, processed, and sold to advertisers by media platforms. [2]2 Dallas W. Smythe, "Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism," *Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory*, vol. 1, no. 3 (1977), pp. 1–27. Eileen Meehan holds that media commodities include not only information and audiences, but also ratings. [3]3 Eileen R. Meehan, "Why We Don't Count: The Commodity Audience," in *Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism*, ed. Patricia Mellencamp (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 117–137. Sut Jhally defines the audience's viewing time as a media commodity. [4]4 Sut Jhally, *The Codes of Advertising: Fetishism and the Political Economy of Meaning in the Consumer Society* (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987).

在数字资本主义时代，数据成为资本主义生产和流通的重要媒介，数字商品的概念也被正式提出。数字商品概念最早可以追溯到传播政治经济学先驱斯麦兹的受众商品理论，他在《传播：西方马克思主义的盲点》一文中正式提出受众对媒体节目的“注意力”是一种可被媒体平台分析、处理并贩售给广告商的商品；艾琳·米汉认为媒体商品不仅有信息和受众，还包括收视率；苏特·加利则将受众的观看时间定义为媒介商品。

With the rise of digitalization, Mosco and Fuchs argue that the formation of digital commodities is similar to that of traditional media, and apply Smythe's audience commodity theory to the interpretation of digital commodities. Mosco judges the data information created by digital media users as digital commodities: "We must emphasize the process of commodification, which links a series of practical behaviors into a spiral of exchange value... This brings all organizations into the orbit of the information industry." [5]5 Vincent Mosco, *The Political Economy of Communication*, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2009), p. 137. Fuchs more explicitly points out that digital commodities are essentially Internet prosumer commodities, that is, users produce media content as commodities while consuming, and this media content has use value and exchange value, and is an important basis for digital platforms to attract advertisers to place advertisements: "Users of social media are double objects in the commodification process: on the one hand, they themselves are commodities; on the other hand, through the commodification process, users' consciousness is dominated by the commodity logic of advertising." [6]6 Christian Fuchs, *Digital Labour and Karl Marx* (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 105. Shoshana Zuboff also holds that users are both consumers and potential producers of behavioral commodities, and their attention and online interactions are "behavioral surplus" that is privatized and commodified by platforms. [7]7 Shoshana Zuboff, *The Age of Surveillance Capitalism* (New York: PublicAffairs, 2019), p. 94. Mayer-Schönberger further points out that the data of a single user often has no value; only data relationships have value, that is, the "big data" produced by users' extensive data interactions and collective labor has use value and exchange value, and can truly become a commodity: "What matters now is the scale of data, that is, to master large amounts of data and to have the ability to easily obtain more data. So, as they possess more and more data, big data owners will shine because they can convert these data into value." [8]8 Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier, *Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think* (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), p. 149.

随着数字化的兴起，莫斯可和福克斯认为数字商品的形成方式与传统媒体类似，并将斯麦兹的受众商品理论应用于数字商品的阐释。莫斯可将数字媒体用户创造的数据信息判定为数字商品，“我们必须强调商品化的过程，它将一连串的实践行为连结成螺旋状的交换价值……这使得所有组织都纳入信息产业的轨道”。福克斯更加明确地指出数字商品本质上是互联网产消者商品，即用户在消费的同时也在生产作为商品的媒介内容，这种媒介内容具有使用价值和交换价值，是数字平台吸引广告商投放广告的重要依据，“社交媒体的用户是商品化过程中的双重客体：一方面，他们本身就是商品；另一方面，通过商品化过程，用户的意识受广告商品化逻辑的支配”。肖沙娜·祖博夫也认为，用户既是消费者也是行为商品的潜在生产者，他们的注意力和在线互动是被平台私有并商品化的“行为盈余”，迈尔-舍恩伯格则进一步指出，单个用户的数据往往没有价值，只有数据关系才有价值，即用户广泛的数据交互和集体性劳动制造的“大数据”才具有使用价值和交换价值，才能真正成为商品，“如今重要的是数据的规模，也就是说要掌握大量的数据而且要有能力轻松地获得更多的数据。所以，随着拥有的数据越来越多，大数据拥有者将大放异彩，因为他们可以把这些数据转化为价值”。

In summary, in the view of Mosco, Fuchs, and others, raw data information, as digital records of user behavior, is a genuine commodity in the digital age, and various Internet companies and digital platforms seek profits by tracking, storing, and analyzing users' various raw data to determine optimal advertising positions. Thus, a trinity structure of the capital value augmentation chain is formed among users, platforms, and advertisers, namely, "the programming of mass media is used to construct the audience, advertisers pay media companies to obtain the audience, and the audience is thus handed over to advertisers." [9]9 Dallas W. Smythe, "Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism," p. 5.

综上，在莫斯可、福克斯等人看来，原始的数据信息作为用户行为的数字化记录在数字时代就是货真价实的商品，而各个互联网公司和数字平台正是通过追踪、储存和分析用户的各种原始数据以确定最佳广告位从而谋取利润，由此，用户、平台和广告商之间形成了资本价值增殖链条的三位一体结构，即“大众媒介的节目安排用来建构受众，广告商为取得受众而付钱给媒介公司，受众于是被转交给广告商”。

2. Western Left-Wing Scholars' Overgeneralization of the Concept of Digital Commodities

2.西方左翼学者对数字商品概念的泛化

Mosco and Fuchs and others hold that in the digital economy, as long as there is an exchange phenomenon, even without productive labor, mere data or data relationships directly constitute the substance of commodities. From the perspective of Marxist political economy, the above view overgeneralizes the concept of the commodity, failing to clearly distinguish and discuss raw data and digitally processed digital commodities separately, thereby confusing the raw materials of production with commodities. Marx holds that products used for production and consumption can become commodities only through exchange and for the purpose of exchange: "The product develops its character as a commodity, and thereby develops its character as exchange value." [10]10 Karl Marx, *Capital*, vol. 1, p. 179. In the simple commodity economy, the means of production and subsistence used by individual producers for their own or their family's production or consumption, although partly possessing value attributes, do not constitute commodities because they are not used for exchange. Therefore, treating all means of production and means of consumption indiscriminately as commodities would confuse their social attributes; likewise, overgeneralizing all digital products or digital information in social life as commodities is also inadvisable.

莫斯可和福克斯等认为，在数字经济中，只要有交换现象，即使不经过生产性劳动，单纯的数据或数据关系也直接构成商品实体。从马克思主义政治经济学的视角来看，上述观点将商品概念泛化了，并未明确地将原始数据和经过加工处理后的数字商品区分开讨论，因而混淆了生产的原材料与商品。马克思认为，用于生产和消费的产品只有通过交换并且用于交换，才能成为商品，“产品发展了自己作为商品的性质，从而发展了自己作为交换价值的性质”。在简单商品经济中，个体生产者用于本人或家庭生产或消费的生产与生活资料，尽管一部分具有价值属性，但由于不用于交换，并不构成商品。因此，将所有生产资料与消费资料都无差别地当作商品，会混淆它们的社会属性；同样，将社会生活中的所有数字化产品或数字信息都泛化为商品，也是不可取的。

Whether a digital product can become a commodity depends on two aspects of determination. First, it must be a product of labor, a direct product of human productive labor. In the digital economy, a large number of digital products cannot be defined as products of labor, but are merely results of people's general activities. In other words, digital commodities can only be established on the basis of productive digital labor. Second, in the strict sense, labor products can be divided into two major categories according to their final use, namely, all means of production and means of consumption produced by the material production departments. As far as digital economic activities are concerned, if information and data are invested as production raw materials in the networked social production process, they must be commodities; if they are merely consumed or used for entertainment, they will not be transformed into new commodities. This is because "the commodity must be realized as value before it can be realized as use value." [11]11 Karl Marx, *Capital*, vol. 1, p. 179. Without the re-intervention of productive labor, digital consumption cannot re-form commodities. As for the information feedback or interaction generated in the process of digital consumption, there are likewise two situations: one is that it is not processed and no labor intervenes, in which case it is not a commodity; the other is that it exists as information requiring reprocessing, in which case it actually exists as an intermediate product of production and is essentially a commodity.

数字化产物之所以能够成为商品，取决于两个方面的规定性。其一，它必须是劳动产品，是人类生产劳动的直接产物。在数字经济中，大量数字化产品并不能被界定为劳动的产物，而仅仅是人们一般活动的结果。换言之，数字化商品只能建立在生产性的数字化劳动基础上。其二，在严格的意义上，劳动产品按最终用途可以分为两大类，即物质生产部门生产的全部生产资料和消费资料。就数字经济活动而言，如果信息、数据作为生产原料投入网络化的社会生产过程，它就必然是商品，如果它只是单纯消费或供人消遣，则不会转化为新的商品。这是因为，“商品在能够作为使用价值实现以前，必须先作为价值来实现”。没有生产性劳动的再介入，数字消费不能重新形成商品。至于在数字消费过程中产生的信息反馈或互动，则同样存在两种情况：一种是不被加工、没有劳动介入，此时它不是商品；另一种则是作为需要被再加工的信息，此时它实际上作为生产的中间品而存在，本质上是商品。

Clearly, the digital commodities spoken of by Mosco, Fuchs, and others (raw data created by users) largely do not fall within the category of commodities, but are rather original means of production or means of consumption. Digital commodities do indeed exist widely, but data, digits, or information can only become digital commodities with value attributes after being processed by living labor, such as the labor of专职 digital workers.

