Gong Yongdan: The Shaping of the Proletariat in the Age of Digital Capitalism
Since the 1990s, with the accelerated advancement of networking, informatization, intelligentization, and digitalization, the operational modes of capital have undergone drastic changes. Knowledge capital, information capital, intelligent capital, and digital capital have gradually become embedded in social modes of production, serving as important engines driving political and economic transformation. The fragmentation, transformation, and reorganization of capital forms have pushed capitalism into a brand-new stage, giving rise to new forms such as "Cognitive Capitalism," "Communicative Capitalism," and "Digital Capitalism." Among these, "digital capitalism represents a 'purer' and more universal form." From the perspective of the Marxist discourse system, although the hegemony of digital capitalism has not changed the contradiction between the logic of capital (capital) and the logic of labor (labor), the manifestations of this contradiction can no longer be mentioned in the same breath as those of the industrial capitalist era. In particular, under the domination and rule of digital capital, is the political subject (the proletariat) shaped by Marx to overthrow capitalism still present? This question has become a theoretical focus of general concern among contemporary Western Leftist scholars. Within the Western Leftist camp, some scholars believe that in the age of informatization and digitalization, "the industrial working class is constantly diminishing, and the identity markers of the working class are no longer important to many 'workers.'" Still others point out that "the working class has been completely 'co-opted' by capitalist culture," and the proletariat has been thoroughly submerged in the torrent of digital capital, becoming a "salaried stratum" and "digital laborers" who have been "absorbed" and "assimilated" by capital. However, other Western Leftist scholars represented by Paolo Virno, Franco Berardi, Yann Moulier-Boutang, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Jodi Dean, Slavoj Žižek, Christian Fuchs, and Giorgio Agamben, focusing on the subjective logic of "immaterial production" and "digital labor," have proposed new subjective models such as the "cognitariat," "intellectual workers," "the multitude," "the partitioned," "the partless," the "cyber-proletariat," and "digital workers," creating a "new version" of the proletariat in the era of digital capitalism. Can these new political subjects move to consolidate revolutionary momentum, raise the banner of resistance, and subsequently achieve their own liberation, just as the proletariat of the era of large-scale machine industry did? To answer this question, we need to conduct theoretical discernment and the re-shaping of the image of these new political subjects.
I. Restarting Class Discourse: New Models of Leftist Subject Theory in the Era of Digital Capitalism
Digital capitalism is the latest manifestation of the transformation of the mode of production in the process of human modernization. It incorporates human knowledge, intelligence, data, and other forms of "general intellect" into capital, turning them into a new pole of growth, thereby confirming the significance of "immaterial labor" in today's development of human society. Based on this, Western Leftist scholars believe that digital capitalism drives intelligent machines and digital media technologies to enclose resources and absorb information and data globally with a trans-temporal and trans-spatial power of dissemination. This has greatly changed human modes of production, especially the social class structure, such that the proletariat in the Marxist sense has receded "behind the scenes." In its place are brand-new political subjects who have shed the original colors of the proletariat; they are the contemporary emerging subjective forces inherent in cognitive capitalism, communicative capitalism, and digital capitalism.
