Contemporary Western Digital Capitalism from the Perspective of Historical Materialism

When Marx and Engels wrote in *The German Ideology* that “without steam engines and the jenny spinning machine slavery could not have been abolished; without improved agriculture serfdom could not have been abolished,” they had already indicated that the widespread application of science and technology is a force that cannot be ignored in changing a society. The widespread application of digital technology, network technology, and intelligent technology will inevitably bring a tremendous impact on the development of contemporary Western capitalist society. This impact has shaped a new form of capitalism different from the past—digital capitalism. In understanding digital capitalism, we cannot simply regard it as capitalism’s application of a new technology as a tool. With the widespread application of digital technology, network technology, and intelligent technology, a new mode of capitalist control has actually emerged, namely, the distribution of various factors of production and the control of the cycle of capital accumulation through a large number of digital platforms. Digital platforms make digital capitalism materially different from previous industrial capitalism and financial capitalism. We must return to Marx’s historical materialism and critique of political economy to re-examine the new changes that digital capitalism has brought to the development of contemporary capitalism.

当马克思和恩格斯在《德意志意识形态》中写下“没有蒸汽机和珍妮走锭精纺机就不能消灭奴隶制；没有改良的农业就不能消灭农奴制”时，已经表明科学技术的广泛应用是改变一个社会不可忽视的力量。数字技术、网络技术、智能技术的广泛应用，必然会对当代西方资本主义社会的发展带来巨大的冲击，这种冲击塑造了一种不同于以往的新的资本主义形态——数字资本主义。对于数字资本主义的理解，我们不能仅仅将其视为资本主义对一种作为工具的新技术的应用。随着数字技术、网络技术和智能技术的广泛应用，实际上诞生了一种资本主义控制的新方式，即通过大量的数字平台实现对各种生产要素的分配和对资本积累循环的控制。数字平台让数字资本主义在物质基础上，不同于以往的产业资本主义和金融资本主义。我们必须回归到马克思历史唯物主义和政治经济学批判来重新审视数字资本主义给当代资本主义发展带来的新变化。

Changes in Factors of Production

生产要素的变化

In traditional political economy, the factors of production mainly include three: capital, labor, and land. The returns on these three factors are profit, wages, and rent, respectively. These three factors are the necessary prerequisites for maintaining capitalist production. Even in the stage of financial capitalism, the status of the capital factor has been significantly elevated relative to the other two factors, but it still depends on the premise of the three factors. However, in the stage of financial capitalism, what actually changes is that banks and financial institutions, by controlling the flow of capital, achieve control over ordinary industrial capital. In Marx’s later years, especially in the third volume of *Capital*, he mentioned that financial capital achieves domination over joint-stock enterprises through credit ratings. Marx said: “With the development of credit, this money capital itself takes on a social character.” [1]1 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Volume 3, Chapter 27, “The Role of Credit in Capitalist Production.” Thus, the root of the difference between financial capitalism and early industrial capitalism lies in the fact that banks and financial institutions have established a credit rating system for different enterprises and individuals, and credit has become another prerequisite for industrial production under financial capitalism. That is, only enterprises and individuals with sufficient credit can obtain loans from banks or receive investment from financial institutions. Financial capital continuously rates enterprises and individuals, determining what enterprises can produce and what they cannot. In the era of digital capitalism, financialized credit calculation has further transformed into datafied and intelligent algorithms. The means of financial capital, such as credit ratings, have been utilized by various big data platforms. However, for better analysis of investment and industrial production, the distribution of databases and computing power has become very important. These platforms that extract and store data on a massive scale from the cloud, as well as those with enormous computing power, have become a more powerful force standing above industrial capital and financial capital. Before an enterprise begins production, it must consider not only the entire production process and product sales process but also how its production can become a link in the industrial chain. It must understand that digital platforms have integrated industrial chains from different places, different regions, and even different countries into a whole. Only when an enterprise enters such an industrial chain in digital form and relies on the massive orders and sales channels of digital platforms can it gain space for survival in this digitalized form of capitalism. This means that data or computing power is not only a tool and material for enterprises to utilize, but within the digital system of traffic, databases, algorithms, and computing power, a single enterprise has been integrated as a link in this system. In short, in the era of digital capitalism, besides traditional factors such as land, labor, capital, and credit, data and computing power have become new capitalist factors that dominate industrial production and financial investment. Just as the banking system at the end of the 19th century mastered the credit rating system and dominated the entire capitalist production system, today’s digital capital is dominating various resources and energies of the entire capitalist society by controlling data, traffic, and computing power.