显然，莫斯可、福克斯等人所说的数字商品（用户创造的原始数据）很大部分不属于商品的范畴，而是原初的生产资料或消费资料。数字商品的确广泛存在，但数据、数字或信息只有经过活劳动譬如专职数字劳工的加工处理才能成为有价值属性的数字商品。

3. The Essential Distinction between Digits, Data, and Digital Commodities

3.数字、数据与数字商品的本质区分

The key to correctly understanding digital commodities lies in scientifically distinguishing digits, data raw materials, and digital commodities. Digits in computer systems are manifested as combinations of 0 and 1; data are symbolic records of things, and users' raw data are their core component. From the perspective of Marxist political economy, whether in terms of natural attributes or social attributes, there are essential differences between raw data and digital commodities.

正确理解数字商品，关键在于科学地区分数字、数据原料与数字商品。数字在计算机系统中体现为0与1的组合；数据是对事物的符号化记录，用户的原始数据是其核心构成。从马克思主义政治经济学视角来看，无论是自然属性还是社会属性，原始数据和数字商品之间均有着本质的区别。

In terms of their natural attributes, raw data refers to the digital traces left by users when they use the functions of digital platforms. Its characteristic lies in its vast quantity yet disorderly and fragmented nature, mostly taking the form of semi-structured and unstructured data. Although they appear to be immaterial in form, they must be based on material elements, and thus may serve either as means of production for processing and manufacturing or as mere means of consumption, mostly possessing only potential usefulness. Digital commodities, by contrast, are a special form of raw data: they are the result of excavating, analyzing, and processing raw, chaotic, and fragmented data traces, and are useful information that has been digitized, symbolized, and logicalized. "These big data are not merely stored and done with; they also need to be analyzed, and useful information must be extracted from them."

在自然属性方面，原始数据是指用户使用数字平台功能时留下的数字痕迹，其特点在于数量庞大却杂乱无序，多为半结构化和非结构化数据形式。尽管它们呈现为形式上的非物质性，但必须以物质要素为基础，因而既可能是用于生产加工的生产资料，也可能是单纯的消费资料，大多只具有潜在的有用性；而数字商品是原始数据的一种特殊形态，它是对原始的、杂乱的、碎片化的数据痕迹进行挖掘、分析和加工后的结果，是数字化、符号化和逻辑化后的有用信息，“这些大数据并非只是存储起来就够了，还需要对其进行分析，并从中获得有用的信息”。

In terms of their social attributes, raw data is merely primary means of production or means of consumption. It cannot determine who owns it, nor can it determine the manner in which it is used. Only by entering into specific social relations and acquiring the character of value and exchange value can it be transformed into a commodity. Under capitalist conditions of production, since "production mediates consumption, and it creates the material for consumption... but consumption also mediates production, because it is consumption that creates the subject for the product, and it is for this subject that the product is a product,"[n] means of production and means of consumption lose their distinction in natural character and are transformed into direct identity. In terms of value attributes, this is manifested as the transfer of old value, rather than the creation of new value by living labor (living labor is productive labor that creates new value, whereas dead labor can only transfer old value and cannot produce new value). Therefore, the production of raw data as means of production is dead labor; as constant capital it can only mechanically transfer old value to the new product part by part. The production of digital commodities, by contrast, contains the dual determinations of dead labor and living labor, of transferring old value and creating new value; lacking either determination, a commodity cannot be formed. Raw data existing in digital form, like digital processing equipment, depends on digital technologies or programs for its collection, discrimination, labeling, and processing, which makes it directly constitute one of the preconditions for commodity production under the digital economy. Marx pointed out: "Capital does not create science, but it utilizes science and appropriates it for the needs of the production process."[n] Digital technology and its equipment are themselves means of production. Once digital technology is appropriated by capital, large quantities of raw data are converted into digital commodities. For the major platforms of the digital age, the key to market exchange lies not only in possessing scattered, fragmented raw data, but also in processing raw data through living labor so as to transform it into usable digital commodities. Only such data can possess exchange value and proceed to the market for buying and selling.

在社会属性方面，原始数据只是原初的生产资料或消费资料，它无法决定自己被谁拥有，也不能决定自己被使用的方式，只有进入特定的社会关系、具有价值和交换价值的性质，才能转化为商品。在资本主义生产条件下，由于“生产中介着消费，它创造出消费的材料……但是消费也中介着生产，因为正是消费替产品创造了主体，产品对这个主体才是产品”，生产资料和消费资料丧失了自然性质的差异而转化为直接的同一性，在价值属性上体现为旧价值转移，而非活劳动创造的新价值（活劳动是创造新价值的生产劳动，而死劳动只能转移旧价值，无法产生新价值）。因此，原始数据作为生产资料的生产是死劳动，作为不变资本只能机械地、一部分一部分地将旧价值转移到新产品中去；而数字商品的生产则包含着死劳动和活劳动、转移旧价值和创造新价值的双重规定，缺乏任一规定都无法形成商品。以数字形式存在的原始数据与数字处理设备一样，其收集、判别、标注、处理等，均依赖于数字化技术或程序，这使得它们直接构成了数字经济下商品生产的前提条件之一。马克思指出：“资本不创造科学，但是它为了生产过程的需要，利用科学，占有科学。”数字技术及其设备本身是生产资料，一旦数字技术被资本所占有，大量原始数据就转换为数字商品而存在。对于数字时代的各大平台来说，其市场交换的关键不仅在于占有散乱的、碎片化的原始数据，更在于对原始数据进行活劳动的加工处理从而转化为可用的数字商品，只有这样的数据才能拥有交换价值，走向市场进行买卖交易。

II. The Proposal and Definition of the Concept of Digital Labor

二、数字劳动概念的提出和界定

Digital commodities are products of labor used for exchange. Therefore, to clarify the connotation of digital commodities, it is also necessary to clarify the concept of digital labor. The innovation of digital technology and the transformation of the Internet paradigm have greatly promoted the digital transformation of labor, causing the various elements of labor to undergo integration and reorganization propelled by digital technology. "The computer and communication revolution in production has already transformed labor practices, so that they all tend toward the model of information and communication technology,"[n] and human labor is continuously shifting toward a new form of digital labor that is supported by digital technology and carried out through virtual networks.

数字商品是用于交换的劳动产品，因此要想明确数字商品的内涵，还要厘清数字劳动的概念。数字技术的革新与互联网范式的转变，极大地推动了劳动的数字化转型，使得劳动诸要素历经数字技术助推下的整合与重组，“生产的计算机和通讯革命已经改造了劳动实践，以至于它们都趋向于信息与通讯技术的模式”，人类劳动不断地向一种以数字技术为支撑、依托虚拟网络进行的数字劳动新形式转变。

1. The Proposal of the Concept of Digital Labor

1.数字劳动概念的提出

The proposal of the concept of digital labor can be traced back initially to the Italian scholar Tiziana Terranova, who at the beginning of the twenty-first century pioneered research on free labor in the Internet digital economy, and designated users' activities in digital space as falling within the category of "labor," and moreover as "free labor."[n] This formulation attracted intense attention from Western left-wing academia. Subsequently, concepts such as "play labor," "prosumer labor," and "immaterial labor 2.0" were successively proposed. Although these concepts differ in name, they in fact share the same meaning as "free labor," namely, treating users' behaviors such as learning, shopping, socializing, and gaming on digital media as a kind of digital labor that creates digital commodities and digital value.

