Collective Force: On the Logical Foundation of Common Prosperity

How to achieve common prosperity under the conditions of a socialist market economy is a major issue for socialism with Chinese characteristics. Grasping the economic-philosophical foundation of common prosperity under market economy conditions is a theoretical mission that Marxist political economy cannot shirk. Some believe that basic needs are the logical starting point of common prosperity. If so, would not some contemporary Western welfare states have already achieved common prosperity? Others believe that, on the basis of public ownership, by developing productive forces in a planned manner, a state of common prosperity will naturally be realized. In the absence of a non-public-ownership economy, common prosperity does not face a real challenge. However, where non-public ownership and a market economy exist, the law of value will lead to polarization between rich and poor. How to achieve common prosperity under these conditions is both a major practical challenge and an important theoretical issue that cannot be evaded.

社会主义市场经济条件下如何实现共同富裕，是中国特色社会主义的重大课题。如何把握市场经济条件下共同富裕的经济哲学基础，则是马克思主义政治经济学责无旁贷的理论使命。有人认为，基本需要是共同富裕的逻辑起点。如此，当代一些西方福利国家岂非已经实现共同富裕？或者有人认为，在公有制基础上，有计划地发展生产力，共同富裕的国度自然会落成。在没有非公有制经济的情况下，共同富裕根本不面临现实挑战。而在存在非公有制和市场经济的情况下，价值规律将导致两极分化，此时如何实现共同富裕，既是实践上的重大挑战，也是理论上不能回避的重要课题。

Western economics and political theory, mainly from perspectives such as market failure and the welfare state, propose some remedial measures against market polarization, but they cannot truly achieve common prosperity. This is an essential defect of liberal thought, which takes individualism as its cornerstone and upholds private ownership as its golden rule. To overcome this problem, we can only seek intellectual resources from the classic works of Marxism. We believe that the concept of collective force proposed in *Capital* contains a path for theoretical innovation.

西方经济学与政治理论主要是从市场失灵和福利国家等角度对市场的两极分化提出一些补偏救弊的措施，无法真正实现共同富裕。这是以个人主义为基石、奉私有制为圭臬的自由主义思想的本质缺陷，要克服这个问题，只能从马克思主义经典著作中去寻求思想资源。我们认为，《资本论》所提出的集体力概念就蕴含着理论创新的路径。

I. Collective Force and Modern Industrial Society

一、集体力与现代工业社会

Marx clearly states that cooperation generates a collective productive force. "The mechanical sum of the forces of isolated individual workers is essentially different from the social force that develops when many hands simultaneously cooperate in the same indivisible operation (such as lifting a weight, turning a winch, clearing an obstacle from the road, etc.). Here, the effect of combined labor is either impossible for individual labor to achieve at all, or can only be achieved over a much longer period, or only on a very small scale. The issue here is not only that cooperation raises individual productive forces, but also that it creates a productive force that is itself necessarily a collective force." [1]1 Morelly and Mably were 18th-century French utopian socialist thinkers who criticized private property and proposed egalitarian communal societies based on small-scale production. This passage has three important layers of meaning: First, it distinguishes the sources of productive forces from the perspectives of the individual and the collective, differing from the factor analysis perspective of the laborer, the means of labor, and the subject of labor. Factor analysis is appropriate for analyzing the factors of growth in productive forces, while the individual-collective analytical perspective has special value for public-private distribution. Second, it emphasizes the indivisibility of collective force. This passage not only does not deny the individual productive force contained in the result of cooperation, but also points out that only collective force can accomplish production tasks that individual productive force cannot complete. Third, the essence of collective force is human cooperation in various forms, including cooperation and division of labor. This is a social force, not a natural force. Among the various elements of productive forces, nature plays an indispensable role. "Land is the mother of wealth, while labor is the father of wealth and the active element." [2]2 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. 3, Chapter 48, “The Trinity Formula.” For example, the economic development of China's coastal cities is inseparable from the special importance of port natural conditions in foreign trade. The essence of collective force, however, is social. Cooperation itself is a social act; it enables laborers to utilize natural forces that previously individual laborers could not harness, and once these natural forces are subjected to people's joint cooperation, it also means they are no longer forces external to social relations. "This productive force is generated by cooperation itself. Through planned common work with others, the laborer overcomes his individual limitations and develops his species capacity." [3]3 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. 1, Chapter 10, “The Working Day.” It is in this sense that Marx calls the productive force realized by people through social acts such as cooperation and division of labor "the natural force of social labor."

马克思明确指出，协作产生了一种集体生产力。“单个劳动者的力量的机械总和，与许多人手同时共同完成同一不可分割的操作（例如举起重物、转绞车、清除道路上的障碍物等）所发挥的社会力量有本质的差别。在这里，结合劳动的效果要么是单个人劳动根本不可能达到的，要么只能在长得多的时间内，或者只能在很小的规模上达到。这里的问题不仅是通过协作提高了个人生产力，而且是创造了一种生产力，这种生产力本身必然是集体力。”这段话有三层重要含义：第一，它从个体和集体两个角度去区别生产力的来源，有别于劳动者、劳动资料和劳动对象的要素分析角度。要素分析在分析生产力增长因素方面具有适切性，而个体与集体的分析角度在公私分配方面有其特殊价值。第二，它强调了集体力的不可分割性。这段话不仅没有否认协作结果所蕴含的个人生产力，而且指明了集体力才能实现个人生产力无法完成的生产任务。第三，集体力的本质是包含协作和分工等各种形式的人类合作。这是一种社会力量，而不是自然力量。在生产力诸要素中，自然承担了一个不可或缺的角色。“土地为财富之母，而劳动则为财富之母和能动要素。”比如，中国沿海城市的经济发达，与港口这一自然条件在外贸中的特殊重要性是分不开的。而集体力的本质则是社会性的。协作本身就是一种社会行为，它能够让劳动者使用此前单个劳动者所无法利用的自然力，而这种自然力一旦经过人们共同协作，也意味着它不再是外在于社会关系的力量。“这种生产力是由协作本身产生的。劳动者在有计划地同别人共同工作中，摆脱了他的个人局限，并发挥出他的种属能力。”正是在这个意义上，马克思将人们由协作、分工等社会行为所实现的生产力称为“社会劳动的自然力”。

Although the term collective force does not reappear in Marx's later works, it has broad prospects for theoretical extension and application. From Marx's discussion, collective force originates not only from simple cooperation but also from the division of labor. The division of labor—whatever form it takes—is merely a special form of cooperation. Furthermore, the various means of labor formed on the basis of cooperation and division of labor can all be regarded as the materialization of collective force. For instance, when a person drives a car to achieve a migration of 500 kilometers in a single day, I do expend personal energy and pay corresponding fuel and road usage fees. On the surface, this is an economic act with internalized costs and containing no externalities. Yet it is precisely the construction of highways, the invention and continuous improvement of automobiles, the operation of road navigation systems, and the accumulation and updating of various related knowledge behind them that enable an ordinary person to travel a thousand miles in a day. From the perspective of productive forces, the main contribution comes not from individual force (personal energy and fees paid) but from the collective force constituted by the entire aforementioned transportation system. In this sense, all relative surplus value production and the technological progress it embodies are manifestations of collective force.

虽然集体力此后在马克思的著作中不再出现，但它具有广泛的理论扩展和应用的前景。从马克思的论述来看，集体力不只源自简单协作，还来自分工。分工——不管它采取什么形式——都只是协作的特殊形式。而基于协作和分工形成的各种劳动资料，都可以视为集体力的物化。比如，当一个人驾车实现一日之内500公里的迁移，在这个过程中，我确实付出了个人的精力，并支付了相应的油费和道路使用费。看上去，这是一个成本完成内化并且不包含任何外部性的经济行为，但正是高速公路的修建、汽车的发明与持续改进、道路导航系统的运作以及背后各种相关知识的积累与更新，才使得一个普通人能够日行千里之远。从生产力的角度来看，主要贡献并非来自个体力（个人的精力与付费），而是前述整个交通系统构成的集体力。从这个意义上看，全部相对剩余价值生产及其凝结的技术进步，都是集体力的表现。