在传统的政治经济学中，生产要素主要包括三种：资本、劳动力和土地。而三要素收益分别是利润、工资和地租。这三个要素是维持资本主义生产的必要前提。即便到了金融资本主义阶段，资本要素的地位相对于其他两个要素有明显的提升，但仍然依赖于三要素的前提。不过，在金融资本主义阶段，实际上发生的变化是，银行和金融机构通过掌握资本的流向，从而实现了对普通产业资本的控制。在马克思的晚年，尤其在《资本论》第三卷中，他提到了金融资本通过信用评级来实现对股份制企业的支配，马克思说道：“随着信用的发展，这种货币资本本身取得了一种社会的性质。”由此可见，金融资本主义不同于早期的产业资本主义的根源就在于银行和金融机构建立了对不同企业和个人的信用评级体系，而信用成了金融资本主义产业生产的另一个前提，即只有拥有足够信用的企业和个人，才能在银行获得贷款，或者从金融机构那里得到投资，而金融资本不断地为企业和个人进行评级，决定了企业可以生产什么、不能生产什么。在数字资本主义时代，金融化的信用计算进一步转化为数据化和智能化的算法，信用评级等金融资本的手段，已经被各大数据平台所利用。不过，为了更好地进行投资和产业生产的分析，数据库和算力的分配变得十分重要，而这些大规模从云空间攫取数据、存储数据的平台，以及拥有庞大算力的平台便成了凌驾于产业资本和金融资本之上的更具有实力的力量。在一个企业进行生产前，它需要考虑的不仅是整个生产过程和产品销售过程，而是需要考虑自己的生产如何成为产业链中的一环，了解到数字平台已经将来自不同地方、不同区域甚至不同国家的产业链融合为一个整体，只有当企业以数字化的形式进入这样的产业链之中，并依赖于数字平台的大量订单和销售渠道时，企业才能在这种数字化的资本主义形式中获得生存的空间。这意味着，数据或者算力，不仅是一种供企业利用的工具和材料，而且在流量、数据库、算法、算力的数字化体系中，单一的企业已经被整合为这个体系的一个环节。简言之，在数字资本主义时代，决定企业是否能生存的，除了传统的土地、劳动力、资本和信用等要素之外，数据和算力已经成为支配产业生产和金融投资的新的资本主义要素。与银行体系在19世纪末掌握了信用评级体系并支配整个资本主义生产体系一样，今天的数字资本正在通过掌控数据、流量和算力，支配着整个资本主义社会的各种资源和能量。

Changes in the Mode of Production

生产方式的变革

Marx pointed out very clearly in *Capital* that the essence of wage labor is that money becomes objectified labor, and this money directly exchanges for the living labor of workers. The exchange of money for living labor is not an equal exchange, but a form that allows capitalists to legally exploit the surplus value of workers. Under the capitalist system, this form is called “wage labor.” The wage labor system is the basis of capitalist relations of production. Unlike the relations of production under slavery, which are based on personal dependency, and unlike the feudal relations of production based on land, the essence of contemporary capitalist relations of production is that living labor, objectified in the form of money, becomes the prerequisite for capitalists to legally enslave workers. However, with the global development of Marxism and the communist movement, the rights of Western workers were partially improved in the 20th century, such as the eight-hour workday, equal pay for women and men workers, and various labor insurance and social welfare. But we should not ignore that these social welfare and insurance are all based on a stable wage labor system, that is, they require workers to be stably employed by one or several enterprises and companies for a long time. But in the era of digital capitalism, these things have vanished like phantoms. Many types of work and businesses rely on certain digital platforms. Enterprises do not need to hire too many employees; instead, they post some outsourced businesses on digital platforms, allowing people from various regions to “compete” for business through bidding and quoting. The result is that there is no clear employment relationship between the outsourcing enterprise and the individuals who win the projects. Those legally guaranteed rights and interests are no longer responsibilities that enterprises need to bear, thus forcing individual laborers to bear these risks themselves. Digital capitalism has not completely changed the wage-labor relationship of capitalism, but it has transformed stable employment relationships into unstable gig economy and outsourcing economy.