数字劳动概念的提出最初可以追溯到意大利学者泰拉诺瓦，她在21世纪之初开创性地研究了互联网数字经济中的免费劳动，并将用户在数字空间的活动划定为“劳动”范畴，并且是“免费劳动”。这一说法引起了西方左翼学界的强烈关注。在此之后，“玩劳动”“产消劳动”“非物质劳动2.0”等概念相继被提出。虽然诸多概念的名称不同，但实际上与“免费劳动”有着同样的含义，即将用户在数字媒体上进行学习、购物、社交和游戏等行为，都视为一种创造数字商品和数字价值的数字劳动。

Terranova, Toffler, Kücklich, Ritzer, and others hold that although digital users have no employment relationship with digital platforms, their activities on digital platforms both create productive content and create surplus value for capital, and thus belong to the category of productive labor and exploited labor. Compared with traditional industrial labor, the greatest characteristic of user labor is the unity of production and consumption, and its unpaid character. "Production is a mixture, always involving a mixture of production and consumption. There is neither pure production nor pure consumption; these two processes always interpenetrate each other."[n] Ritzer points out that user labor is prosumer labor, that is, a mode of labor in which the consumer simultaneously acts as a producer of content. The user is both a consumer and a producer of data information, while digital platforms process this digital information into useful digital commodities and then sell them to advertisers to obtain surplus. In this new type of digital labor of "unity of production and consumption," first, the capitalist need not provide any value compensation to these digital prosumers; second, the exploitation of digital prosumers can be carried out anytime, anywhere, at every moment—not only during working hours, but more importantly, also during non-working hours; third, when digital prosumers engage in consumption and the production of data traces, they are for the most part enjoying themselves rather than being alienated.

泰拉诺瓦、托夫勒、库克里奇、瑞泽尔等认为，数字用户尽管没有和数字平台之间产生雇佣关系，但他们在数字平台的活动既创造了生产性内容，又为资本创造了剩余价值，因而属于生产劳动和剥削劳动的范畴。相较于传统的工业劳动，用户劳动最大的特征是产消合一的、无酬的。“生产是一种混合，总是涉及生产和消费的混合。既没有纯粹的生产，也没有纯粹的消费，这两个过程总是相互渗透的。”瑞泽尔指出，用户劳动是产消劳动，即消费者同时作为内容生产者的劳动模式，用户既是消费者，也是数据信息的生产者，而数字平台则将这些数字信息加工成有用的数字商品，进而出卖给广告商以获得剩余。在这种“产消合一”的新型数字劳动中，首先，资本家不需要向这些数字产消者提供任何价值补偿；其次，对数字产消者的剥削可以随时随地、时时刻刻地进行，不仅在工作时间剥削，更重要的是在非工作时间也可以剥削；最后，数字产消者在进行消费和数据痕迹的生产时，他们大多是享受的而非异化的。

Fuchs, Hardt, Negri, Srnicek, and others define the concept of digital labor more broadly. Fuchs holds that digital labor encompasses all labor on the industrial chain of digital platforms, involving all the physical and mental labor required for the production, circulation, and use of data. "Digital labor and digital laborers are all activities involving digital media technologies and content production."[n] Digital labor includes not only users' free labor, but also the paid labor performed by full-time digital laborers who specialize in processing data, developing technology, and maintaining equipment—that is, two types: raw digital labor (unpaid) and processing digital labor (paid). Thus the objects of exploitation by digital platforms include not only their users and audiences, but also the full-time digital laborers they employ (such as network engineers, data analysts, programmers, and system maintenance personnel). "The labor time involved in capital exploitation is on the one hand the labor time of full-time employees, and on the other hand all the time users spend online."[n] Hardt and Negri also hold that productive labor in the digital age is no longer confined to the traditional categories of material labor and wage labor, but extends to society as a whole, and is dominated by affective and intellectual labor, "manifested in the form of information flows, communication networks, social codes, linguistic innovation, and feelings and passions."[n] Srnicek and Williams, for their part, focus on new forms of labor that do not belong to the traditional wage-labor system yet can obtain labor remuneration, such as gig work, crowdsourcing, and outsourcing, which participate in the production process of digital capital through flexible employment methods. "With the construction and management of global communications and supply chains, outsourcing has become easier, and coordination costs have been greatly reduced."[n] Thus paid digital labor can be further subdivided into employed forms (the labor of full-time digital laborers) and non-employed forms. The latter are often situated in flexible, informal, and non-standard labor relations, and have not signed formal labor contracts with platforms.

福克斯、哈特、奈格里、斯尔尼塞克等人则更加广泛地定义了数字劳动的概念。福克斯认为，数字劳动囊括了数字平台产业链上的所有劳动，涉及数据生产、流通与使用所需的各种体力和脑力劳动，“数字劳动和数字劳工是涉及数字媒体技术和内容制作的所有活动”。数字劳动不仅包括用户的免费劳动，也包括专门处理数据、研发技术和维修设备的专职数字劳工所做的有酬劳动，即原始型数字劳动（无酬型）和加工型数字劳动（有酬型）两种。因而数字平台的剥削对象，不仅包括它的用户和受众，也包括它雇佣的专职数字劳工（如网络工程师、数据分析师、程序员、系统维护人员等），“资本剥削所涉及的劳动时间一方面是专职员工的劳动时间，另一方面是用户在线花费的所有时间”。哈特、奈格里也认为，数字时代的生产劳动已经不再局限于传统的物质劳动和雇佣劳动范畴，而是向社会整体扩展，并以情感性和知识性劳动为主导，“以信息流动、交往网络、社会符码、语言创新以及感受和激情的形式表现出来”。斯尔尼塞克和威廉姆斯则关注到一些不属于传统雇佣劳动体系中的且能获得劳动报酬的新的劳动形式，譬如零工、众包、外包等灵活用工方式参与到数字资本的生产过程中来，“随着全球通信和供应链的构建和管理，外包变得更容易，协调成本大大降低”。因而有酬型数字劳动可以进一步细化为雇佣型（专职数字劳工的劳动）和非雇佣型的劳动形式，后者往往处于灵活的、非正式的、非标准的劳动关系之中，且并未与平台签订正式的劳动契约。

2. Whether Users' Prosumer Labor Belongs to the Category of Productive Labor

2.用户的产消劳动是否属于生产劳动的范畴

Western left-wing scholars' understandings of digital labor can be broadly divided into three types: users' prosumer labor, platform flexible employment, and employed full-time digital labor. Among these, the relations between productive and non-productive, and between employed and non-employed, have not been clarified, and there is overlap and confused usage. From the perspective of Marxist political economy, these three concepts of labor need to be redefined. In particular, whether the two types of non-employed labor—users' prosumer labor and platform flexible employment—belong to the category of "productive labor," and whether they are objects of exploitation by digital capital, are questions that must first be clarified.

西方左翼学者关于数字劳动的认识大体有三种：用户产消劳动、平台灵活用工和雇佣型的专职数字劳动。其中，生产与非生产、雇佣与非雇佣的关系并未得到厘清，且存在交叉和混乱使用的现象。从马克思主义政治经济学的视角来看，这三种劳动的概念需要被重新界定，尤其是用户的产消劳动和平台的灵活用工这两类非雇佣劳动是否从属于“生产劳动”的范畴、是不是数字资本的剥削对象是首先需要被厘清的问题。

Marx held that "from the standpoint of capitalist production, productive labor is wage labor," which must presuppose that living labor is stripped of the means of production and is free in the sense of owning nothing, and it contains a twofold character: the concrete and the abstract. Concrete labor refers to the form of labor in which humanity objectifies nature, that is, humanity directly appropriates the usefulness of natural things through the material exchange with nature; abstract labor, by contrast, means that all specific forms of labor lose their sensuous qualitative differences and are converted into undifferentiated human labor. Under the conditions of capitalist commodity production, this abstractness implies: first, from the standpoint of the purpose of labor, the purpose of the worker's labor is not merely to obtain the use-value of the product of labor, but rather to obtain, through exchange, the value produced by the abstract labor congealed in the product of labor; second, from the standpoint of the result of labor, productive labor can on the one hand create new value, and on the other hand preserve and transfer the value of the original means of production—"in the same act of labor, therefore, labor must by one of its attributes create value, and by another attribute preserve or transfer value." Based on Marx's view, it is not difficult to find that wage-based full-time digital labor undoubtedly contains the twofold character of productive labor. First, from the standpoint of the purpose of labor, the purpose of full-time digital workers' labor is not to appropriate the use-value of the product of labor, but to appropriate through exchange the value produced by abstract labor; second, from the standpoint of the result of labor, full-time digital workers on the one hand create digital commodities through data processing, realizing the preservation and transfer of the value of raw data, and on the other hand create new value for the digital platform, so that "the value of the commodity produced is greater than the value of the various commodities required to produce it, namely the means of production and labor-power." Thus, whether in terms of the purpose or the result of labor, processing-type digital labor can undoubtedly be counted as "productive labor," and calling it "digital labor" also conforms to the judgment of Marxist political economy.