(1) The "Cognitariat": The Personification of "General Intellect"
Western Leftist scholars believe that contemporary capitalism has fully realized the category of "general intellect" (also known as "universal intelligence") discussed by Marx in the Grundrisse [1], namely, the extent to which "general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it." This exposition by Marx, along with his forward-looking prophecies regarding "machinery systems" in the "Fragment on Machines," is often hailed by the Left as a "scriptural text," serving as the theoretical key to understanding capitalism in the digital age. In the view of the Italian Leftist scholar Virno, in the era of digitalization and intelligentization, "general intellect" as general social knowledge has already become the core element of capital valorization. Contemporary capitalism is the empirical manifestation of Marx's "general intellect" category. "Today, general intellect is manifested above all in the communication, abstract thought, and self-reflection of living subjects." Virno emphasizes that in the era of digital production, the specific meaning of "general intellect" should be re-understood from the subjective dimension—that is, "general intellect" is the manifestation of the subject's cognitive activities, communicative forms, linguistic exchange, and affect; it is the potential and intelligence possessed by "living labor." In this sense, Virno believes that in the era of intelligentization and Post-Fordism [2], "general intellect" has reshaped the social class structure. It has gradually replaced "physical" labor, causing the traditional "proletariat" engaged in physical labor to be gradually replaced by the "multitude" engaged in the production of "general intellect." The laboring subject of contemporary capitalism is the multitude—the "intellectual labor power," or "mass intellectuality." In Virno's context, the multitude is a de-politicized existence. They engage in "hidden labor," because their intellectual production (thinking, knowledge, imagination, memory, communication, affect, etc.) is often not counted as a social productive force; thus, they belong to the vacillating and hidden "marginal workers" in their work.
The Italian Leftist scholar Berardi belongs to the same autonomist [3] camp as Virno. He also believes that the "general intellect" discussed by Marx in the "Fragment on Machines" cannot be classified or incorporated into "fixed capital." On the contrary, in the contemporary era, "general intellect" should be subjectivized into an element of "living labor"—that is, it belongs to the "creativity" or "intellectual capital" of the subject. Berardi thus emphasizes that in the era of cognitive capitalism, where information, communication, and knowledge are the primary forms of value, cognitive activity, intellectual labor, and information production are the dominant forms of labor. This means that the laboring class of cognitive capitalism is no longer simply the working class or the proletariat, but the "cognitariat"—the "social entity that performs cognitive labor." In Berardi's context, the "cognitariat" is also sometimes referred to as "information workers." The labor they perform is cognitive work directly associated with processing information and data. The "cognitariat" and the "multitude" have clear differences in their field of existence and their own characteristics. If the "multitude" is a product of Post-Fordism and the totality of "living labor" in the Post-Fordist era, then the "cognitariat" consists of "intellectual workers" parasitic within "cognitive capitalism," a group representing "general intellect" situated amidst anxiety and panic.
Moulier-Boutang, of the University of Technology of Compiègne in France, has reconstructed the class discourse of "cognitive capitalism" from the perspective of the transformation and upgrading of the contemporary capitalist economy, revealing the essence of the "cognitariat." In Boutang's view, cognitive capitalism is a new mode of accumulation in which knowledge is the primary object of accumulation. In this mode, knowledge becomes the basic source of value and the main site of the value valorization process. The exploitation of labor by capital is no longer manifested solely as the absorption of labor power by capital, but rather as the absorption by capital of "creativity," represented by knowledge, information, affect, and codes. Boutang believes that the "creativity" of cognitive capitalism is a form of "intellectual capital" and the dominant factor in value valorization. Based on this, cognitive capitalism is a "new capitalism" containing "new contradictions." Its class relations are no longer the traditional opposition between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but the opposition between capitalists who control the intellectual means of production and the "cognitariat." Boutang further distinguishes between two forms of exploitation in contemporary capitalism: primary exploitation (capital exploiting physical labor power) and secondary exploitation (capital exploiting creativity). These two forms of exploitation coexist in the production process of contemporary capitalism, but cognitive capitalism strengthens and accelerates the development and expropriation of human creativity and innovation. This transforms the class logic of capitalism, taking laborers engaged in intellectual creation and innovation as the new "living labor" and valorized "living capital." Consequently, Boutang restarts the class discourse and political subjects of cognitive capitalism, taking the cognitariat, the netariat, market-dependent cognitive workers, cognitive workers freely engaged in creative labor, and the self-employed as the dominant forces of cognitive capitalism. Boutang believes that capitalism is not only a stable regime and a mode of accumulation, but also a trend in the transformation of exploitation modes. Cognitive capitalism is the new form of capitalism dominated by secondary exploitation (capital's exploitation of creativity).
