Critique of Communicative Capitalism and Subject Emancipation

Today, humanity is in an era of high technology. Yet the arrival of the technological age has not changed the alienated state of human existence; on the contrary, it has consolidated the abstract rule of alienating forces. Under the two-way logical movement of "capital's technologization and technology's capitalization," a series of new changes have emerged in capitalism's modes of accumulation, exploitation, and value forms. One notable feature is capital's comprehensive invasion of the sphere of everyday communication. Faced with this situation, Western left-wing scholars represented by Jodi Dean have raised the important issue of a "critique of communicative capitalism." In fact, the issue of communication has a deep theoretical tradition in Western philosophy, from Kant's reflection on "dogmatism" to Hegel's "master-slave dialectic," from Marx's theory of communication to the intersubjectivity theory of modern Western philosophy, and then to the multi-subject theory of postmodern philosophy—all of which demonstrate the important research value of the communication issue. Faced with the transformation of human modes of communication in the technological age, "communication" should become a central topic of contemporary philosophical reflection.

今天，人类正处在一个高度技术化的时代。然而，技术时代的到来，并未改变人类异化的生存状态，反而巩固了异化力量的抽象统治。在“资本技术化与技术资本化”的双向逻辑运动下，资本主义的增殖方式、剥削方式、价值形式出现了一系列新变化，其中一个显著特征表现为资本对日常交往领域的全面入侵。面对此种情形，以约迪·迪恩为代表的西方左翼学者提出了“交往资本主义批判”这一重要议题。实际上，交往议题在西方哲学界有着深厚的理论传统，从康德对“独断论”的反思到黑格尔的“主奴辩证法”，从马克思的交往理论到现代西方哲学的主体间性理论，再到后现代哲学的多元主体理论等，无不向我们展示着交往议题的重要研究价值。面对技术时代人类交往方式的变革，“交往”理应成为当代哲学反思的中心议题。

The historical genesis of communicative capitalism. From the perspective of the developmental process of human society, the extent of the expansion of communication constitutes an important indicator of the historical evolution of forms of human civilization. In the stage of feudal civilization, various national regions, constrained by geographical factors, lacked close ties and were unable to engage in intensive economic activities to form large-scale economic units. The collapse of feudal civilization was accompanied by the realization of relatively widespread economic communication. A notable hallmark of the birth of capitalist civilization is the breadth and dynamism of communication. In the capitalist stage, communication is not confined to the economic sphere but possesses richer social content and forms of expression. In this process, the decisive factor is the qualitative change in the form of productive forces triggered by scientific and technological revolution. Especially today, with the concentrated explosion of modern emerging technologies, the impact of technology on human modes of communication and even on the transformation of forms of human civilization has broader realistic possibilities.

交往资本主义的历史生成。从人类社会的发展进程来看，交往的扩展程度构成了人类文明形态历史演进的重要表征。在封建文明阶段，各民族地区受制于地理因素疏于联系，无法进行密切的经济活动以形成规模化经济单位。封建文明的覆灭，则是伴随较为普遍的经济交往而实现的。资本主义文明诞生的一个显著标志是交往的广泛性与活跃性。在资本主义阶段，交往不局限于经济领域，而是具有更为丰富的社会内容和表现形式。在这一过程中，起决定性作用的是科学技术变革引发的生产力的形态质变。尤其是在现代新兴技术集中爆发的今天，技术对于人类交往方式乃至人类文明形态变革的影响具有更为宽泛的现实可能性。

In the context of historical materialism, technology and machinery, as extensions of the human body and as objectified displays of humanity's essential forces, possess clear purposive and historical characteristics. These are manifested in the following two dimensions: first, technology can change the mode of communication between humans and nature, having the practical function of raising labor productivity; second, technology can change the mode of communication between humans, having the practical function of transforming the relations of production and social order. Today, human society is at a critical stage of the fourth technological revolution. With the explosion of emerging technologies such as big data, cloud computing, 5G, and artificial intelligence, modern technology has further penetrated the production sphere and the sphere of everyday life. Capitalist production has undergone a historical shift from the traditional sphere of physical factories to the sphere of digital factories, and then to the sphere of everyday communication. Accordingly, some Western left-wing scholars judge that the development of capitalism has entered the historical stage of communicative capitalism—"communication constitutes the mode of capitalist production, in which capital has successfully subordinated the entire society and the globe to its system, completely suppressing other possibilities."