马克思认为，“从资本主义生产的意义上说，生产劳动是雇佣劳动”，它必须以活劳动丧失生产资料和自由得一无所有为前提，且包含两重属性：具体性和抽象性。具体劳动是指人将自然对象化的劳动形式，即人通过与自然的物质变换实现对自然物有用性的直接占有；而抽象劳动则意味着所有具体的劳动形态都丧失感性的质的差别，而转换为无差别的人类劳动。在资本主义商品生产的条件下，这种抽象性意味着：首先，从劳动目的来看，劳动者的劳动目的不仅仅是为了获得劳动产品的使用价值，更是为了通过交换获得凝聚在劳动产品中的抽象劳动所产生的价值；其次，从劳动结果来看，生产劳动一方面可以创造新的价值，另一方面可以保存和转移原始生产资料的价值，“在同一时间内，劳动就一种属性来说必然创造价值，就另一种属性来说必然保存或转移价值”。基于马克思的观点，不难发现，雇佣型的专职数字劳动无疑包含着生产劳动的两重属性。首先，从劳动目的来看，专职数字劳工劳动的目的并非占有劳动产品的使用价值，而是通过交换占有抽象劳动所生产的价值；其次，从劳动结果来看，专职数字劳工一方面通过数据处理创造了数字商品，实现了对原始数据的价值保存和转移，另一方面为数字平台创造了新的价值，使得“生产出来的商品的价值，大于生产该商品所需要的各种商品即生产资料和劳动力”。因而无论就劳动目的还是结果来说，加工型数字劳动无疑可以算作“生产劳动”，将其称之为“数字劳动”也符合马克思主义政治经济学的判定。

However, users' unpaid "prosumption labor" strictly speaking cannot be counted as productive labor. First, from the standpoint of the relation between labor and the commodity, Marx held that the twofold character of labor determines the two factors of the commodity. Only data processed by living labor is a commodity with the attribute of value; unprocessed fragmented raw data has no value and no exchange value, and therefore cannot be counted as a commodity. From this point alone, users who generate raw data cannot be counted as producers of digital commodities. Second, from the standpoint of the purpose of labor, the purpose of users' free labor in generating raw data on digital media is not to appropriate the value of abstract labor through exchange, but to appropriate the use-value of some specific thing. For example, the purpose of users' consumption on digital platforms is to directly obtain commodities needed for their own life, and the purpose of playing games on gaming websites is relaxation and entertainment, or to exchange for corresponding game currency or equipment; these "needs" are all needs of the concrete dimension of use, not needs of the abstract dimension. Finally, from the standpoint of the result of labor, users' "free labor" that creates raw data neither creates any valorization nor preserves or transfers the value of any original means of production. Although for the overall production of digital capital it is an important stage in the process of creating digital commodities and digital value, and it also has a foundational role for the productive labor of full-time digital workers, nevertheless "from the capitalist standpoint this labor is not productive, because it produces no surplus value"; it creates no valorization, and no judgment of its value attribute (necessary labor) can be made, and therefore it cannot be counted as productive labor in the vision of Marxist political economy.

然而，用户无酬性的“产消劳动”严格来讲不能被算作生产劳动。首先，从劳动和商品的关系来看，马克思认为劳动的二重性决定商品的二因素。而只有活劳动加工处理后的数据才是具有价值属性的商品，未经处理的碎片化的原始数据不具有任何价值和交换价值，因而不能算作商品。仅从这一点看，生成原始数据的用户，不能算作数字商品的生产者。其次，从劳动目的来看，用户在数字媒介生产原始数据的免费劳动，目的并非为了通过交换占有抽象劳动的价值，而是占有某种具体的物的使用价值。譬如，用户在数字平台消费的目的是直接获得自身生活需要的商品，在游戏网站进行游戏的目的是放松和娱乐，或换取相应的游戏币或装备，这些“需要”都是具体的使用维度的需要，而非抽象维度的需要。最后，从劳动结果来看，用户创造原始数据的“免费劳动”既没有创造任何价值增殖，也没有保存和转移任何原始生产资料的价值。尽管对于数字资本总体性的生产来说，它是创造数字商品和数字价值过程中的重要阶段，也对专职数字劳工的生产劳动具有基础作用，但“从资本主义意义上来说，这种劳动就不是生产的，因为它不生产任何剩余价值”，它没有创造价值增殖，也无法对其作出价值属性（必要劳动）的判定，因而不能算是马克思主义政治经济学视域中的生产劳动。

3. Whether the labor form of flexible employment belongs to the category of productive labor

3.灵活用工的劳动形式是否属于生产劳动的范畴

With the digital development of capitalism, in order to realize the maximization of valorization, digital capital must use technical means to depress the value compensation of living labor, but the replacement of human labor by technology and the replacement of human intelligence by artificial intelligence inevitably leads to the emergence of a relative surplus population. In order on the one hand to compress the cost of living labor and on the other hand to increase employment positions and absorb surplus labor-power, labor forms of flexible employment such as gig work, crowdsourcing, and outsourcing within the capitalist production system have developed rapidly.

随着资本主义的数字化发展，数字资本为了实现最大化的价值增殖，必须以技术手段压低活劳动的价值补偿，但技术取代人工、人工智能取代人类智能又必然导致相对过剩人口的出现。为了一方面压缩活劳动成本，另一方面增加就业岗位、吸纳剩余劳动力，资本主义生产体系内的零工、众包、外包等灵活用工的劳动形式得到迅速发展。

As Srnicek said: "Today, the income of most of the world's population is controlled by the market and obtained through precarious and informal work." The differences between this type of labor and traditional wage labor are mainly reflected in the following points: First, the employment form is flexible. Traditional wage labor has fixed labor time, labor space, and labor content, but labor forms such as gig work, crowdsourcing, and outsourcing can autonomously choose labor time, labor space, and labor content, and have the characteristics of part-time, temporary, flexible working, and unstable income. Second, the price of labor-power is low. Workers in flexible employment relations often have no fixed wages or bonuses, nor do they have benefits such as seniority subsidies or insurance. So-called crowdsourced micro-labor (for example, food delivery riders, ride-hailing drivers, etc.) is even paid by piece or by order, resulting in workers receiving no economic compensation for time spent searching for tasks online and waiting for the system to dispatch orders. Third, the employment relation is complex. Compared with traditional employment relations, the labor form of flexible employment forms a complex employment chain, containing the "many-to-many" characteristic between both sides of capital and labor. The so-called "many-to-many" means that workers can simultaneously receive the assignment and management of multiple employing units, not only platforms (the contracting parties) but also outsourcing companies (the contracting parties), while platforms can also share the right to use employees with partner companies, causing workers to flow back and forth among multiple enterprises, thereby forming a joint employment relation of "platform + company + individual." In addition, among workers themselves, between platforms and platforms, and among outsourcing companies, there also appear phenomena of layer-by-layer contracting and layer-by-layer subcontracting, thereby blurring traditional labor relations, leading to the diversion of profits and the dispersal of responsibility, and presenting a pluralistic employment pattern in which direct control and indirect control are intermingled.

正如斯尔尼塞克所说：“今天，世界上大部分地区人口的收入受市场控制，并通过不稳定和非正式的工作获得。”这类劳动与传统雇佣劳动的差异主要体现在以下几点：第一，用工形式灵活。传统的雇佣劳动具有固定的劳动时间、劳动空间和劳动内容，但零工、众包、外包等劳动形式则可以自主选择劳动时间、劳动空间和劳动内容，具有非全日制、临时性、弹性工作、收入不稳定的特征。第二，劳动力价格低微。处于灵活用工关系的劳动者往往没有固定工资和奖金，也没有工龄补助、保险等福利。所谓的众包微劳动（譬如外卖骑手、网约车司机等）甚至按件、按单计酬，导致劳动者在线搜寻任务和等待系统派单时间无法得到任何经济补偿。第三，用工关系复杂。相较于传统雇佣关系，灵活用工的劳动形式形成了复杂的用工链条，包含着劳资双方“多对多”的特征。所谓“多对多”意味着，劳动者可以同时接收多个用人单位的指派和管理，不仅是平台（发包方）还包括外包公司（承包方），而平台也可以与合作公司共享员工使用权，使得劳动者在多个企业之间来回流动，从而形成“平台＋公司＋个体”的共同用工关系。此外，劳动者之间、平台与平台之间、外包公司之间也会出现层层承包、层层转包的现象，从而模糊传统的劳动关系，导致利润的分流和责任的分散，并呈现出直接控制与间接控制相互融合的多元用工格局。

However, although the labor form of flexible employment differs from traditional wage labor, its essence still belongs to the category of productive labor and wage labor. The reasons are as follows: first, the labor contract is only the external manifestation and rational packaging of the wage-labor relationship, regardless of whether it is confirmed in legal, moral, or political form, "this juridical relation, whose form is contractual (whether or not it is fixed by law), is a relation of will that reflects an economic relation." [22]22 Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 23, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1972, p. 102. Marx holds that economic relations determine juridical relations, and that law and illegality are both products of economic relations. Although the labor form of flexible employment often does not involve a formal labor contract signed with the platform and related companies (and may even appear in illegal forms), digital capital, relying on its monopoly over digital resources, still exercises substantive domination and control over the relevant labor; the capital-labor relation merely shifts from formal employment to hidden employment. Second, wage labor as productive labor is essentially about producing capital: "only wage labor that produces capital is productive labor." [23]23 Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part 1, in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 26, Part 1, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1972, p. 142. For workers in online gig work, crowdsourcing, and outsourcing, the flexibilization of labor time and space precisely means that the temporal and spatial limits of labor are broken, and that labor can be carried out anytime and anywhere. This is the production of absolute surplus value in Marx's perspective, that is, increasing surplus value by intensifying labor and extending labor time. In addition, in the labor form of flexible employment, digital platforms, first, determine gig wages according to completed work tasks rather than working time; second, often assign gig workers to non-core production positions; third, adjust the scale of gig employment according to changes in time, season, and production needs; and fourth, rely on non-standard employment relations and the application of intelligent algorithms to improve transaction efficiency and reduce transaction costs. This is the production of relative surplus value in Marx's perspective, that is, relatively increasing surplus value by reducing the value of living labor. Therefore, from the above two levels, the labor form of flexible employment is exchanged with capital and creates surplus value for capital, and thus belongs to the category of productive labor.