Beyond simple cooperation, the concept of collective force can encompass many aspects and take on multiple forms and modalities. First, it can include various forms of complex cooperation. The division of labor that transcends simple cooperation constitutes a more complex collective force. The internal division of labor in manufacture "is a specific kind of cooperation, and many of its advantages arise from the general nature of cooperation, not from this specific form of cooperation." [4]4 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. 1, Chapter 14, “Division of Labour and Manufacture.” The advantages here are manifestations of collective force. As market scale, science and technology, and the division of labor interact, the forms of division of labor and cooperation become increasingly diverse and multi-layered. They also constitute a kind of collective force, but the participants in these complex forms of cooperation often cannot consciously recognize this. As Mill said, compared with simple cooperation, the greatest characteristic of complex cooperation is that "these people do not know each other and are not acquainted, yet they cooperate to produce the same final product—the coat." [5]5 David Harvey, contemporary Marxist geographer and social theorist, known for his work on neoliberalism and capitalist urbanization. Second, scientific and technological progress has special significance for collective force. As Marx pointed out: "Machine production provides a constantly increasing quantity of raw materials, semi-finished products, tools of labor, etc., with a relatively smaller number of workers. Correspondingly, the processing of these raw materials and semi-finished products is divided into countless branches, and thus the diversity of social production sectors increases. Compared with manufacture, machine production gives an incomparably greater development to the social division of labor, because it brings an incomparably greater growth in the productive forces of the industries it occupies." [6]6 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse*, “The Fragment on Machines.” No one can produce from start to finish all the tools needed for personal survival; Robinson Crusoe is merely a myth of capitalist individualist economics. The existence of any tool itself is a condensation of collective force. Third, collective force also manifests as an expanded market scale. The division of labor is a kind of collective force, and the market itself is the transactional expression of the division of labor. "The division of labor depends on the scale of the market, and the scale of the market depends on the division of labor." [7]7 The Gotha Program was the program of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany, adopted in 1875 at its unification congress in Gotha. Marx criticized it in his *Critique of the Gotha Program*. The market is not a trading place that can be completely reduced to individual productive forces; it is a complex system of social cooperation containing various collective forces. Even when an individual engages in an extremely simple transaction in the market, it cannot be entirely attributed to the capabilities of the two transacting parties. When a person enters a vegetable market to buy vegetables, the water and electricity facilities, the vegetable logistics system, the market order, the payment and credit system, and the beliefs and knowledge systems of the traders... all these collective forces constitute the prerequisites for the completion of this ordinary transaction.

除了简单协作外，集体力概念还可以涵盖许多方面，并呈现多种形式和样态。首先，它可以包含各种形式的复杂合作。超越简单协作的分工构成较为复杂的集体力。工场手工业的内部分工“是特殊种类的协作，它的许多优越性都是由协作的一般性质产生的，而不是由协作的这种特殊形式产生的”。这里的优越性，就是集体力的表现。随着市场规模、科学技术与劳动分工的互动，分工协作的形式日益多样化与层次化。它们也构成了一种集体力，但是这些复杂协作的参与者往往不能自觉认识到这一点。诚如穆勒所说，与简单合作相比，复杂合作最大的特点在于，“这些人互不相识也不了解，但却为了生产出相同的最终产品——上衣而进行合作”。其次，科技进步对于集体力有着特殊意义。正如马克思所指出的：“机器生产用相对少的工人人数所提供的原料、半成品、劳动工具等等的数量不断增加，与此相适应，对这些原料和半成品的加工也就分成无数的部门，因而社会生产部门的多样性也就增加。机器生产同工场手工业相比使社会分工获得无比广阔的发展，因为它使它所占领的行业的生产力得到无比巨大的增长。”没有人可以从头至尾制造个人生存所需的各种工具，鲁滨逊只是资本主义个人主义经济学的神话。任何一种工具的存在本身，都是一种集体力的凝聚。再次，集体力也表现为一种扩大的市场规模。分工就是一种集体力，而市场本身就是分工的交易表现。“劳动分工取决于市场规模，而市场规模又取决于劳动分工。”市场并不是一种可以完全还原为个人生产力的交易场所，而是蕴含着各种集体力的、复杂的社会合作体系。个人即使在市场中从事一项极其简单的交易行为，也不能将它全部归功于交易双方的能力。当一个人走进菜市场购买蔬菜时，水电设施、蔬菜物流体系、市场秩序、支付和信用体系以及交易者的信念与知识体系……所有这些集体力，构成这一普通交易行为得以完成的前提。

It can be said that the larger collective productive forces converging at different levels and in various fields of society lay the material foundation of modern society. The whole of modern industrial society is essentially the full unfolding of collective force in all fields, including material production, knowledge production, and social interaction.

可以说，在社会各个领域不同层面汇聚起的较大的集体生产力，奠定了现代社会的物质基础。全部现代工业社会本质上是集体力在物质生产、知识生产、社会交往等各个领域的全面展开。

First, in the field of material production, the evolution from cooperation among workers to the system of machinery, and further to cooperation across the entire industrial chain, increasingly highlights collective force as a sociality of production that belongs to humanity as a whole and is indivisible.

第一，在物质生产领域，由工人之间的协作演变为机器体系，更进一步演变为全产业链条之间的协作，集体力日益凸显其为人类整体所有且不可分割的生产社会性。

After the industrial revolution, “within the factory, that is, within the workshop based on machine production, simple cooperation always reappears, and this cooperation first manifests as the spatial concentration of homogeneous and simultaneously operating working machines (leaving aside the workers here). For example, the concentration of many mechanical looms in the same workshop forms a weaving factory, and the concentration of many sewing machines in the same workshop forms a sewing factory.” [1]1 Morelly and Mably were 18th-century French utopian socialist thinkers who criticized private property and proposed egalitarian communal societies based on small-scale production. Here, the cooperation of labor power transforms into the cooperation of means of labor, and production begins to break free from the constraints of individual capability, converging into a productive force that surpasses the individual. In a society of intelligent production, the cooperation among means of labor is increasingly complex. Some intelligent means of labor even possess a certain degree of judgment and thinking ability. This form of force, which can be detached from the laborer and is increasingly independent, clearly cannot be attributed to a specific designer or operator. The development of contemporary artificial intelligence not only signifies the transcendence of collective force over the individual laborer but also its transcendence over the individual enterprise or individual industry. Researching and developing artificial intelligence requires extensive complex cooperation, involving not only scientists, technical workers, managers, and even consumers, but also interactions between machines and between humans and machines. The productive forces it contains are often the condensation of the production experience of many previous enterprises, users, and related industrial chains. As the depth of industrial layers increases and the interconnections between industries strengthen, the holistic nature of the achievements of industrial chain collaboration becomes increasingly prominent, irreducible to any single production unit or individual.

产业革命后，“在工厂内，即在以机器生产为基础的工场内，总有简单协作重新出现，这种协作首先表现为同种并同时共同发生作用的工作机在空间上的集结（这里撇开工人不说）。例如，许多机械织机集结在同一厂房内便组成一个织布工厂，许多缝纫机集结在同一厂房内便组成一个缝纫厂”。在这里，劳动力的协作转变为劳动资料的协作，生产开始摆脱个人能力的制约，汇聚出超越个体的生产力。在智能化生产的社会中，劳动资料之间的协作日益复杂。部分智能化的劳动资料甚至拥有一定的判断力和思维力。这种可以脱离劳动者且日益具有独立性的力量形式，显然无法归功于特定的设计者或操作者。当代人工智能的发展不仅意味着集体力对单个劳动者的超越，也是对单个企业或单个产业的超越。研发人工智能需要大量的复杂协作，不仅包括科学家和技术工人、管理人员乃至消费者的合作，还涉及机器之间、人机之间的互动。它所蕴含的生产力，往往是此前许多企业、使用者和相关产业链条生产经验的凝聚。随着产业层次的深化和产业间关联性的加强，产业链协同成果的整体性也日益突出，无法还原到某个生产单位或个人。

Second, in the field of knowledge production, collective force exerts an increasingly broad and powerful influence, and its realization mechanisms are becoming increasingly perfected.

第二，在知识生产领域，集体力发挥着日益广泛而强大的影响，其实现机制日益完善。

Pure scientific knowledge, within the contemporary institutional framework, has been publicly recognized as a public good, and therefore also constitutes an element of collective force. Unlike pure scientific knowledge, technology, within the current institutional framework, possesses both private and public characteristics. Its private nature is manifested in the fact that intellectual property systems such as patent rights and copyrights ensure the rights and interests of inventors and creators, incentivizing people to engage in technological innovation and its application. Its public nature is manifested in the fact that when intellectual property rights such as copyrights and patents exceed their term or specific fields of application, works and patents enter the public domain, and members of society can use them free of charge. The copyright and patent system not only helps balance the interests of authors, disseminators, and the public but also, through the concept of law, reduces the friction in the utilization and dissemination of works, thereby constituting a collective force for economic and social development.