在历史唯物主义语境下，技术、机器作为人的肉体延伸，作为人的本质力量的对象化展示，具有明确的目的性和历史性特征。其具体表现在以下两个维度：其一，技术能够改变人与自然的交往方式，具有提升劳动生产率的实践功能；其二，技术能够改变人与人的交往方式，具有变革生产方式和社会秩序的实践功能。现如今，人类社会正处于第四次技术革命的关键阶段。随着大数据、云计算、5G、人工智能等新兴技术的爆发，现代技术进一步深入生产领域和日常生活领域，资本主义生产实现了由传统的实体工厂领域向数字工厂领域，再向日常交往领域的历史性转变。据此，部分西方左翼学者判定资本主义的发展进入了交往资本主义的历史阶段——“交往构成了资本主义生产的方式，在其中，资本已经成功地使整个社会和全球从属于它的体制，完全压制了其他可能性”。

Communicative capitalism is the historical result of the interaction between capital innovation and technological innovation, containing within it the interactive logic of capital's technologization and technology's capitalization. According to Marx's prediction, in the process of capital's pursuit of universality, its historical mode of existence will inevitably change continuously through self-innovation, from industrial capital to financial capital, and then to today's ecological capital, digital capital, and communicative capital. Objectively speaking, each innovative development in the mode of existence of capital actually relies on the practical background of technological innovation. In this sense, communicative capital is a special form of capital derived against the backdrop of the concentrated explosion of modern emerging technologies, specifically manifested as "contemporary communication media have captured all users in intensity and breadth, from entertainment, production, to surveillance." On the one hand, as general capital, the core logic of communicative capital remains exploitation, accumulation, and expansion; on the other hand, as technological capital, its inherent technological dimension extends the object of capital exploitation from traditional fields to the sphere of everyday communication. But at the essential level, communicative capital is the concrete entity of capitalist social relations of production under the background of modern emerging technologies—this is what Marx referred to as "the change in the shell of capital." Driven jointly by the interactive logic of capital's technologization and technology's capitalization, communicative capitalism begins to deeply influence the practice of human survival and development in the "rational form" of actual history.

交往资本主义是资本创新与技术创新相互作用的历史结果，其内含着资本技术化与技术资本化的交互逻辑。按照马克思的预判，资本在追求普遍性的过程中，其历史存在样态必然会以自我创新的方式不断变化，从产业资本到金融资本，再到今天的生态资本、数字资本、交往资本等。客观而言，资本存在样态的每一次创新发展，实际上都依赖于技术创新的实践背景。在此意义上，交往资本是在现代新兴技术集中爆发的背景下衍生的一种特殊资本形态，具体表现为“当代交往传播媒体已经在强度和广度上，从娱乐、生产和监督上俘获了所有的用户”。一方面，交往资本作为一般性的资本，其核心逻辑仍旧是剥削、增殖、扩张；另一方面，交往资本作为技术性的资本，其内在的技术向度将资本剥削对象由传统领域扩展至日常交往领域。但就本质层面而言，交往资本是现代新兴技术背景下资本主义社会生产关系的具象实体，此即为马克思所言之“资本躯壳的改变”。在资本技术化与技术资本化之交互逻辑的共同驱使下，交往资本主义开始以现实历史的“合理形式”深入影响现代人类的生存发展实践。

The logic of exploitation and rule in communicative capitalism. Although communicative capitalism has brought about innovations in the mode of production, it has not changed the theme of capitalist civilization, namely "capital exploits and enslaves people." If industrial capitalism directly targets the exploitation of productive labor, then communicative capitalism is built on the basis of the exploitation of everyday communication, pushing capital exploitation further toward a situation of all fields and all times and spaces. The innovation in the mode of exploitation achieved by communicative capitalism stems from the fact that its target of exploitation is no longer limited to the traditional physical commodity model but, using modern emerging technologies as intermediary carriers, extends its tentacles of exploitation into "the social relations located at the center of the commodity." From this perspective, even in the era of digital communication, the social attribute of commodity value explained by Marx in *Capital*—that is, the social relations capable of embodying the "general labor" of commodity value exchange—remains the most important thing to pay attention to.