(2) The "User-Proletariat": Symbolized "Intellectual Workers"
Maurizio Lazzarato, another representative figure of the Italian Autonomist school, starts from the transformation of human labor forms under the dominance of knowledge and information. He analyzes the differentiation and reorganization of social classes against the backdrop of the hegemony of "immaterial labor," subsequently introducing concepts such as the "knowledge-proletariat" and "intellectual workers." Lazzarato believes that with the development of networking and digitalization, social knowledge, abstract intellect, and immaterial signals have become the "soft power" of social productive forces. Consequently, capitalist forms of production have extended into the field of "immaterial labor," which mainly involves audiovisual products, software, advertising, information, and cultural activities. Immaterial labor is the "mode of labor that exists in the form of networks and flows"—that is, "labor that produces commodity information and cultural content." In this context, Lazzarato believes that post-industrial capitalism is a "mass intellectuality" type of society. In such a society, intellectual labor is an important driver in shaping the social mode of production. It is precisely within mass intellectual labor that an emerging laboring class resides: the intellectual proletariat. Like the proletariat described by Marx, they suffer from deep control and excessive exploitation by capital. Similar to Lazzarato, Hardt and Negri also assert that the labor form of contemporary capitalism is "information production" and "knowledge production." This involves the fields of knowledge, communication, and language, mainly including communicative labor, interactive labor, and labor that produces and manipulates affect. Because the forms of capital and labor have changed, the concept of the proletariat as "personified labor" should also be re-calibrated and re-defined. To this end, Hardt and Negri rewrite the political-subjective meaning of the proletariat and propose a general formula for organizing classes in the digital age: "C-M-C'," which is "Class—Multitude—Multitudinous Class." This formula indicates that classes in the digital age possess characteristics of diversity and inclusivity. The proletariat within this has been accommodated into the "multitudinous class," which is an upgraded version of the "multitude"—the masses who have lost ownership of the "public sphere" (such as public resources, knowledge production, and affective production) and are subject to the control and exploitation of digital capital. If Lazzarato, Hardt, and Negri reshaped the proletariat in digital production from the perspective of labor ontology, then Žižek introduced the concept of the "user-proletariat" from the dimensions of "internat politics" and social reality. Žižek points out that in internet politics, society is no longer a hierarchical whole but an open complex composed of different networks. Within this network system, an internet aristocratic elite has emerged, possessing power and the ability to obtain key information, while the vast majority of users become objects of manipulation. The direct consequence of this is that "a new class resistance between the 'internet aristocracy' and the 'user-proletariat' has replaced the class struggle between capitalists and the proletariat." In response, Žižek borrows the subjective concepts of Hardt and Negri to repeatedly emphasize that even if the revolutionary subject of internet politics is the "masses in power," such "masses" are likely to find it very difficult to form a collective force to resist the globalized network.