纯科学知识在当代的制度框架下已经被公认为公共产品，因此也构成集体力的要素。与纯科学知识有别，技术在当前制度框架下既具有私有性，又具备公共性。私有性表现在，专利权和著作权等知识产权制度确保了发明者与创造者的权益，激励人们从事技术创新及其应用。公共性表现在，当版权和专利权等知识产权超过其期限或者特定的应用领域，作品与专利将进入公有领域，社会成员可以免费使用。版权和专利权制度不仅有利于兼顾作者、传播者和社会公众的利益，而且以法的观念削弱了作品利用与传播的摩擦力，进而构成经济和社会发展的集体力量。

Information is a special kind of knowledge. The production and application of information constitute an important productive force. Contemporary information productive forces are prominently manifested in various forms of platform economy based on digital information. The platform economy, as a new form of organization for digital technology systems, relies on digital platforms supported by efficient data collection and transmission systems, advanced computing power, and powerful data processing algorithms. It integrates information from social production, distribution, exchange, and consumption activities across time, space, departments, and even national borders, thereby significantly reducing the information costs related to transaction processes. However, if capital’s monopoly over platforms is not regulated, it may lead to the excessive use of personal information by the platform economy, triggering various new problems such as “regulatory desensitization,” “information gaps,” and “digital tax challenges.” [2]2 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. 3, Chapter 48, “The Trinity Formula.” In recent years, in response to illegal activities of operating platforms such as Meituan and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), the state has imposed monopoly fines and initiated investigations. [3]3 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. 1, Chapter 10, “The Working Day.” Internationally, various countries have successively introduced multiple regulations and action plans targeting the platform economy, strengthening data privacy protection, and developing the digital economy. It can be seen that when personal information is aggregated and collected, exerting a collective force effect, it also acquires a certain public nature, thereby creating a practical need for government intervention.

信息是一种特殊的知识。信息的生产与应用构成一种重要的生产力。当代信息生产力突出表现为各种基于数字信息的平台经济。平台经济作为一种新型的数字技术体系组织形式，依靠高效的数据采集和传输系统、发达的算力和功能强大的数据处理算法所支持的数字平台,跨时空跨部门甚至跨国界地将社会生产、分配、交换与消费活动的各种信息进行集成，从而显著地减少有关交易过程的信息成本。然而，资本对平台的垄断若不加以规范，可能导致个人信息被平台经济过度利用，从而引发各种“监管脱敏”“信息鸿沟”“数字税挑战”等新型问题。近些年，针对美团、中国知网等运营平台的不法行为，国家给予垄断罚款和立案调查的处理。在国际上，各国先后出台了以平台经济为对象、强化数据隐私保护、发展数字经济的多项规定与行动计划。由此可见，个人信息被汇总和收集，发挥出集体力效应时，也就具有了一定的公共性，从而存在政府介入的现实需要。

Third, in the field of interaction, that is, the field of production of social relations, the role of collective force is also increasingly expanding.

第三，在交往领域，亦即社会关系的生产领域，集体力的作用也日益扩展。

The survival of an individual depends not only on material production but also on the interaction of social life. Only through various interactive activities can human productive capacity be transformed into various real productive forces that meet human practical needs. “The common activity of different individuals, divided by the division of labor, produces a social force, that is, a multiplied productive force.” [4]4 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. 1, Chapter 14, “Division of Labour and Manufacture.” Interaction is also a human activity; the common activity in interaction not only constitutes a productive force but also creates various institutionalized social forms. “Society—whatever its form—what is it? It is the product of human interaction. Can people freely choose a certain social form? Absolutely not. Given a certain state of development of people’s productive forces, there will be certain forms of exchange [commerce] and consumption. At a certain stage of development of production, exchange, and consumption, there will be corresponding forms of social institutions, corresponding families, estates, or class organizations.” [5]5 David Harvey, contemporary Marxist geographer and social theorist, known for his work on neoliberalism and capitalist urbanization. Market transactions and political systems are the forms of interaction with the most far-reaching influence and the most foundational constructive role.

个人的生存不仅取决于物质生产，也仰赖于社会生活的交往。只有在各种交往活动中，人类的生产能力才能转化为满足人类现实需求的各种现实的生产力。“受分工制约的不同个人的共同活动产生了一种社会力量，即成倍增长的生产力。”交往也是人的活动，交往中的共同活动不仅构成一种生产力，而且创造出各种制度化的社会形式。“社会——不管其形式如何——是什么呢？是人们交互活动的产物。人们能否自由选择某一社会形式呢？决不能。在人们的生产力发展的一定状况下，就会有一定的交换［commerce］和消费形式。在生产、交换和消费发展的一定阶段上，就会有相应的社会制度形式、相应的家庭、等级或阶级组织。”市场交易和政治制度是影响最为深远、也最具有底层建构作用的交往形式。

In the primitive barter activity between two people, the market emerged. It also carries the characteristics of collective force—the mutual consent of both parties, the common venue, the mutually recognized transaction rules—none of these can be attributed to a single party alone; they can only be attributed to the joint creation and recognition of both parties in the transaction. With the development of transactions, the scale of the market has grown larger and larger, and the content and form of the market have achieved unprecedented development. In modern society, the market has penetrated into all fields of modern production and life, but its basic characteristics have not changed: it belongs to all market participants and cannot be entirely reduced to individual participants. The political system takes the rights and obligations of citizens as its core content; it can be regarded as the reification and formalization of various economic and social activities in the political field. “Rights can never be higher than the economic structure of society and the cultural development of society conditioned by it.” [6]6 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse*, “The Fragment on Machines.” Political institutions and political systems do not operate in a vacuum; they provide stable behavioral expectations for all members of society, reduce friction costs, and generally promote people’s economic activities and social interactions. They can be described as a political collective force.

在原始的两个人以物易物的活动中，市场就出现了。它也带着集体力的特征——双方的合意表示、共同的场所、彼此认可的交易规则，所有这些都无法归功于单独某一方，只能归属交易双方的共同创造与认可。随着交易的发展,市场规模越来越大,市场的内容与形式也获得了空前的发展。在现代社会,市场已经渗透到了现代生产和生活的各个领域，但其基本特征没有改变：它归属于所有的市场参与者，且不能全部还原为单个参与者。政治制度以公民的权利义务为核心内容，它可以视为各种经济和社会活动在政治领域的物化和形式化。“权利决不能超出社会的经济结构以及由经济结构制约的社会的文化发展。”政治机构和政治制度并不是在真空中运行，它们为所有社会成员提供了稳定的行为预期，减少了摩擦成本，总体上促进了人们的经济活动与社会交往，可谓政治上的集体力。

The different forms of collective force mentioned above all promote the production of human material and spiritual wealth in various aspects. However, this does not mean that these essentially collective forms of wealth are distributed equally among participants or used for public accumulation. Therefore, how to fairly and reasonably distribute the wealth created by collective force constitutes the core issue of the social system.

上述不同形式的集体力都在各个方面促进了人类的物质财富和精神财富的生产，但是，这并不意味着这些本质上属于集体的财富平均地分配给参与者或者用于公共积累。因此，如何公平合理地分配集体力所创造的财富，构成社会制度的核心问题。

II. Capitalism and the Privatization of Collective Force

二、资本主义与集体力的私有化

If a productive force is essentially public, then the distribution based on that productive force should also be public. This is a simple distributive concept of “to each according to their labor,” essentially a manifestation of the principle of distribution according to work applied to the issue of collective force. The Gotha Program of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany advocated that the proceeds of labor should be distributed undiminished to the workers. [7]7 The Gotha Program was the program of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany, adopted in 1875 at its unification congress in Gotha. Marx criticized it in his *Critique of the Gotha Program*. Marx, however, rejected the claim that workers should receive the entire product of their labor, pointing out that in addition to compensating for consumed means of production, expanding production, and providing for contingencies, there is also a need for funds for facilities meeting the “common needs” of the people and for those who have lost their ability to work. From Marx’s emphasis on public accumulation, it is not difficult for us to see the moral connection between collective force and public accumulation.