然而，尽管灵活用工的劳动形式与传统的雇佣劳动存在不同，但其本质仍旧从属于生产劳动和雇佣劳动的范畴。原因在于：首先，劳动契约只是雇佣劳动关系的外在表现和理性包装，不管它是否以法律、道德或政治的形式得到确认，“这种具有契约形式的(不管这种契约是不是用法律固定下来的)法的关系，是一种反映着经济关系的意志关系”。马克思认为，经济关系决定法的关系，法与非法都只是经济关系的产物。尽管灵活用工的劳动形式往往并未与平台及相关公司签订正式的劳动契约（甚至以非法的形式出现），但数字资本依托其对数字资源的垄断仍旧对相关劳动起着实质上的支配和控制作用，只是劳资关系由正式雇佣转为隐藏式雇佣而已。其次，雇佣劳动作为生产劳动实质在于生产资本，“只有生产资本的雇佣劳动才是生产劳动”。对于网络零工、众包、外包的劳动者来说，劳动时间和空间的灵活化恰恰意味着劳动时空限制被打破、意味着劳动可以随时随地进行。这是马克思视域中的绝对剩余价值的生产，即通过增加劳动强度，延长劳动时间的方式增加剩余价值。此外，在灵活用工的劳动形式中，数字平台一是按照完成的工作任务而非工作时间来确定零工工资，二是往往在非核心生产岗位上安排零工劳动者，三是按照时间、季节和生产需要的变化调整雇佣零工的规模，四是依据非标准雇佣关系以及智能算法的应用提高交易效率、降低交易成本。这是马克思视域中的相对剩余价值的生产，即通过降低活劳动价值的方式来相对地增加剩余价值。因此，从上述两个层面来看，灵活用工的劳动形式都与资本相交换并为资本创造了剩余价值，因而属于生产劳动的范畴。

III. The Proposal and Definition of the Concept of Digital Capital

三、数字资本概念的提出和界定

The combined development of platforms, big data, and intelligent technologies has given rise to a new historical form of capitalism—digital capitalism. "The internet is driving the political economy toward a so-called digital capitalism." [24]24 Dan Schiller, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System, trans. Yang Lijun, Nanchang: Jiangxi People's Publishing House, 2001, p. 15. Castells calls it informational capitalism, and Srnicek calls it platform capitalism. Although these various expressions differ in wording, they all emphasize the important role of data, information, knowledge, and digital technology in the movement of capital. However, Dan Schiller and others often take the ready-made existence of digital capital as the a priori premise of their theoretical research and regard it as a capital form independent of functional capital and interest-bearing capital. This undoubtedly neglects the historical essence and totalizing logic of the movement of capital.

平台、大数据和智能技术的发展共同催生了资本主义新的历史形态——数字资本主义，“因特网正在带动政治经济向所谓的数字资本主义转变”，卡斯特称其为信息资本主义，斯尔尼塞克称其为平台资本主义。各种表达虽有用词上的不同，但都强调数据、信息、知识、数字技术等在资本运动中的重要作用。然而，丹·希勒等人往往将数字资本的现成性存在设定为其理论研究的先验前提，并将其视作与职能资本及生息资本相互独立的资本形态。这无疑忽视了资本运动的历史性本质和总体性逻辑。

1. The Proposal of the Concept of Digital Capital

1.数字资本概念的提出

Regarding digital capital, Dan Schiller, on the basis of analyzing the impact of the marriage of information technology, the knowledge economy, and media systems on modern capitalism, defines it as a private property system formed by "the marketized development of the network": "The marketized development of the network—that is, digital capitalism—is not limited to providing well-known services such as commercial home entertainment. It not only attracts external companies into this market but also continuously opens up new markets." [25]25 Ibid., p. 16. The marketized development of the digital network has brought about networked producers and employers, and corporate capital, by virtue of its ownership and control of the network, has completely separated network ownership from laborers, thereby forming an economic system of private ownership of digital capital. Fuchs holds that digital capitalism is formally digitalized and informatized, but in essence it remains dominated by capital. He says, "The way I conceptualize digital capitalism does not mean that digitalization is the main feature of contemporary capitalism. The core feature of digital capitalism is that it is a capitalist society." [26]26 Christian Fuchs, Digital Labour and Karl Marx, trans. Zhou Yanyun, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 2017, p. 341. The reason is that the three elements of productive forces in digital capitalism are interwoven with information technology and digital networks, and digital capital is formed precisely by exploiting the surplus value of digital laborers in class relations through information productive forces. Jonathan Pace argues that digital capital is a historical mediator in the digitalization process of capitalist structures, and its emergence comes from the dialectical unity of the structural tendency of capital accumulation and the processual development of digital infrastructure and digital technology: "digital capitalism is a mode of operation in which the structural needs of capital adapt to digital conditions." [27]27 Jonathan Pace, "Exchange Relations in the Digital Economy," trans. Xu Yanru, in World Philosophy, 2018, no. 4.

关于数字资本，丹·希勒在分析信息技术、知识经济和媒体系统的联姻对现代资本主义影响的基础上，将其判定为“网络的市场化发展”而形成的私有财产制度，“围绕网络的市场化发展——即数字资本主义——并非仅限于提供诸如商业家庭娱乐等为人熟知的服务。它不仅吸引外部公司进入这一市场，还不断开辟新市场”。由于数字网络的市场化发展，带来了网络化的生产者及雇佣者，而企业资本凭借对网络的所有与控制，使得网络所有权和劳动者彻底分离，从而形成了数字资本私人所有的经济制度。福克斯认为，数字资本主义形式上是数字化和信息化的，但实质仍旧以资本为主导。他说，“我将数字资本主义概念化的方式并非意味着数字化就是当代资本主义的主要特征。数字资本主义的核心特征是它是一个资本主义社会”。其原因在于数字资本主义的生产力三要素都与信息技术和数字网络交织在一起，数字资本正是利用信息生产力在阶级关系中剥削数字劳动者的剩余价值才得以形成。乔纳森·佩斯认为，数字资本是资本主义结构数字化过程中的历史中介，它的产生来自资本积累的结构性趋势和数字基础设施、数字技术的过程性发展的辩证统一，“数字资本主义是一种资本的结构性需求适应于数字化条件的运作方式”。

Srnicek and Williams hold that digital capital represents a new round of great acceleration in social change, and its formation must presuppose the separation of economic subjects from digital means of production (including data resources and digital technology). First, platforms monopolize data resources. Unlike the competition and monopoly over material raw materials in the era of large-scale industry, digital platforms take control of data resources as their core competitiveness. "On the basis of digital technological change, data has increasingly become the core of the relationship between enterprises and their employees, customers, and other capitalists. The platform has become a new business model capable of extracting and controlling large amounts of data." [28]28 Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, trans. Cheng Shuiying, Guangzhou: Guangdong People's Publishing House, 2018, p. 50. Second, platforms monopolize algorithmic technology. Raw data can only be transformed into usable digital commodities through specialized data processing; therefore, to achieve large-scale commodification of data, digital platforms must enhance their data-processing capabilities or algorithmic capabilities. On the one hand, the application and development of algorithmic technology can help digital platforms record and track data of various natures and directions in real time; on the other hand, it can clean, filter, and process large amounts of fragmented raw data with low value density, thereby transforming it into useful digital commodities. It is precisely in the process of competitively developing and monopolizing more precise, more fault-tolerant, and more readable digital algorithms that major digital platforms succeed in capitalizing themselves.