(3) "The Partitioned": The "Masses" in the Power-Law Distribution of the Network
Jodi Dean focuses on networked media, big data, and traffic to reshape the image of the proletariat in the digital age, glimpsing the subjects of resistance in contemporary capitalism through the realities of digitalization and communicative capitalism. Dean argues that in the era of digital production, big data, networks, and mass media are forging a new political force. She posits that "the 'digital' directs us toward the momentum of communicative capitalism," and that digitalization and networked media are "aggregating" or "concentrating" social populations. These assembled "masses" represent a new force, providing a breakthrough for understanding political subjects in the digital age and an opportunity for the birth of new social classes. Dean believes that an emphasis on the masses allows us to find the "gravediggers" within the complex networks and the power-law distribution of links upon which communicative capitalism operates and depends. Of course, Dean does not advocate for treating the broad and vague "masses" directly as a political subject; she argues that the true subject is the fractured part of the masses—namely, the "separated people" residing within the symbolic system of communicative capitalism's networks. Dean emphasizes that in the digital age, powerful data and complex algorithms drive capital valorization, causing the masses to aggregate within digitalized and networked symbolic systems. However, only a few occupy the pinnacle of this symbolic pyramid and enjoy vast wealth, while the majority of the masses are excluded and squeezed by complex algorithms and digital capital; these squeezed masses constitute a potential political force. Since the masses parasitic on digital capitalism are an aggregation of collective and diverse strata, Dean advocates using the term "long tail" from power-law distributions as a "symbol" to describe the masses in the era of big data. This is because "in complex networks, the scale and number of the masses are organized according to the hierarchy of power-law distribution, i.e., 1% versus 99%." Dean uses the "1%" to identify the "superstars" and "elite class" in communicative capitalism—those who possess infinite prestige, the highest attention, and the most frequent click-through rates—while the "99%" are the ordinary public in the "long tail," a symbolic mass composed of users, fans, and so on. Dean points out: "This number does not specify a person's identity, but rather highlights a divide and a gap—the wealth gap between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of us. ... It declares that we are divided, divided into the dispossessors and the dispossessed." Therefore, according to Dean’s analytical framework, in the era of communicative capitalist hegemony, social class antagonism has shifted to the confrontation between the 1% and the 99% within digital network systems. The potential political subjects of digital capitalism are the "remainder" [4] requisitioned, dominated, and exploited by digital capital and intelligent algorithms—the masses who engage in actual communicative activities but are separated by capital.
(4) The "Cyber-Proletariat": The "New Poor" in the Digital Whirlwind
Canadian scholar Nick Dyer-Witheford both inherits the subject theory of the Italian Autonomist school and innovates and expands Marx's concept of the proletariat from the perspective of "cybernetics" spawned by new technologies and intelligent algorithms, proposing the "cyber-proletariat" as a new subject. Dyer-Witheford argues: "The ubiquity of computers and networks in the global capitalist economy has dramatically changed the working conditions as well as the unemployment situation of a generation." Most importantly, the combination of information technology, networking, digitalization, and globalization has greatly enhanced the new momentum and intensity of contemporary capitalist development, while simultaneously absorbing more global workers into the capitalist production system. These global working classes are not "free laborers" but a "cyber-proletariat" forced to reside within the massive system of "cyber-capitalism." In Dyer-Witheford's view, contemporary capitalism achieves automated and intelligent production through networks and algorithms. This form of production arises based on the application of new technologies such as websites, videos, games, Facebook, and chat rooms. This trend causes capitalist labor to gradually incline toward digital labor and capital toward digital capital. Changes in the forms of labor and capital in contemporary capitalism inevitably necessitate a change in its political subjects. Dyer-Witheford likens this trend of informationized and digitalized capital to "a great vortex storm," while the proletariat consists of the "digital artisans" and "new poor" caught in this super-storm, whose consciousness of resistance is weakened and consumed by invisible capital. Although Dyer-Witheford reveals the political subjects and their plight within the current digital whirlwind, he does not delve deep into the subject-context of Marx’s critique of political economy, but rather stands on the reality of the internet and merely swaps out the Italian Left’s concept of the "cognitariat." In contrast, British scholar Christian Fuchs focuses on the massive changes in labor forms brought about by social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google. By examining concepts such as "digital labor" and "digital work" in the era of "transnational middle-class information capitalism," he introduces a subject theory for the post-revolutionary era. Fuchs believes that digital labor is the most important form of labor in contemporary capitalism; this labor is a new type of exploitative and unpaid labor, where "the exploitation of digital labor includes processes of coercion, alienation, and appropriation." In Fuchs’s view, digital labor is alienated digital work—labor monitored by digital capitalists and exploited by private shareholders—which creates a new political subject: the digital worker. On platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, users are not just consumers of information but also producers—that is, "prosumers." "They produce documents, content, connections, social relations, networks, and communities as use-values. They are creative, active, networked digital workers." How then can digital workers resist the exploitation of digital capital? The answer Fuchs provides is a "unified political strategy of digital working-class struggle," which is the "Occupy the Internet movement," aimed at achieving common control of information and a revolution in social media.