如果一种生产力本质上是公共的，那么基于该生产力的分配也应当是公共的。这是一种谁劳动谁得的朴素的分配观念，本质上是按劳分配观在集体力问题上的体现。德国社会民主工党的《哥达纲领》主张，劳动所得应当不折不扣地分配给劳动者。而马克思拒绝了工人拥有全部劳动产品的主张，指出除了需要补偿消耗品、扩大生产和应付风险外，还需要有为满足人们“共同需要”的设施以及为丧失劳动能力的人们所设立的基金。从马克思对公共积累的强调中，我们不难看出集体力与公共积累之间存在道义关联。

The 18th-century French utopian socialists once envisioned building socialism and achieving common prosperity on the basis of a backward, narrow handicraft industry. For example, Morelly “very much wanted to divide society into small-scale, self-sufficient economic units (with one thousand people as a unit) of communal communism”; while Mably “believed that a society composed of small producers could eliminate economic crises and spare small producers from bankruptcy as an ideal society,” so he “advocated restoring patriarchal small-scale production methods.” [1]1 Morelly and Mably were 18th-century French utopian socialist thinkers who criticized private property and proposed egalitarian communal societies based on small-scale production. The production methods envisioned by these utopian socialists were very backward and could not constitute the material foundation of common prosperity. As previously stated, the collective force inherent in modern industrial society is extremely vast. From the perspective of what is due, the entire collective force of modern society ought to belong to the whole of society. Theoretically, if we could accurately identify and legally stipulate the share of collective force in all products, then through just a single distribution, we could achieve common prosperity through public accumulation. Therefore, the reasonable conclusion is that collective force constitutes the logical foundation of common prosperity; this is the logic of what ought to be in modern society, and also the moral demand of distributive justice.

18世纪的法国空想社会主义者曾设想在落后的、狭小的手工业生产基础上建立社会主义，实现共同富裕。比如，摩莱里“很想把社会分成小规模的、自给自足的经济单位（以一千人为一个单位）的公社共产主义”；而马布利“认为由小生产者组成的社会,是能够消灭经济危机、免除小生产者破产的理想社会”，所以他“主张恢复宗法式的小生产方式”。这些空想社会主义者设想的生产方式很落后，无法构成共同富裕的物质基础。如前所述，现代工业社会蕴含的集体力极其庞大。从应得的角度来看，全部现代社会的集体力理应归整个社会所有。理论上，如果我们能够准确辨识并在法律上规定集体力在全部产品中的份额，那么仅仅只需要一次分配，我们就可以通过公共积累而实现共同富裕。因此，合理的结论是，集体力构成共同富裕的逻辑基础，这是现代社会的应然逻辑，也是分配正义的道德诉求。

Under the capitalist system, although several centuries of industrialization in developed countries have created unprecedented human wealth, not only has common prosperity not been achieved, but the problem of the gap between rich and poor has become increasingly serious. The fundamental reason is that private ownership of the means of production not only allows the bourgeoisie to expropriate surplus value but also to appropriate collective force without compensation. As Marx said: “If it appears to be a natural attribute of capital to exploit the surplus labour of the workers and to appropriate the social productive forces of labour, and therefore arises from the use-value of capital, then conversely, it appears to be a natural attribute of labour that its own social productive forces are manifested as the productive forces of capital, and its own surplus product as capital’s surplus value, as capital’s self-valorization.” [2]2 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. 3, Chapter 48, “The Trinity Formula.” Because capital owns the means of production, purchases labor power, and organizes production, the dominant conception naturally regards collective force — “the social productive forces of labour” — as “capital’s self-valorization.” Marx points out: “The capitalist process of production is not simply a process of commodity production. It is a process of absorbing unpaid labour, a process of turning the means of production (materials and instruments of labour) into means of absorbing unpaid labour.” [3]3 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. 1, Chapter 10, “The Working Day.” In the production of absolute surplus value, unpaid labour mainly comes from the exploitation of workers’ labour, but in modern industrial society where science and technology change with each passing day, the decline in workers’ labour input and the surge in value constitute a theoretical paradox. Although academia has attempted to deepen concepts such as complex labour and the collective worker, and even introduced propositions linking value and time positively in an effort to explain this, it remains unsatisfactory. Only collective force can fundamentally grasp the essence of the problem. Capital’s uncompensated appropriation of collective force constitutes the main source of surplus value and is also the basic reason for the wealth gap in capitalist society. Marx clearly states in *Capital*: “Because the social productive forces of labour cost capital nothing, and on the other hand, because the worker cannot exert these productive forces before his labour itself belongs to capital, the social productive forces of labour appear to be the productive forces naturally inherent in capital, the immanent productive forces of capital.” [4]4 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. 1, Chapter 14, “Division of Labour and Manufacture.”

在资本主义制度下，发达国家几百年的工业化虽然创造了前所未有的人类财富，但是不仅没有实现共同富裕，贫富悬殊问题反而越来越严重。根本原因就在于，生产资料私有制不仅让资产阶级霸占剩余价值，而且无偿占有集体力。正如马克思所言：“如果说榨取工人的剩余劳动和占有劳动的社会生产力，看来是资本的自然属性，因而表现为从资本的使用价值中产生的属性，那么，反过来说，把劳动自己的社会生产力表现为资本的生产力，把劳动自己的剩余产品表现为资本的剩余价值、资本的自行增殖，看来就是劳动的自然属性。”由于资本占有生产资料，购买劳动力，并组织生产，因此，占统治地位的观念自然地将集体力——“劳动的社会生产力”——视为“资本的自行增殖”。马克思指出：“资本主义生产过程并不单纯是商品生产。它是一个吸收无酬劳动的过程，是一个使生产资料（材料和劳动资料）变为吸收无酬劳动的手段的过程。”在绝对剩余价值生产中，无酬劳动主要来自对工人劳动的剥削，而在科技日新月异的现代工业社会中，工人劳动投入的衰减与价值量暴涨构成一个学理悖论。尽管学界尝试深化复杂劳动、总体工人等概念，甚至引入价值和时间正相关的命题以期作出解释，但仍然不能令人满意。只有集体力，才能从根本上抓住问题的实质。资本无偿占有集体力，构成剩余价值的主要来源，也是资本主义社会贫富差距的基本原因。马克思在《资本论》中明确指出：“因为劳动的社会生产力不费资本分文，另一方面，又因为工人在他的劳动本身属于资本以前不能发挥这种生产力，所以劳动的社会生产力好像是资本天然具有的生产力，是资本内在的生产力。”

Collective force can provide a more explanatory conceptual framework for monopoly. The basis of monopoly is a collective force constructed on natural resources, market scale, or political resources. Without this objective sense of collective force, monopoly cannot be formed. Under capitalist conditions, the huge profits generated by monopoly are also owned privately. The contemporary bourgeoisie has adopted various means to gradually construct a monopoly system that encroaches upon global collective force. In David Harvey’s words, “an initially envisioned open collaborative production system that could liberate workers and produce public goods rapidly degenerated into a super-exploitation system where capital takes whatever it wants.” [5]5 David Harvey, contemporary Marxist geographer and social theorist, known for his work on neoliberalism and capitalist urbanization. The private appropriation of contemporary collective force by the bourgeoisie takes the following representative forms:

集体力可以为垄断提供一种更具解释力的概念框架。垄断的基础是一种基于自然资源、市场规模或政治资源而构建的集体力。缺乏这种客观意义上的集体力，就无法形成垄断。在资本主义条件下，因垄断而产生的巨额利益也都归私人所有。当代资产阶级采取了各种方式，逐步构建起一个侵占全球性集体力的垄断制度。用大卫·哈维的话来说，“最初设想的一个能解放劳动者并生产公共品的开放协作生产体系却迅速蜕变成资本予取予夺的超级剥削体系”。资产阶级私人占有当代集体力有如下几种具有代表性的方式：

First, global plunder. Intelligent technology enables capital to plunder collective force on a global scale in more flexible and elastic ways to meet the needs of domestic economic and social development. On the one hand, intelligent technology allows capital to hire gig workers through network platforms and other means; on the other hand, the collective force available for capital to exploit is no longer limited to specific regions but has expanded to a global scope. Core production organizations can not only obtain surplus value produced by economic organizations in peripheral countries through unequal exchange based on unequal division of labour, but also establish low-cost, high-flexibility cooperative relationships with economic organizations in peripheral countries through business outsourcing, plundering the collective force created by developing countries worldwide.

第一，全球性掠夺。智能化技术使得资本可以通过更为灵活、更富弹性的方式掠夺全球范围内的集体力，以满足国内经济社会发展的需要。一方面是因为智能化技术使得资本可以通过网络平台等方式雇用零工；另一方面是因为可供资本利用的集体力不再局限于特定区域，而是扩大到全球范围。核心生产组织不仅可以通过基于不平等分工的不平等交换，获得外围国家经济组织所生产的剩余价值，而且可以通过业务外包，与外围国家经济组织建立低成本、高弹性的合作关系，在世界范围内掠夺发展中国家创造出来的集体力。

Second, extracting audience labour. Audience labour refers to the fact that people, as audiences, watching television or reading newspapers in their leisure time is essentially working for advertisers. Although there is controversy over the nature of audience labour, one point can be established: the size of the audience largely determines the productivity of that media product and the income of related practitioners. Unlike traditional material products, media products can only truly realize their market value in collective consumption, and consumers themselves are unaware that they have been drawn into this production process. Even if consumers actively integrate into the production process of the media, they still remain in the passive position of the audience. With the expansion of the digital economy and the ubiquity of media technology, the audience economy is far more extensive and prominent than in the 1960s and 1970s. In contemporary media production processes such as self-media and the virtual economy, the audience often plays a decisive role in the success or failure of a particular media product. Countless audiences who participate in opinion production by posting and forwarding comments, although unable to obtain income from it, in fact constitute important producers of new media products, forming a collective force concerning ideas, images, and digital products. However, in the absence of a property rights system for audiences, this collective force is seized by the relevant capital.