斯尔尼塞克、威廉姆斯认为，数字资本代表着新一轮的社会变化大加速，它的形成必须以经济主体和数字生产资料（包括数据资源与数字技术等）的分离为前提。首先，平台垄断数据资源。不同于大工业时代资本对物质原料的竞争和垄断，数字平台以控制数据资源为核心竞争力。“在数字技术变革的基础上，数据越来越成为企业及其与员工、客户和其他资本家关系的核心。平台已经成为一种新的商业模式，能够提取和控制大量数据”。其次，平台垄断算法技术。原始数据只有经过专业的数据处理才能转化为可用的数字商品，因而数字平台要实现数据的大规模商品化，必须提升其数据处理能力或算法能力。算法技术的运用和发展一方面可以帮助数字平台实时记录和追踪各种不同性质、不同方向的数据；另一方面可以将大量碎片化的、低价值密度的原始数据进行清洗、筛选、处理，从而转化为有用的数字商品。各大数字平台正是在竞相开发和垄断更精确、更具容错能力、更具可读性的数字算法的过程中，成功将自身资本化。

In summary, Schiller, Fuchs, Srnicek, and others depict the latest developments in production, ownership, markets, and technology under the conditions of digital capitalism and correctly explain the economic connections among them. However, from the perspective of Marxist political economy, they remain at the level of analyzing specific economic categories and do not inquire into the historical premises that give rise to these economic categories, thereby severing the dialectical relationship between the form and content of the movement of capital; they also tend to regard digital capital as an independent capital form, thereby severing the dialectical relationship between the whole and the parts of the movement of capital.

综上可知，希勒、福克斯、斯尔尼塞克等人描绘了数字资本主义条件下生产、所有权、市场和技术方面的最新进展，正确说明了彼此之间的经济联系。但从马克思主义政治经济学的视角来看，他们只是停留于具体的经济范畴的分析，并未追问使这些经济范畴得以产生的历史性前提，从而割裂了资本运动形式和内容的辩证关系；也往往将数字资本视作独立的资本形态，从而割裂了资本运动总体和部分的辩证关系。

2. The Severing of the Dialectical Relationship between the Form and Content of the Movement of Capital

2.割裂了资本运动形式和内容的辩证关系

Regarding capital, Marx distinguishes between capital in general, capital in particular, and capital in the individual. Among these, capital in general refers to the value attribute of capital: "capital in general is the determination common to every capital as capital, or the determination that makes every specific sum of value into capital"; [29]29 Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, in Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol. 46, Part 1, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1979, p. 444. capital in particular refers to the specific form of capital produced in combination with the basis of ownership, with capital of a capitalist nature embodied as value that can bring surplus value; capital in the individual refers to the concrete existing form of capital, reflecting the difference and diversity in the content of the movement of capital.

关于资本，马克思区分了资本一般、资本特殊和资本个别。其中，资本一般是指资本的价值属性，“资本一般，这是每一种资本作为资本所共有的规定，或者说是使每个一定的价值额成为资本的那种规定”；资本特殊是指与所有制基础结合而产生的特殊资本形式，资本主义性质的资本体现为能够带来剩余价值的价值；资本个别则是指资本的具体存在形态，体现了资本运动内容的差异性和多样性。

Marx held that for capital in general to transform into capital in particular, what matters is not only the value substance but, more importantly, the value form, that is, the specific social form behind value, thereby enabling value to transform into exchange value and surplus value; "it is only through the domination of direct, living labor by accumulated, past, objectified labor that accumulated labor becomes capital." This means that the factors of production must combine with living labor, and in this combination generate a power relation that dominates living labor, before capital in particular can come into being. "The Negro is a Negro. It is only under certain relations that he becomes a slave. A spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It is only under certain relations that it becomes capital. Torn from these relations, it is no more capital than gold in itself is money." Marx held that the Negro is not directly a wage laborer or a slave, nor is the spinning machine directly a commodity or constant capital; only when they enter capitalist private property, are commodified for the transfer of value of the means of production and the valorization of living labor, and realize the transition of value into exchange value, can they transform into capital in particular. The twofold character of capitalist production determines that capital must on the one hand create new value (variable capital) and on the other hand preserve or transfer value (constant capital). Therefore, the different roles of dead labor and living labor, constant capital and variable capital, are the historical premise for the emergence and operation of capital in particular. To abandon this premise, to turn instead to the analysis of individual and concrete economic categories, to replace historical movement with logical categories, and to conceal the social form with the material content, is in essence the practice of bourgeois economics. As Marx said, "The economists explain to us how production takes place under the above-mentioned relations, but they do not explain how these relations themselves are produced, that is, they do not explain the historical movement that gave rise to them."

马克思认为，要使资本一般转化为资本特殊，不仅在于价值实体，更重要的在于价值形式即价值背后特定的社会形式，从而使价值转化为交换价值和剩余价值，“只是由于积累起来的、过去的、对象化的劳动支配直接的、活的劳动，积累起来的劳动才变为资本”。这意味着生产要素必须与活劳动相结合，并在这种结合中生成统治活劳动的权力关系，资本特殊才得以产生，“黑人就是黑人。只有在一定的关系下，他才成为奴隶。纺纱机是纺棉花的机器。只有在一定的关系下，它才成为资本。脱离了这种关系，它也就不是资本了”。马克思认为，黑人并不直接就是雇佣劳动者或奴隶，纺织机也不直接就是商品或不变资本，它们只有进入资本主义私有制，被商品化用于生产资料的价值转移以及活劳动的价值增殖，实现价值向交换价值的过渡，才能转化为资本特殊。资本主义生产的两重性决定了资本一方面必须创造新价值（可变资本），一方面必须保存或转移价值（不变资本）。因此，死劳动和活劳动、不变资本和可变资本的不同作用是资本特殊得以产生和运作的历史性前提。抛弃这一前提，而转向个别和具体的经济范畴的分析，以逻辑范畴取代历史运动，以物质内容遮蔽社会形式，实质是资产阶级经济学的做法。正如马克思所说，“经济学家们向我们解释了生产怎样在上述关系下进行，但是没有说明这些关系是怎样产生的，也就是说，没有说明产生这些关系的历史运动”。

Therefore, in the digital age, the "digital" (including data, information, knowledge, digital technology, and many other digital factors) is not directly digital capital. Neither the fact that the digital becomes the dominant factor of production in capitalist development, nor the fact that capitalism undergoes digital transformation in production, circulation, consumption, and many other fields, can show that capitalism has formed a capital form called "digital capital." Only when the "digital" enters the value form, combines with living labor, realizes the transfer of old value and creates new value, can digital capital be formed. However, in the studies of Schiller, Fuchs, and others, the specific social form of existence of capital in particular—the relation between dead labor and living labor, constant capital and variable capital—is on the one hand superficialized into a competition between labor and technology—"if industrial society is based on machine technology, post-industrial society is formed by knowledge technology. If capital and labor are the main structural features of industrial society, then information and knowledge are the main structural features of post-industrial society"; on the other hand, it is displaced into an opposition between old and new forms of labor, such as the debate between Fuchs, Sayers, and others and the Italian autonomists over the materiality or immateriality of digital labor. From Marx's perspective, no matter what technical reorganization productive labor undergoes, and no matter whether it unfolds as material or immaterial, intellectual or non-intellectual in nature, what changes is only the concrete natural attribute of labor, not its abstract social attribute. Hence the category of labor in the vision of Western left-wing scholars is not abstract labor but the digitalized expression of concrete labor. Correspondingly, the digital capital they describe is also not capital in particular but the digitalized expression of capital in particular, that is, capital in its individual form. Western left-wing scholars lack the vision of the value form; they focus only on the construction of economic categories and the analysis of concrete material content, yet fail to explain the historical premise and social conditions under which the categories are generated. They inevitably fall into a mechanical opposition between logic and history, and between the concrete and the abstract, thereby severing the dialectical relation between the material content and the social form of the movement of capital.

因此，在数字时代，“数字”（包括数据、信息、知识、数字技术等诸多数字要素）并不直接就是数字资本，无论是数字成为资本主义发展中占据主导地位的生产要素，还是资本主义在生产、流通和消费等诸多领域进行数字化的转型，都不能表明资本主义形成了一种名为“数字资本”的资本形态。只有“数字”进入价值形式，与活劳动相结合，实现旧价值转移并创造新价值，才能够形成数字资本。然而，在希勒、福克斯等人的研究中，资本特殊的社会存在形式——死劳动和活劳动、不变资本和可变资本的关系，却一方面被表面化为劳动与技术之间的竞争——“如果工业社会以机器技术为技术，后工业社会则是由知识技术形成的。如果资本与劳动是工业社会的主要结构特征，那么信息和知识则是后工业社会的主要结构特征”；另一方面被转移为新旧劳动形式之间的对立，譬如福克斯、塞耶斯等人和意大利自治主义者关于数字劳动物质性与否的争论。从马克思的视角来看，生产劳动无论经历怎样的技术重组，无论以物质性还是非物质性、知识性还是非知识性的性质展开，改变的都只是劳动具体的自然属性，而非抽象的社会属性，因而西方左翼学者视域中的劳动范畴并非抽象劳动，而是具体劳动的数字化表现。相应的，他们描述的数字资本也并非资本特殊，而是资本特殊的数字化表现，即资本个别。西方左翼学者缺乏价值形式的视野，只着眼于经济范畴的建构和具体的物质内容的分析，却并未说明范畴生成的历史前提和社会条件，必然陷入逻辑和历史、具体和抽象的机械对立，从而割裂了资本运动的物质内容和社会形式的辩证关系。

Therefore, from Marx's standpoint, to judge whether digital capitalism still takes capital as its dominant principle does not consist in explaining capital in its individual form or capital in general, but in explaining how capital in general transforms into capital in particular within the value form; nor does it consist in explaining how digital factors promote, integrate, and reorganize the category of living labor, but in the mode of valorization under the conditions of digital labor and the mode by which dead labor appropriates living labor—that is, how original data and materials combine with dead labor to become constant capital, and how living labor can valorize to become variable capital. Only in this way can it be shown that digital capital still rests on the social form of capital.