交往资本主义的剥削统治逻辑。交往资本主义虽然带来了生产方式的革新，但并未改变“资本剥削人、奴役人”的资本主义文明主题。如果说工业资本主义直接指向对生产劳动的剥削，那么交往资本主义则建立在对日常交往剥削的基础之上，使得资本剥削进一步朝向全领域、全时空的态势发展。交往资本主义所实现的剥削方式创新，根源在于其剥削靶点不再局限于传统实体的商品模式，而是以现代新兴技术为中介载体，将剥削触角伸入“位于商品中心的社会关系”之中。据此来看，即便在数字交往时代，马克思在《资本论》中阐释的商品价值的社会属性，即能够体现商品价值交换“劳动一般”的社会关系依旧是最为需要重视的。

In the exploitative system constructed by communicative capitalism, apart from the initial investment in technological costs, the extraction of surplus value requires no labor costs. The combination of digital technology and capital means that any browsing, following, or forwarding in digital communication produces general data that can constitute a source of profit for communicative capitalism, becoming a direct element of value creation. Communicative capitalism also has a fundamental contradiction—"the imbalance between the supply of information and the demand for attention is the fundamental contradiction of contemporary capitalism, an inherent contradiction based on the value form." Capital's supply of information is infinite, while the demand for human attention is finite. On the one hand, capitalism uses entirely new technological forms to carry out large-scale information production; on the other hand, the produced information must be precisely delivered to its targets, ultimately achieving the political and economic goals of guiding public opinion and culture, policy formulation, and consumer preferences. In essence, communicative capitalism, through comprehensive manipulation of the information supply, extracts more profit from the inequality of attention. Therefore, this exploitative system has a dual nature: it not only appropriates without compensation the data, information, and other digital means of production generated by people's everyday communication but also, in turn, manipulates the information supply, shaping a new mode of social operation to serve physical capital.

在交往资本主义构建的剥削体系中，除了初期的技术成本投入外，剩余价值的剥削是无须耗费劳动成本的。数字技术与资本的结合，使得数字交往中的任何一次浏览、关注、转发中所生产的一般数据都能够构成交往资本主义的获利来源，成为价值创造的直接要素。交往资本主义同样存在基本矛盾——“信息的供给和对注意力的需求之间的不平衡是当代资本主义的基本矛盾，这是基于价值形式的一个内在矛盾”。资本的信息供给是无限的，人的注意力的需求则是有限的。一方面，资本主义借助全新的技术形式进行规模化的信息生产；另一方面，生产出的信息必须向对象精准投递，最终达到引导舆论文化、政策制定和消费偏好的政治经济目的。质言之，交往资本主义通过对信息供给的全面操控，从关注度的不平等中攫取更多利润。所以，这种剥削体系具有双重性：不仅无偿占有人们日常交往生产的数据、信息等数字生产资料，而且反过来操控信息供给，塑造全新的社会运转模式服务于实体资本。

Constructing a social order of technology sharing and universal communication. As is well known, Marx attached great importance to the foundational role of "productive activity" in the development of human society and human emancipation. In fact, Marx also gave full attention to "communicative activity." "Communication" is one of the core themes of historical materialism. Through communicative activity, human society is able to break through closed regional characteristics, and science, technology, and productive forces can be preserved and developed worldwide without being lost. The communicative relations and modes of communication formed in communicative activity implicitly constitute the order form of human survival and development, and the contradictory movement between them reveals, from the communicative level, the essential content of the replacement of forms of human civilization. Taking the relationship between "production and communication" as the logical starting point, and based on a profound grasp of all historical development, Marx scientifically explained the law of the progression of human history toward world history and human society toward communism, using the universal communication of world history as the driving mechanism. Among these, universal communication constitutes the basic feature of world history and communism.