第二，汲取受众劳动。受众劳动指的是，作为受众的人们在闲暇时间收看电视、阅读报纸，实质上是在为广告商工作。虽然有关受众劳动的性质存在争议，但有一点可以成立，即受众的多寡很大程度上决定了该媒体产品的生产力以及相关从业者的收入。与传统物质产品不同，媒体产品只有在集体消费中才能真正实现其市场价值，而消费者本人并不知晓自己已经卷入这一生产过程。即使消费者主动融入媒体的生产过程，也仍然处于受众的被动地位。随着数字经济的扩展和媒体技术的无远弗届，受众经济要远远比20世纪六七十年代更为广泛而突出，在自媒体、虚拟经济等当代媒体生产过程中，受众往往对某个媒体产品的成败起着决定性的作用。无数以发表和转发评论的方式参与了意见生产的受众，虽然不能从中获得收入，但事实上构成新型媒体产品的重要生产者，形成一种有关观念、形象、数字产品的集体力。然而在缺乏受众的产权制度下，这一集体力为相关资本所攫取。

Third, technological hegemony. From its origins, science based on social labour and its application, as “the product of the general historical process of development, which abstractly expresses the essence of this development process,” [6]6 Karl Marx, *Grundrisse*, “The Fragment on Machines.” ultimately formed modern science and technology; the latter often manifests as the solidification of the results of a specific division of labour, meaning that once this rational outcome matures, it can be materialized into means of production at a certain technological level, or externalized into organizational methods at a certain technological level, thus appearing to exist independently of general collective force. In fact, the means of production manifested as science and technology are derivatives of collective force. The monopoly of advanced intelligent technology by individual capital leads to the underutilization of scientific knowledge, thereby inhibiting innovation culture and reducing the speed of technological progress.

第三，技术霸权。从起源来看，以社会劳动为基础的科学及其应用，作为“一般历史发展过程的产物，它抽象地表现了这一发展过程的精华”，并最终形成了现代科技；后者往往体现为特定分工成果的固化，即该理性成果成熟后，已经能够物化为一定科技水平的生产资料，或者外化为一定工艺水平的组织方式，因此好像可以独立于一般集体力之外而存在。事实上，表现为科技的生产资料是集体力的衍生。个别资本对先进智能技术的垄断，会导致科学知识的使用不足，进而抑制创新文化，降低技术进步的速度。

Fourth, international financial domination. Financial capital monopoly is an important means by which capitalism exploits the entire world. The essence of international financial monopoly capitalism is the internationalization of financial monopoly capital. Financial capital continuously aggregates in international movements, forming an absolutely dominant monopoly position, mainly manifested as consortia or oligarchs that dominate the globe, controlling advantageous industries, occupying international industrial and trade chains, possessing absolute discourse power in the world economic system, and then plundering the world’s collective force through capital export. As a typical example of encroaching upon global collective force, the United States, based on the domination of finance and technology by Wall Street and Silicon Valley, has forged its hegemony in the world political and economic landscape. US international financial monopoly capital has penetrated from the production and operation fields of enterprises into global economic life and even political life.

第四，国际金融统治。金融资本垄断是资本主义剥削全世界的重要手段。国际金融垄断资本主义的实质就是金融垄断资本国际化。金融资本在国际运动中不断聚集，形成占绝对优势的垄断地位，主要表现为统治全球的财团或寡头，控制优势产业，占据国际产业链、贸易链，在世界经济体系中拥有绝对的话语权，进而通过资本输出掠夺世界的集体力。作为侵占全球集体力的典型，美国正是基于华尔街与硅谷对金融和科技的统治，缔造了其在世界政治经济格局中的霸权。美国国际金融垄断资本已经从企业的生产经营领域渗透到全球的经济生活甚至是政治生活。

In summary, in modern industrial society, the uncompensated appropriation of collective force by private capital is deepening in various aspects, constituting the objective basis for the widening wealth gap in contemporary capitalist society. On the other hand, it must also be recognized that there still exist objective needs for the public ownership of part of the collective force in capitalist countries, along with corresponding institutional arrangements. This is mainly manifested in public utilities represented by infrastructure and the welfare state system whose main content is population reproduction.

综上所述，在现代工业社会中，私人资本无偿占有集体力在各个方面日益深化，构成当代资本主义社会贫富差距日益扩大的客观基础。另一方面，也要看到，资本主义国家仍然存在着部分集体力公共所有的客观需要以及相应的制度安排。这主要表现为以基础设施为代表的公用事业和以人口再生产为主要内容的福利国家制度。

Public utilities mainly refer to various tangible public goods and intangible public goods. The former refers to "hard infrastructure," such as transportation facilities like highways, airports, and ports; industrial development projects like electricity, natural gas, and water; equipment and installations for education and research; farmland water conservancy projects; mining engineering projects, etc. The latter is also called "soft infrastructure," including government-supported compulsory education, free employment training, publicly funded technological research and development, etc. The reason for the continuous growth of public goods in capitalist countries is that the complexity and interdependence of the division of labor and cooperation in modern industrial capitalism are constantly rising, and the further accumulation of collective force depends on the completeness of various infrastructures and the sufficiency of a highly educated labor force; capital, especially monopoly capital, requires more and more public investment to ensure the economic operation of society, thereby developing and appropriating collective force.

公用事业主要指各种有形的公共产品和无形的公共产品，前者指“硬基建”，如公路、机场、港口等交通设施，电力、天然气、水等工业发展项目，教育和研究的设备和装置，农田水利工程，矿业开采工程等；后者又称“软基建”，包括政府支持的义务教育、免费就业培训、公共投资的技术研发等。资本主义国家公共产品不断增长的原因是，现代工业资本主义分工协作的复杂性和相互依赖性不断上升，集体力的进一步积累依赖于各种基础设施的完备和较高教育水平的劳动力的充足；资本，尤其是垄断资本，需要越来越多的公共投入来保证社会的经济运转，从而开发和占有集体力。

The welfare state is another institutional arrangement for the public ownership of collective force. After the Second World War, in response to the prominent contradictions of poverty, unemployment, and social inequality, some capitalist countries embarked on the path of the welfare state. In O'Connor's view, the welfare state will fulfill two basic functions: accumulation and legitimation, that is, "the state must try to maintain or create the conditions that make profitable capital accumulation possible; however, the state must also try to maintain or create the conditions necessary for social harmony." Corresponding to this contradictory function, two parts of state expenditure emerge: social capital and social expenses. Gough, starting from two fundamental activities of human beings, further distinguishes the functions and activities of the welfare state into two parts: the reproduction of the working population and the maintenance of the non-working population. He believes that the function of the welfare state is "to use the power of the state to modify the reproduction of labor power and the maintenance of the non-working population in capitalist society." In short, the welfare state is an attempt, after a crisis in the reproduction of the capitalist state's population, to assume through public funding the functions originally borne by individual families, thereby ensuring a sufficient industrial reserve army. This is a collective force in the field of population reproduction.

福利国家是另一种集体力公有化的制度安排。第二次世界大战后，为应对突出的贫困、失业、社会不平等矛盾，一些资本主义国家走上福利国家发展道路。在奥康纳看来，福利国家将履行两个基本功能:积累与合法性，即“国家必须尝试去维护或创造使有利可图的资本累积成为可能的各种条件，然而，国家也必须尝试去维护或创造社会和谐所需的各种条件”。对应于这种矛盾性功能，产生了两个部分的国家支出:社会资本和社会费用。高夫从人类的两个基本活动出发，将福利国家的功能和活动进一步区分为工作人口的再生产与非工作人口的养育两个部分，认为福利国家的功能就是“运用国家的力量去修正劳力的再生产与维持资本主义社会中的非工作人口”。总之，福利国家是资本主义国家人口再生产出现危机后，通过公共资助来承担原来由个体家庭所承担的职能，从而确保有足够的产业后备军的尝试。这是一种人口再生产领域中的集体力。

"Capital is not a personal power, but a social power." This statement indicates that the essence of capital is a collective force. The institutional foundation of contemporary capitalism remains private ownership, but there also exists partial public ownership of collective force within it, which is an inherent requirement of the development of productive forces. To a certain extent, it alleviates social contradictions and maintains the capitalist economic order. However, overall, the privatization of collective force remains the core content of the capitalist economic system. This also determines that no matter what reforms capitalist countries undertake, they cannot fundamentally solve the problem of common prosperity.