因此，立足于马克思的立场，判断数字资本主义是否仍旧以资本为主导，不在于说明资本个别或资本一般，而在于说明资本一般如何在价值形式中转化为资本特殊；不在于说明数字诸要素如何推动、整合和重组活劳动范畴，而在于数字劳动条件下的价值增殖方式以及死劳动对活劳动的占有方式，即原初的数据资料如何与死劳动结合成为不变资本，活劳动如何能够价值增殖成为可变资本，只有这样才能说明数字资本仍旧以资本的社会形式为基础。

3. Severing the dialectical relation between the totality and the parts of the movement of capital

3.割裂了资本运动总体和部分的辩证关系

The fact that Western left-wing scholars sever the relation between the form and content of the movement of capital inevitably leads them to sever the dialectical relation between the totality and the process of the movement of capital. Marx held that the movement of capital is a contradictory and organic totality: "Production is not only a particular production; it is always a certain social body, a social subject, which operates in a totality of production departments that is broader or narrower in scope." The totality of capital means that its various links and processes are not in a relation of mutual isolation and separation from one another, but form a whole of mutual connection and mutual interaction in the inheritance and development of the old and the new.

西方左翼学者割裂资本运动形式和内容的关系必然导致其割裂资本运动总体和过程的辩证关系。马克思认为，资本运动是矛盾且有机的总体，“生产也不只是特殊的生产，而始终是一定的社会体即社会的主体在或广或窄的由各生产部门组成的总体中活动着”。资本的总体性意味着它的各环节和过程并非彼此孤立、相互分离的关系，而是在新与旧的继承与发展中形成的一个相互联系、相互作用的整体。

Concretely speaking, the new things produced in the total movement of capital are not an either/or negation of the old things, but a negation of the negation; they must presuppose the productive forces generated by the old things as their premise, "the new forms arise because capital acts upon the old forms." Yet in the vision of Western left-wing scholars, digital capital is often regarded as a capital form independent of the "old" capital forms—functioning capital and interest-bearing capital—and the inheritance and development within it have not been systematically discussed. "Digital technology has profoundly transformed the mode of production as well as the ways of cognition and communication, so in the debate on the impact of digitalization on society, we put forward a serious hypothesis, namely that the use of digital machines has changed workers and producers." They generally hold that "old" capital is dominated by material production, whereas digital capital places more emphasis on the creation, transmission, and application of immaterial factors such as knowledge, emotion, and information. This undoubtedly severs the totality of the movement of capital and treats capital as something mechanical rather than historical. However, from Marx's perspective, as long as the relation between dead labor and living labor, constant capital and variable capital, remains unchanged, and as long as what changes is only the natural attribute of capital and labor rather than their social attribute, then digital capital is not an independent capital form but a particular digital stage in the total movement of capital, which must take functioning capital and interest-bearing capital as its basis and foundation.

具体来讲，资本的总体性运动中产生的新事物并非对旧事物非此即彼的否定，而是否定之否定，它必须以旧事物生成的生产力基础为前提，“新形式的产生是由于资本对旧形式发生了作用”。而在西方左翼学者的视域中，数字资本往往被视作与“旧”的资本形态——职能资本和生息资本相互独立的资本形态，其中的继承性和发展性并未得到系统论述。“数字化技术已经深刻地变革了生产方式以及认知和沟通的方式，所以在关于数字化对社会的影响的争论中,我们提出了一个严肃的假设，即数字化机器的使用改变了工人和生产者。”他们普遍认为，“旧”资本以实物生产为主导，而数字资本则更加注重知识、情感和信息等非物质要素的创造、传递和应用。这无疑割裂了资本运动的总体性，而将资本视作机械性而非历史性的东西。然而，从马克思的视角来看，只要死劳动和活劳动、不变资本和可变资本的关系未变，只要改变的只是资本和劳动的自然属性而非社会属性，那么数字资本就并非独立的资本形态，而是资本总体运动过程中的一个特殊的数字化阶段，它必须以职能资本和生息资本为依据和基础。

In order to explain this conclusion, it is first necessary to clarify the intrinsic connection between functioning capital and interest-bearing capital. Marx held that functioning capital (including commercial capital and industrial capital) and interest-bearing capital are not independent forms of capital but rather an organic whole that interpenetrates each other, with industrial capital being the foundational form among them: "Industrial capital is the basic form of the capital relation that dominates bourgeois society, and all other forms are merely derived or secondary forms of this basic form." Industrial capital constitutes the foundation of the capital relation and is also the source of surplus value. In terms of the functional forms of capital, commercial capital is subordinate to industrial capital, being the independent form of commodity capital and money capital within the circuit of industrial capital: "As soon as this function of capital in the circulation process becomes independent as a specific function of a specific capital, and is fixed as a function assigned by the division of labor to a specific class of capitalists, commodity capital becomes commodity-dealing capital or commercial capital." Because the scale of industrial capital increases and the quantity of commodity capital in circulation grows, in order to shorten turnover time, it is required that a group of people be separated from industrial capitalists to become "middlemen" or commercial agents, linking production and consumption and accelerating the mutual transformation of commodity capital and money capital. It is thus that commercial capital separates from industrial capital and becomes a formally independent existence. Furthermore, interest-bearing capital is also subordinate to and serves functioning capital; it originates from the temporarily idle money capital generated in the movement of functioning capital: "Once capitalist production has developed in its various forms and become the dominant mode of production, interest-bearing capital comes under the domination of industrial capital." In order to absorb the idle capital generated in the movement of industrial capital, increase the turnover speed of functioning capital, and expand the scale of capital production, industrial capitalists gradually come to rely on the money-dealing business, such as banking, and increase the circulation of money capital by constructing a credit relationship between industrial capital and banking, thereby giving rise to interest-bearing capital. In modern society, the typical form of interest-bearing capital—bank capital—merges and develops with industrial capital to form finance capital and international financial monopoly capital, becoming the dominant force in capitalist society.

为了说明这一结论，必须首先说明职能资本和生息资本之间的内在联系。马克思认为，职能资本（包括商业资本和产业资本）和生息资本并非独立的资本形态，而是相互渗透的有机整体，产业资本是其中的基础形式，“产业资本是在资产阶级社会占统治地位的资本关系的基本形式，其他一切形式都不过是从这个基本形式派生的或次要的”。产业资本构成资本关系的基础，也是剩余价值的来源。从资本的职能形式来说，商业资本从属于产业资本，是产业资本循环中商品资本和货币资本的独立形态，“只要处在流通过程中的资本的这种职能作为一种特殊资本的特殊职能独立起来，作为一种由分工赋予特殊一类资本家的职能固定下来，商品资本就成为商品经营资本或商业资本”。由于产业资本的规模增大，流通中商品资本的数量增加，为了缩短周转时间，就要求从产业资本家中分离出一批人来，成为“中间人”或商务代理人，以链接生产和消费，加速商品资本与货币资本相互转化，由此，商业资本才从产业资本中分离出来而成为形式上的独立存在。此外，生息资本也从属和服务于职能资本，它来源于职能资本运动中暂时闲置的货币资本，“一旦资本主义生产在它的诸多形式上发展起来，成了占统治地位的生产方式，生息资本就会受到产业资本的支配”。为了消化产业资本运动中生成的闲置资本，增加职能资本的周转速度，扩大资本的生产规模，产业资本家会逐渐依赖于货币经营业譬如银行业，通过构建产业资本和银行业之间的信用关系的方式增加货币资本的流通量，于是催生了生息资本的产生。在现代社会中，生息资本的典型形态银行资本与产业资本融合发展形成了金融资本和国际金融垄断资本，成为资本主义社会的主导性力量。

Secondly, as to whether digital capital has become a new form of capital after finance capital, Western left-wing scholars have put forward their own views. A relatively typical view is that data and digital platforms have not only become the object or carrier of capital but have also transformed into an independent form of capital or functional form of capital, named variously as digital capital, platform capital, cloud capital, and so on. For example, Srnicek holds that there exists a platform capital, which is the dominant form of digital capital, and he divides platform capital into five types: advertising platforms, cloud platforms, industrial platforms, product platforms, and lean platforms. Among these, advertising platforms profit by selling user information to advertisers, cloud platforms profit by renting out digital software and hardware, industrial platforms achieve value augmentation by reducing labor costs through the transformation from traditional manufacturing to digital manufacturing, product platforms obtain revenue by charging advertising fees, rents, and subscription fees on the platform, and lean platforms earn intermediary fees by linking service transactions. In addition, there are specialized monetary digital platforms that obtain revenue by providing mobile payment and financial credit services (such as P2P). Varoufakis, for his part, holds that there exists a cloud capital, which is an important lever driving the rapid development of artificial intelligence, algorithms, and digital networks. These scholars have taken note of the capitalization trend of digital technology; however, they merely borrow Marx's concept of "capital" and offer unreasonable explanations of the nature and methods by which digital capital obtains profit. For instance, Varoufakis and others directly use "rent" to define revenue under the digital economy and use techno-feudalism to define the nature of digital capital.