建构技术共享与普遍交往的社会秩序。众所周知，马克思非常重视“生产活动”在人类社会发展和人类解放过程中的基础地位。而实际上，马克思对“交往活动”也给予了充分重视。“交往”是历史唯物主义的核心论题之一。通过交往活动，人类社会得以打破封闭的地域性特征，科学技术、生产力得以在世界范围内保存发展而不至于失传。交往活动中所形成的交往关系和交往方式，潜在地构成了人类生存发展的秩序形式，其相互间的矛盾运动更是从交往层面展现了人类文明形态更替的本质内容。马克思以“生产与交往”的关系为逻辑基点，在对全部历史发展深刻把握的基础上，以世界历史的普遍交往为动力机制，科学阐释了人类历史向世界历史、人类社会向共产主义迈进的规律。其中，普遍交往构成了世界历史和共产主义的基本特征。

As the latest development of contemporary capitalism, the deep-rooted source of the inherent basic contradictions of communicative capitalism remains the social relations of production under bourgeois private ownership, which in essence is not conducive to the realization of a state of universal communication. As Marx revealed, capitalism is a “shackle” on the development of productive forces in the stage of large-scale industry, and it is also a “shackle” on the development of modern emerging technologies. Under the conditions of capitalist society, the potential of productive forces contained in modern emerging technologies can only be selectively and one-sidedly released under the guidance of the logic of capital. Their potential in areas such as civilizational exchange, social governance, democratic consultation, medical and health care, and public education cannot be fully utilized, and for the majority of people, they constitute a destructive and exploitative force. Therefore, according to the dynamic mechanism principle of historical materialism, the leap and qualitative change in productive forces achieved by modern emerging technologies—this economic base—objectively calls for a superstructure characterized by socialist relations of production that is more conducive to the universal communication of productive forces.

交往资本主义作为当代资本主义的最新发展，其内在基本矛盾的深层根源仍旧是资产阶级私有制的社会生产关系，这在本质上并不利于普遍交往状态的实现。正如马克思所揭示的那样，资本主义对于大工业阶段的生产力发展是一种“桎梏”，对于现代新兴技术的发展而言也是一种“桎梏”。在资本主义社会条件下，现代新兴技术所内含的生产力潜力只能以资本逻辑为导向进行选择性、片面性释放，其在文明交流、社会治理、民主协商、医疗卫生、公共教育等方面的潜能不仅无法得到充分利用，而且对于多数人而言，它是一种破坏性、剥削性的力量。所以，根据历史唯物主义的动力机制原理，现代新兴技术所实现的生产力的跃迁质变这一经济基础，客观上呼唤着以社会主义生产关系为表征、更加利于生产力普遍交往的上层建筑。

Science and technology are not the sole revolutionary force determining the development of social history; the maximum release of the emancipatory function of science and technology must occur under reasonable social conditions. Without revolutionary theory, without the struggle of revolutionary subjects, capitalism will not automatically transition to the communist stage, nor will the emancipatory function of science and technology truly serve humanity. Therefore, the author believes that in the stage of communicative capitalism, the key direction of subject emancipation lies not in technological development itself, but in eliminating the private ownership of the means of technological production at the institutional level, and on the basis of the comprehensive sharing of technology, promoting the realization of the state of universal communication as envisioned by Marx.

科学技术并非决定社会历史发展的唯一革命理论，科学技术解放功能的最大限度释放必须在合理的社会条件之下；没有革命的理论，没有革命主体的斗争，资本主义不会自动转变到共产主义阶段，科学技术的解放功能也不会真正为人所用。所以，笔者认为，在交往资本主义阶段，主体解放的重点方向并非在于技术发展本身，而在于从制度层面消除技术生产资料的私人占有，以技术的全面共享为基础，推动实现马克思所设想的普遍交往状态。

(The author is a lecturer at the School of Marxism, Jilin University.)

（作者系吉林大学马克思主义学院讲师）

Online editor: Tongxin

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