“资本不是一种个人力量，而是一种社会力量。”此语表明，资本的本质是一种集体力。当代资本主义的制度基础仍然是私有制，但其中也存在着局部的集体力公有化，这是生产力发展的内在要求。它一定程度上减缓了社会矛盾，维护了资本主义经济秩序。然而，总的来说，集体力的私有化仍然是资本主义经济制度的核心内容。这也决定了，不管资本主义国家作出何种改良，都不可能从根本上解决共同富裕问题。

III. The Public Ownership of Collective Force Is the Path to Common Prosperity

三、集体力的公有化是通往共同富裕之路

If capitalism privatizes collective force, thereby determining that the gap between rich and poor cannot be truly resolved, then the logic by which socialism can achieve common prosperity lies in returning the collective force, which should originally belong to all the people, to the people, thus eliminating the basis for polarization. Public ownership as the main body constitutes the prerequisite condition for common prosperity. In the past, people's understanding of public ownership was "large in scale and high in degree of public ownership" [8]8 "Large in scale and high in degree of public ownership" (一大二公, yi da er gong): A slogan from the People's Commune movement in the late 1950s, advocating for communes to be as large as possible and for ownership to be as public as possible, often associated with the Great Leap Forward., that is, the larger the scale, the better, and the higher the degree of public ownership, the better. However, the reform practice of socialist public ownership has proven that the forms of public ownership should be diversified, mixed ownership has its rationality and necessity, and absolute private ownership and purely pure public ownership cannot meet the needs of real productive forces. Implementing multi-level ownership to varying degrees according to the specific conditions of different production fields is a basic form of ownership that both conforms to the Marxist ideal of a future society and can better reflect actual needs. From the perspective of the attribution of rights to collective force, multi-level ownership can more accurately describe and specify the sources of contribution at different levels within collective force.

如果说资本主义将集体力私有化，从而决定了贫富差距不可能得到真正的解决，那么社会主义能够实现共同富裕的逻辑就在于，将本来就应当属于全体人民的集体力还给人民，从而消除了两极分化的基础。作为主体的公有制，构成共同富裕的前提条件。曾经人们对于公有制的理解是“一大二公”，即规模越大越好，公有程度越高越好。而社会主义公有制的改革实践证明，公有制实现形式应当多样化，混合所有制存在其合理性和必要性，而绝对的私有制和纯之又纯的公有制并不能满足现实生产力的需求。根据不同生产领域的具体情况而实施不同程度的多级所有，则属于一种既符合马克思主义未来社会理想、又能够较好地反映现实需求的基本所有制形式。从集体力的权利归属来看，多级所有能够更准确地描述和规定集体力中不同层次的贡献来源。

Collective force itself has multiple levels. In the production results of a production team, aside from the individual force of the workers, there is also the collective force based on the production team. A production workshop can also aggregate the collective force of the workshop due to improvements in forms of cooperation and transmission methods. As manual operations transform into mechanized production, factories composed of several workshops, processes, and work groups emerge. The deepening of specialized production and the increased complexity of internal factory cooperation greatly improve labor productivity, and also mean that collective force at the enterprise level emerges. Going a step further, the rational allocation of various production factors will help aggregate collective force at the societal level. For example, due to the agglomeration of factors such as water and electricity, roads, industrial chain information, and logistics, as well as the impetus of market exchange and cooperation, the collective force of an entire development zone can be generated. At the level of an entire city, the agglomeration of a population of a certain scale, the support of various markets, and the intensification of economy, culture, and technology are conducive to specialized division of labor and cooperation, achieving the economic benefits of urban agglomeration, enabling the city to create a greater productive force than the simple sum of its various regions. Continuing to expand from this, at the level of the entire nation, there also exists a corresponding collective force. "The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country... It has agglomerated population, centralized means of production, and concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff." [9]9 This is a paraphrase of a passage from Marx and Engels, *The Communist Manifesto* (1848), describing the centralizing effects of the bourgeoisie. This indicates that the collective force within a country spontaneously demands corresponding political and institutional arrangements. From the practice of various countries, completely laissez-faire states often fail to fully tap the potential collective force at the national level, while states that can effectively implement state intervention and industrial policies achieve long-term economic growth. The successes of Japan and South Korea fall into this category. China's socialist market economy and the new system of mobilizing resources nationwide [10]10 New system of mobilizing resources nationwide (新型举国体制, xinxing juguo tizhi): A Chinese policy framework that combines state-led strategic planning with market mechanisms to concentrate national resources on key technological and industrial breakthroughs, especially in areas like semiconductors and aerospace. should also be regarded as the institutional realization of collective force in the economic and social spheres at the national level. Similarly, there exists a collective force common to humanity at the global level, and international cooperation mechanisms in trade, ecology, and society confirm the existence and function of this collective force.

集体力本身存在着多个层次。一个生产小组的生产成果中，撇去工人的个体力之外，还有基于生产小组的集体力。生产车间也会由于协作形式和传输方式的改进，汇聚出生产车间的集体力。随着手工作业转变为机器化生产，由若干车间、工序和班组等构成的工厂应运而生。专业化生产的深化和工厂内部协作复杂程度的提高，极大地改善了劳动生产效率，也意味着企业层面的集体力得以出现。更进一步讲，各种生产要素的合理配置将有助于汇聚社会层面的集体力。比如，由于水电、道路、产业链信息和物流等要素的集聚，以及市场交换协作的推动，可以产生出整个开发区的集体力。在整个城市的层面，一定规模人口的集聚，各种市场的依托，经济、文化、科技的集约，有利于专业化分工和协作，取得城市聚集经济效益，使得城市创造出比各个区域简单加总更大的生产力。由此继续扩展，在整个国家层面，也存在相应的集体力。“资产阶级日甚一日地消灭生产资料、财产和人口的分散状态……各自独立的、几乎只有同盟关系的、各有不同利益、不同法律、不同政府、不同关税的各个地区，现在已经结合为一个拥有统一的政府、统一的法律、统一的民族阶级利益和统一的关税的统一的民族。”这说明，一国范围之内的集体力自发要求相应的政治制度安排。从各国实践来看，完全自由放任的国家往往未能充分挖掘潜在的国家层面的集体力，而能够有效地实行国家干预和产业政策的国家则实现了长期的经济增长。日本和韩国的成功即属此列，中国的社会主义市场经济和新型举国体制也应当视为经济与社会生活领域中集体力在国家层面上的制度实现。同理，存在着全球层次上人类共同的集体力，而全球贸易、生态和社会层面的国际合作机制则确证了这种集体力的存在与作用。

Collective force at different levels objectively requires the realization of ownership attribution at corresponding levels. Only in this way can the true meaning of collective force be realized: productive forces that cannot be reduced to individuals should be owned by the collective. On the other hand, collective force cannot exist independently of individuals. Just as the classic prototype of collective force—"many hands simultaneously completing the same indivisible operation"—shows, there is no collective force that exists entirely independently of individual force. The existence and realization of any collective force originate from the contribution of individual force and are interdependent and difficult to distinguish from individual force. Returning collective force to the collective also means that while realizing the public ownership of collective force, the private ownership of individual force by individuals must be respected. Therefore, mapping multi-level collective force onto ownership naturally leads to multi-level ownership where public ownership and private ownership coexist.

不同层次的集体力客观上要求实现相应层次的所有权归属，如此才能够真正实现集体力的本真意义：无法还原到个体的生产力理应为集体所拥有。另一方面，集体力也并不能脱离个体而存在。正如“许多人手同时完成同一不可分割的操作”这一集体力经典原型所体现的，并不存在完全摆脱个体力而独自存在的集体力。任何集体力的存在与实现，都源自个体力的贡献，并与个体力彼此依存、难以区分。让集体力回归集体也意味着，实现集体力公共所有权的同时，要尊重个体对其中个体力的私人所有权。因此，将多层次的集体力映射到所有权方面，则自然得出了公共所有与私人所有并存的多级所有权。

The multi-level ownership of collective force will provide an economic-philosophical foundation for common prosperity and offer a political economy proof for the proposition of common prosperity. This formulation includes both the ideal sense that socialist public ownership should be a combination of multi-level public ownership and the reconstruction of individual ownership; and, in practice, respecting the actual non-public ownership factors, affirming individual contributions, and gradually identifying the collective force factors in various outputs, steadily and effectively advancing common prosperity.