其次，数字资本是否成为金融资本之后的一种资本新形态，西方左翼学者提出了自己的看法。比较典型的观点是，数据与数字平台不仅成为资本的客体或载体，还转化为一种独立的资本形态或资本职能形式，并以数字资本、平台资本、云资本等命名之。例如，斯尔尼塞克认为，存在着一种平台资本，它是数字资本的主导形态，并将平台资本划分为广告平台、云平台、工业平台、产品平台和精益平台五种。其中，广告平台以出售用户信息给广告商而谋取利润，云平台以出租数字化软件和硬件的方式谋取利润，工业平台通过传统制造向数字化制造的转变以降低劳动成本实现价值增殖，产品平台通过在平台收取广告、租金和订阅费而获得收益，精益平台通过链接服务交易收取中介费用。此外，还有专门的货币数字平台，通过提供移动支付和金融信用服务（比如P2P）获得收益。瓦鲁法基斯则认为，存在一种云资本，它是推动人工智能-算法-数字网络迅速发展的重要杠杆。这些学者注意到了数字技术的资本化趋势，不过，他们只是借用了马克思的“资本”概念，对数字资本获取利润的性质及方式给出了不合理的解释，如瓦鲁法基斯等人直接用“租金”来定义数字经济下的收益，用技术封建主义来定义数字资本的性质。

It should be recognized that whether it is digital capital, cloud capital, or platform capital, none of them exceed the operational logic of functioning capital and interest-bearing capital, and they often appear directly in the digital production process in the latter's guise. For example, advertising platforms, cloud platforms, product platforms, and lean platforms fall within the category of commercial capital: they gather different groups (advertisers, service providers, producers, consumers, etc.) into digital networks as middlemen, earning price differentials and commercial profit by promoting interaction between producers and consumers and satisfying the needs of different groups in buying and selling activities. Industrial platforms, by contrast, fall within the category of industrial capital: the reason enterprises undertake digital transformation is to break down the single, closed production system on the production end and realize flexible, automated, and agile production modes; on the demand end, to upgrade the consumption structure, lower consumption costs, and stimulate user demand; and in the sphere of exchange, to accurately forecast product supply and demand and efficiently link supply and demand sides, thereby accelerating the turnover of industrial capital and effectively resolving the difficulties that industrial capital inevitably faces in its movement, such as relative overproduction and the falling rate of general profit. Monetary digital platforms fall within the category of interest-bearing capital: they provide formally safer, faster, and lower-cost financial transactions by constructing a digital credit system, thereby improving the efficiency of money circulation and increasing the volume of money in circulation, effectively resolving the problems of traditional finance, such as low timeliness, lengthy procedures, and high costs. Whether advertising platforms, cloud platforms, product platforms, or monetary digital platforms, their ownership is mainly controlled by finance capital, and their rapid expansion and "enclosure of territory" [33]33 "跑马圈地" (literally "racing horses to enclose land") is a Chinese idiom referring to the aggressive, large-scale seizure of territory or market share, here applied metaphorically to the rapid expansion of digital platforms. is often carried out through the form of fictitious capital. It can thus be seen that various platform capitals are in essence merely the products of the era in which functioning capital and interest-bearing capital, in order to ease their own contradictions and overcome their own limits, have undertaken digital reform.

应当看到，无论是数字资本、云资本还是平台资本，它们都没有超出职能资本和生息资本的运作逻辑，且常常是以后者的面目直接出现在数字化生产过程之中。譬如广告平台、云平台、产品平台和精益平台属于商业资本的范畴，它们以中间人的身份将不同群体（广告商、服务提供商、生产商、消费者等）聚集于数字网络之中，通过促进生产者和消费者之间的互动、满足买卖活动中不同群体的需求的方式赚取差价，谋得商业利润。而工业平台属于产业资本的范畴，企业之所以进行数字化转型，是为了在生产端打破单一、封闭的生产系统，实现弹性化、自动化和柔性化的生产模式。在需求端升级消费结构，降低消费成本，刺激用户需求。在交换领域，精准地进行产品供应与需求预测，高效地链接供需双方，从而加速产业资本的周转，有效解决产业资本运动中必然面临的生产相对过剩、一般利润率下降等难题。货币数字平台则属于生息资本的范畴，它通过建构数字信用体系提供形式上更安全、更快捷和更低成本的金融交易，以提升货币流通效率，增加货币流通量，从而有效解决传统金融低时效性、程序冗长、费用高昂的问题。不管是广告平台、云平台、产品平台，还是货币数字平台，其所有权主要由金融资本掌控，且其快速扩张和“跑马圈地”往往通过虚拟资本形式进行。可见，各种平台资本实质上只是职能资本和生息资本为了缓和自身矛盾、克服自身界限而实行数字化改革的时代产物而已。

In sum, in their research on digital capitalism, contemporary Western left-wing scholars either focus on various new commodities and factors of production (data, information, knowledge, etc.), or on changes in old and new forms of labor and in the relationship between labor and technology, or on various new manifestations of digital capital. Although these studies have thoroughly explained the diversity and dynamism of capital movement in the digital age, capital movement is a dialectical unity of change and constancy: the emergence of digital commodities, digital labor, and digital capital can only demonstrate that a digital "reform" of capital movement has occurred, not a "revolution" in the movement of value. On the one hand, Western left-wing scholars have ignored the value form behind capital movement, ignored the social form of the division between dead labor and living labor, and have judged digital capital to be an independent, self-sufficient existence detached from functioning capital, interest-bearing capital, and their operational logic; on the other hand, they treat digital capital as an a priori premise of their own theoretical research and replace historical premises with logical structures, thereby compressing the historical movement of capital into something ready-made and mechanical. This undoubtedly fails to attain the height of Marxist political economy. As Marx himself said, "The so-called general conditions of all production are nothing but these abstract elements, with which no real, historical stage of production can be understood." [34]34 This quotation is adapted from Marx's *Grundrisse* (Introduction, section on the method of political economy), where he criticizes the abstraction of "general conditions of production" as insufficient for understanding any concrete historical stage of production. Marxist political economy is not merely an analysis of economic categories; more importantly, it is an analysis of the historical premises from which the formal determinations of economic categories arise. To detach from the historical premises and overall logic of capital movement and to formalize and reify various economic categories is in essence still to remain within the shackles of metaphysics.

综上，当代西方左翼学者在关于数字资本主义的研究中，或是聚焦于各种新的商品和生产要素（数据、信息、知识等），或是聚焦于新旧劳动形式的变化、劳动与技术的关系变化，或是聚焦于数字资本的各种新的表现形式。这些研究尽管深入说明了数字时代资本运动的多样性和动态性，但资本运动是变与不变的辩证统一，数字商品、数字劳动和数字资本的产生只能说明资本运动发生了数字化的“改革”，而非价值运动的“革命”。西方左翼学者一方面忽视了资本运动背后的价值形式，忽视了死劳动和活劳动分工的社会形式，并将数字资本判定为脱离职能资本、生息资本及其运动逻辑的独立、自主的存在；另一方面将数字资本视作自身理论研究的先验前提，并以逻辑结构取代历史前提，从而将资本的历史运动紧缩为现成性、机械性的东西，这无疑没有达到马克思主义政治经济学的高度。正如马克思所说，“所谓一切生产的一般条件，不过是这些抽象要素，用这些要素不可能理解任何一个现实的历史的生产阶段”。马克思主义政治经济学不仅是对经济范畴的分析，更重要的是对经济范畴的形式规定得以产生的历史前提的分析。脱离资本运动的历史性前提和总体性逻辑，而将诸经济范畴形式化和实体化，实质上仍旧处于形而上学的桎梏之中。

(Author's biography: Xu Yanru, tenured associate professor at the School of Marxism, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

（作者简介：徐艳如，上海交通大学马克思主义学院长聘副教授）

Online editor: Tongxin

网络编辑：同心