马克思在《资本论》中十分清晰地指出，雇佣劳动的本质是货币成为对象化的劳动，这种货币直接交换了工人的活劳动，货币与活劳动的交换并不是等价交换，而是让资本家可以合法地剥削工人剩余价值的形式，这种形式在资本主义体制下被称为“雇佣劳动”。雇佣劳动体制是资本主义生产关系的基础，不同于基于人身依附关系的奴隶制生产关系，也不同于基于土地的封建生产关系，当代资本主义的生产关系的实质就是活劳动以货币形式的对象化，成为资本家合法奴役工人的前提。但是随着马克思主义和共产主义运动在全球的发展，实际上，西方工人的权益在20世纪得到了部分改善，如八小时工作制、妇女与男性工人的同工同酬以及各种劳动保险和社会福利。但是，我们不要忽视这些社会福利和保险都建立在稳定的雇佣劳动体制基础上，即这些都需要工人长期稳定地受雇于某一个和几个企业和公司。但在数字资本主义时代，这些东西都如同幻影一般烟消云散了，许多工种和业务都依赖于一定的数字平台，企业不需要雇佣太多员工，而将一些可以外包的业务在一些数字平台上进行发布，从而让各个地区的人通过报价和投标的方式来“抢”业务。其结果是外包企业和拿到项目的个体之间不具有明确的雇佣关系，那些曾经法定的保障权益，不再是企业需要承担的责任，从而让劳动个体自己来承担这些风险。数字资本主义并没有彻底改变资本主义的雇佣劳动关系，但让稳定的雇佣关系变成了不稳定的零工经济和外包经济。

Digital Platforms and New Monopolies

数字平台与新的垄断

Large digital capital and digital platforms are forming new monopoly kingdoms. They stand not only above the ordinary proletariat but also above ordinary industrial capitalists. These new capitalists, who possess enormous digital capital, no longer bear social responsibilities such as healthcare, pensions, and unemployment for ordinary people. On the contrary, through the huge databases and computing power in their hands, they monopolize the entire social capital, economic capital, and even political capital on digital platforms, thereby controlling the highest power of capitalist countries. People like Yanis Varoufakis and Jodi Dean call this monopolistic form of digital capitalism “techno-feudalism.” [2]2 Yanis Varoufakis, *Techno-Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism* (2023); Jodi Dean, *The Communist Horizon* (2012) and related works. They believe that techno-feudalism is only a metaphor and does not really mean that capitalism has regressed to the stage of feudalism. Rather, it indicates that digital capital, through digital platforms and monopolistic computing power, has realized a chapter that imperialism could not fully unfold before, and has also transcended feudal dependency relations, ultimately pushing capitalism to a more monopolistic and centralized stage.

大的数字资本和数字平台正在形成新的垄断王国，他们不仅凌驾于普通的无产阶级之上，也凌驾于普通的产业资本家之上。这些拥有巨大数字资本的新型资本家，不再承担普通人的医疗、养老、失业等社会责任，相反，他们通过手中的巨大数据库和算力，将整个社会资本、经济资本甚至政治资本都垄断在数字平台之上，从而掌控着资本主义国家的最高权力。瓦鲁法基斯和约迪·迪恩等人将这种垄断化的数字资本主义形式称为“技术封建主义”，他们认为技术封建主义只是一种隐喻，并不真的意味着资本主义重新倒退回封建主义阶段，而是说明，数字资本通过数字平台和垄断化的算力，实现了之前帝国主义未能完全展开的篇章，也超越了封建主义依附关系，最终让资本主义发展到一个更为垄断化和集权化的阶段。

In summary, the intellectual legacy Marx left us still possesses intellectual efficacy in analyzing contemporary Western digital capitalism today. Historical materialism and the critique of political economy remain weapons for analyzing and criticizing the development of contemporary Western digital capitalism today. Once the masses grasp this power, it will become a force to change the world. As Marx said: “Material force can only be overthrown by material force; but theory itself becomes a material force once it has gripped the masses.” [3]3 Karl Marx, “Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (1843-1844).

总而言之，马克思给我们留下的思想遗产，在今天分析当代西方数字资本主义时仍然具有思想的效力，唯物史观与政治经济学批判依然是今天分析和批判当代西方数字资本主义发展的武器，一旦人民群众掌握了这种力量，就会成为改变世界的力量，正如马克思所说：“物质力量只能用物质力量来摧毁；但是理论一经掌握群众，也会变成物质力量。”

(The author is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Nanjing University)

（作者系南京大学哲学系教授）

Online Editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