集体力的多级所有将为共同富裕提供一个经济哲学基础，为共同富裕命题提供政治经济学的证明。这一表述，既包含着理想意义上，社会主义公有制应当是多级公共所有权与重建个人所有制的结合；也包含着在实践中，尊重现实的非公有制因素，肯定个人的贡献且逐步辨识各种产出的集体力因素，稳妥有效地推进共同富裕。

First, the multi-level ownership of collective force provides an appropriate multi-level form for the realization of common prosperity. Common prosperity is not egalitarianism. Multi-level ownership conforms to Marx's description of the form of ownership in a future society. Its essence is public ownership at different levels under the premise of socialist public ownership, which can balance efficiency and fairness.

首先，集体力的多级所有为共同富裕的实现提供了恰当的多层次形式。共同富裕不是平均主义。多级所有符合马克思对于未来社会所有制形式的描述，它的本质是社会主义公有制前提下不同层次的公共所有，可以兼顾效率与公平。

There are two important propositions in Marx’s conception of ownership in future society: the abolition of private property and the re-establishment of individual property. These two expressions are formally contradictory, but as long as ownership is not regarded as an extreme form that is either absolutely public or absolutely private, then ownership in the intermediate zone more or less simultaneously contains both public and private factors, and can therefore also be fully expressed by the ownership model of multi-level ownership. Traditional Marxist political economy holds that in future society, the means of production are socially owned and the means of consumption are individually owned. Although this view holds true in most cases, because it violates the principle of concrete analysis of concrete conditions, it fails to accurately express that the ideal ownership system should conform to the requirements of productive forces and the people’s needs. Even in communist society, under specific circumstances, private ownership of the means of production is often more reasonable, such as with production tools like laptops, fishing nets, and hunting rifles; on the other hand, under specific circumstances, the means of consumption often also contain public factors, such as food and water in times of scarcity, or housing as a personal consumer good. Multi-level ownership can avoid the institutional mismatch caused by mechanically distinguishing between ownership types.

马克思有关未来社会所有制的构想中有两个重要命题：消灭私有制和重新建设个人所有制。这两个表述在形式上是矛盾的，但是只要不将所有制视为一种要么绝对公有、要么绝对私有的极端形式，那么处于中间地带的所有制或多或少都同时包含着公有和私有的因素，因此也完全可以用多级所有这一所有制模型来表达。传统马克思主义政治经济学主张，未来社会生产资料社会所有，消费资料个人所有。这一看法虽然在多数情况下成立，但因为违背了具体情况具体分析的原则，因此未能准确表达理想所有制应当符合生产力和人民需求的要求。即使在共产主义社会，在特定情况下，生产资料私人所有权往往更具有合理性，比如作为生产工具的笔记本电脑、渔网、猎枪；另一方面，特定情况下的消费资料往往也蕴含着公有因素，比如稀缺情况下的食物、水，或者作为个人消费品的住房。而多级所有，则可以避免机械式区分所有制所导致的制度错配。

Multi-level ownership under the ideal system recognizes individual force, leaving sufficient space for individual incentives. Individual force includes not only exertion but also the contributions made by individuals due to differences in the level of productive forces and the influence of external factors. “On the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era, that is, on the basis of cooperation and the common possession of the land and of the means of production produced by labor itself, re-establish individual property.” [11]11 Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 32: “Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.” Multi-level ownership recognizes both the collective’s public ownership rights and the individual’s ownership rights over their labor products, and thus is more consistent with Marx’s conception of ownership in future society.

理想制度下的多级所有承认个体力，为个人激励留下足够的空间。个体力不仅仅包括付出，还包括个人由于生产力水平不同以及外部因素影响所产出的贡献。“在资本主义时代的成就的基础上,也就是说,在协作和对土地及靠劳动本身生产的生产资料的共同占有的基础上,重新建立个人所有制。”多级所有既承认了集体的公共所有权，同时也承认了个体对其劳动产品的所有权，因而更符合马克思有关未来社会所有制的构想。

Secondly, factors of collective force also exist within the non-public sector; identifying these factors of collective force will establish the conceptual premise for the public ownership of collective force.

其次，非公有制中也存在集体力因素，辨识出其中的集体力因素，将为集体力的公有化确立观念前提。

Multi-level ownership is a theoretical description of the various ownership factors between absolute public ownership and absolute private ownership. It can satisfy the relatively pure public ownership of future society, and can also be applied to a society dominated by private ownership, and of course even more so to the primary stage of socialism, which takes public ownership as the mainstay and allows diverse forms of ownership to develop together. In the latter case, multi-level ownership is not limited solely to distribution according to work; it can also accommodate distribution according to factors of production and distribution according to luck, among other distribution methods. Distribution according to factors of production permits the non-public ownership of the means of production, while distribution according to luck acknowledges the influence of contingency on distribution, which is a typical manifestation of the market economy. Defenders of absolute private ownership often reject any factor of public ownership in the market economy, believing that any taxation of individual labor and income infringes on individual self-ownership. This clearly violates common sense; even under the contemporary capitalist system, certain factors of public ownership exist. The theoretical advantage of multi-level ownership lies in its confirmation of these factors of public ownership, such as the public goods and welfare state in the capitalist system mentioned in the previous section, and its provision of a complete and self-consistent description of these public ownership factors alongside private ownership factors: between absolute private ownership and pure public ownership, there exist multiple forms of ownership in which public ownership factors and private ownership factors wax and wane. A society where public ownership factors are dominant belongs to socialism, within which certain private ownership factors exist; while a society where private ownership is dominant belongs to the capitalist system, within which certain public ownership factors also exist, such as inheritance tax, property tax, and windfall profit tax.

多级所有是对绝对的公有制与绝对的私有制之间各种所有制因素的一种理论描述。它可以满足未来社会比较纯粹的公有制，也可以用于以私有制为主体的社会，当然更可以应用于以公有制为主体、多种所有制共同发展的社会主义初级阶段。在后者，多级所有不仅仅限于单纯的按劳分配，它也可以容纳按生产要素分配以及按运气分配等多种分配方式。按生产要素分配将允许生产资料的非公有制，而按运气分配则承认偶然性对分配的影响，这是市场经济的典型表现。绝对私有制的辩护者往往拒绝市场经济中的任何公有制因素，认为对任何个人劳动和收入的征税都侵犯了个人自我所有权。这显然违背常识，即使在当代资本主义制度下，也存在一定的公有制因素。多级所有的理论优势在于，它确认这种公有制因素，比如前节所述资本主义制度中的公共物品、福利国家，并将这种公有制因素与私有制因素给出完整而自洽的描述：在绝对的私有制与纯粹的公有制之间，存在着公有制因素与私有制因素此消彼长的多种所有制形式。公有制因素占主导地位的社会属于社会主义，其中存在一定的私有制因素；而私有制占主导的社会则属于资本主义制度，也存在着一定的公有制因素，比如遗产税、房产税与暴利税。

Confirming the public ownership of collective force within a certain scope under the capitalist system is not a defense of the capitalist system, but rather an indication of a possibility for transitioning to socialism. In real life, collective force is often appropriated by individuals. Here, factors of people’s moral concepts and legal systems incline people to attribute factors and luck entirely to the individual. However, as long as collective force is theoretically confirmed, and efforts are made to distinguish the respective contributions of collective force and individual force in output, we can hope to gradually form a consensus on collective force within the market economy and adopt corresponding institutions to establish the public attribution of collective force. The public ownership of collective force in the New Era means consolidating public capital, regulating and guiding the healthy development of non-public capital, and opening up a new path for common prosperity.

确认资本主义制度下一定范围的集体力公有化，并不是为资本主义制度辩护，而是指出一种通往社会主义的可能性。在现实生活中，集体力往往被个人占有。这里有人们的道德观念、法律制度的因素，使人们倾向于将要素和运气统归个人。然而，只要在理论上确证集体力，并且致力于在产出中辨析出集体力与个体力的各自贡献，我们就有望在市场经济中逐步形成集体力的共识，并采用相应制度确立集体力的公共归属。新时代集体力的公有化意味着，夯实公有资本，规范和引导非公有资本健康发展，为共同富裕开辟出新道路。

Thirdly, the public ownership of collective force cuts into the material premise of common prosperity; compared with the existing three distributions, it can promote common prosperity more forcefully.

再次，集体力的公有化切入共同富裕的物质前提，相比较现有的三次分配，能够更加有力地推进共同富裕。

The tertiary distribution centered on charity is certainly of great significance, but if efforts are not made on the core issues of primary and secondary distribution, it will inevitably be like climbing a tree to catch fish — a futile endeavor. The core issue of primary and secondary distribution is to identify the source of income and the factors that contribute to it. Over the past few decades, discussions of distribution theory in Chinese-language literature have been basically limited to distinguishing the contributions of labor and factors of production, without delving into distinguishing the contributions of individual force and collective force. Acknowledging the contribution of factors of production has an important driving effect on the construction of the market economy and individual incentives, but this view neglects the contribution of collective force, and its drawbacks are very obvious: the role of collective force is ignored, the portion of public accumulation and common income is severely lost, and the contribution of collective force is often appropriated by a few individuals in the name of factors of production. This is also an important reason why a small number of people have become wealthy overnight since reform and opening up, thus widening the gap between rich and poor.

以慈善为核心的三次分配当然有其重要意义，但如果不在初次分配和再次分配的核心问题上作出努力，也必将是缘木求鱼之举。初次分配、再次分配的核心问题是确认收入的来源是什么、其作出贡献的因素是什么。过去几十年中文文献有关分配理论的讨论，基本局限于区分劳动与生产要素的贡献，而没有深入到区分个体力与集体力的贡献。承认生产要素的贡献对市场经济构建和个体激励有着重要的推动作用，但这一看法忽略了集体力的贡献，其弊端非常明显：集体力的作用被忽视，公共积累和共同收入部分严重流失，集体力的贡献往往被少数个体以生产要素的名义侵占，这也是改革开放以来少部分人暴富，从而拉开贫富差距的重要原因。

The public ownership of collective force directly seizes the core of common prosperity. Common prosperity does not mean that some people act out of kindness, but rather achieving overall income growth through common labor, common creation, and public accumulation. Xi Jinping said that to achieve the goal of common prosperity, we must first make the “cake” bigger and better through the common struggle of the entire people. [12]12 Xi Jinping, “Making Solid Progress Toward Common Prosperity,” October 15, 2021. Due to the hierarchical nature of collective force itself, the multi-level ownership of collective force ensures both collective survival and common prosperity, while also allowing for income gaps within a reasonable range caused by differences in contributions from different collective forces and individual forces. The report of the 20th National Congress of the CPC points out, “The distribution system is the foundational system for promoting common prosperity,” and it is necessary to “regulate the order of income distribution and regulate the mechanism of wealth accumulation.” [13]13 Report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, October 16, 2022. We believe that the order and mechanism referred to here are essentially the public ownership of collective force. In this regard, some institutional provisions in contemporary Western capitalist countries, such as inheritance tax, property tax, windfall profit tax, asset exit tax, and related tax avoidance governance, do have aspects worth learning from.

集体力公有化直接抓住了共同富裕的核心。共同富裕不是一部分人发善心，而是通过共同劳动、共同创造、公共积累而实现整体的收入增长。习近平说，实现共同富裕的目标，首先要通过全国人民共同奋斗，把“蛋糕”做大做好。由于集体力本身的层次性，集体力的多级所有既保证了集体生存、共同富裕，同时也允许由于不同的集体力和个体力的贡献差异而导致的合理范围内的收入差距。党的二十大报告指出，“分配制度是促进共同富裕的基础性制度”，应当“规范收入分配秩序,规范财富积累机制”。我们认为，这里的秩序和机制，其实质是集体力的公有化。在这方面，当代西方资本主义国家的一些制度规定，比如遗产税、房产税、暴利税、资产出境税等以及相关避税治理，确有可鉴之处。

Besides the public ownership of collective force at the overall societal level, the multi-level ownership of collective force has another important significance: it acknowledges the existence of collective forces at different levels, such as enterprises and institutions, regions, and social organizations, as well as the corresponding differences in returns. Collective forces at different levels can be materialized into public accumulation at different levels, effectively promoting the rational allocation of resources and corresponding production incentives. Acknowledging the collective forces of different levels and groups, as well as the corresponding public accumulation, on the one hand stimulates the common sense of honor of this group and significantly reduces income gaps and inequality within the group, while also stimulating competition and production incentives between groups. As Marx said: “In most productive labors, mere social contact arouses a spirit of emulation and a peculiar stimulation of the vital forces, which heightens the individual efficiency of each individual worker.” [14]14 Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 13: “Co-operation.”

除了社会整体层面的集体力公有化，集体力的多级所有还有一个重要意义，那就是承认企事业单位、地域、社会组织等不同层次的集体力存在以及相应的收益差别。不同层次的集体力可以物化为不同层次的公共积累，有力地促进资源的合理分配以及相应的生产激励。承认不同层次、不同群体的集体力以及相应的公共积累，一方面激发这个群体的共同荣誉感，并大幅减少群体内部的收入差距和不平等，同时也激发群体之间的竞争和生产激励。正如马克思所说：“在大多数生产劳动中，单是社会接触就会引起竞争心和特有的精力振奋，从而提高每个人的个人工作效率。”

Finally, the public ownership of collective force is a gradual revolution under the socialist system; it can gradually achieve common prosperity in a Pareto-improving manner.

最后，集体力的公有化是社会主义制度下的渐进革命，它能够以帕累托改进的方式逐步实现共同富裕。

The necessity of violent revolution by the proletariat stems from the fundamental contradictions under the capitalist system. The institutional arrangements of private ownership of the means of production and the privatization of collective force determine that capitalist society cannot achieve common prosperity; at best, it can only adopt limited methods of public ownership of collective force to alleviate social contradictions. Once the public ownership of collective force shakes the foundations of capitalist private ownership, the bourgeoisie will inevitably use its violent machinery to defend its vested interests. Therefore, to achieve common prosperity, only through violent revolution, smashing the existing capitalist state machinery, can institutional feasibility be established.

无产阶级暴力革命之所以成为必然，是源于资本主义制度下的基本矛盾。生产资料私有制及集体力私有化的制度安排决定了，资本主义社会不可能实现共同富裕，充其量只能采取有限的集体力公有化的办法来缓解社会矛盾。一旦集体力公有化动摇了资本主义私有制的根基，资产阶级必将运用其暴力机器来维护既得利益。因此，要实现共同富裕，只有通过暴力革命，打碎现成的资本主义国家机器，才能确立制度上的可行性。

Socialism has established public ownership, fundamentally resolving this contradiction. Although a certain degree of disparity between rich and poor still exists in the primary stage of socialism, it is entirely possible to narrow income gaps through improving institutions, ultimately achieving common prosperity. Common prosperity is a long-term goal that requires a process of gradual adjustment. Pareto improvement requires protecting the interests of all people or the majority. This also means that institutional evolution satisfying this principle typically protects vested interest groups and leads to class solidification; however, this does not mean that Pareto improvement cannot be used to narrow class-based disparities between rich and poor. In fact, appropriate institutional design can still achieve a more equal distribution of income and wealth without harming the interests of all parties. The public ownership of collective force is clearly a path to common prosperity that conforms to Pareto improvement. By identifying the collective-force contribution in various outputs, and gradually solidifying these collective forces through institutionalized rules into the common contribution of all members of society or a specific group, returning them to the collective that made the contributions through means such as taxation and public accumulation, this is a path different from the violent path of "expropriating the expropriators." It is the self-revolution of the socialist system, a genuine path to communist common prosperity.

社会主义确立了公有制，从根本上解决了这个矛盾。尽管社会主义初级阶段还存在着一定程度的贫富差距，但完全可以通过完善制度来缩小收入差距，最终实现共同富裕。共同富裕是一个长远目标，需要一个逐步调整的过程。帕累托改进要求保护所有人或大多数人的利益。这也意味着，满足这一原则的制度演进，通常是保护既得利益群体，并导致阶级固化；但是这并不意味着帕累托改进就无法用于缩小阶级贫富差距。事实上，恰当的制度设计仍然可以在不损害各方利益的前提下实现更为平等的收入和财富分配。集体力的公有化，显然就是一条符合帕累托改进的共同富裕道路。通过辨识出各种产出的集体力贡献，并逐步将这些集体力通过制度化规则固化为全体社会成员或某个群体的共同贡献，以税收、公共积累等方式将它还给所有作出贡献的集体。这是一种不同于剥夺剥夺者的暴力道路，是社会主义制度的自我革命，是真正通往共产主义的共同富裕之路。

Online editor: Tongxin

网络编辑：同心