II. Examining Theoretical Misconceptions: The Dilemma of Leftist Subject Theory in the Era of Digital Capitalism
Contemporary foreign leftist scholars have constructed theories and shaped images of political subjects from radical positions, providing brand-new perspectives for an in-depth examination of labor forms, class structures, and antagonistic contradictions in the era of digital capitalism. Theoretically, they have compensated for the "exit" and "absence" of the revolutionary subject in the digital age, expanded the subject theory of digital capitalism, and provided pioneering theoretical horizons for studying the new "global landscape" and "labor organizations" brought about by digital technological transformation. However, if the subject concepts introduced by these leftist scholars are examined within the theoretical horizon and discursive logic of Marx’s construction of the proletarian revolutionary subject, these political subjects—while appearing to be radical subjects of resistance—actually degenerate into the passive "pariahs" and "mobs" [5] criticized by Marx, downgraded to a kind of "anonymous void" and "subjectivity without substance." The reason for this is that leftist scholars maintain a certain distance from Marxism in their revolutionary stance and methodology. This leads the "new proletariat" they shape to not only invert the ontological foundation of historical materialism but also lack the theoretical horizon of the critique of political economy. Consequently, they substitute the generative conditions of the political subject within postmodern philosophical discourse, expand its referential scope, and dissolve its political identity as the "gravedigger," ultimately rendering it a "constellational subject" and a "multi-presence."
(1) Substitution of Generative Conditions: From "Labor Power" to "General Intellect"
Within the horizon of the materialist conception of history, the true political subject is not a "substantial estate" or a "universal estate" in the Hegelian sense, but a "particular class" inherent to socio-history. By answering "what exactly is the proletariat," Marx demonstrated the ontological situation and generative conditions of the proletariat as a political subject. In Marx's view, the political subject is not derived through sensible experience but is contained within the concrete historical context of human material productive activities; it requires judging "what it is historically compelled to do." The historical role of the proletariat is bestowed by "its own situation in life as well as by the whole organization of middle-class society today"—that is, the confirmation of the proletariat's subjective identity is determined by the "universal suffering" and "absolute poverty" it endures. The root cause of these "inhuman living conditions" is modern capitalism and its system of private property. From its origins, the proletariat, as "a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society," is not external to the human mode of production but is "the product of large-scale industry itself." The historical conditions for its emergence are the transformation of social property (capitalist private property) triggered by the Industrial Revolution and "universal injustice." Particularly in large-scale industrial production driven by capital, the proletariat loses its own means of production due to the domination of capital. They can only turn to the capital-dominated market and make a living by selling their labor power, because "their only property is their capacity to labor." Therefore, unlike other classes, the proletariat is a subject parasitic on capitalism that relies entirely on selling its labor power to obtain the means of subsistence. The characteristic identity of this class is the "personification of labor," or more accurately, "labor power itself." Diverging from Marx's context, Western leftist scholars have substituted the generative conditions and actual plight of the proletariat. They believe that the proletariat in the digital age cannot be identified by "labor power," but should take "general intellect" as its prerequisite. Paolo Virno inverts Marx's relationship between living labor and dead labor, replacing "living labor" with "general intellect," arguing that "general intellect" is not an attribute of fixed capital but the capacity, potential, and life-form of living labor. In post-Fordism, "labor power" is no longer the sole element confirming the subjective identity of the proletariat; on the contrary, "general intellect manifests as immortal wage labor, a hierarchy, and a pillar for the production of surplus value." Virno takes "general intellect" as the core metric for identifying the subject (the multitude), thereby viewing the proletariat as personified immaterial laborers engaged in intellectual production. Similarly, leftist scholars such as Berardi, Hardt, and Negri have reordered the relationship between "labor power" and "intellect," arguing that "labor power" should accommodate the "collective general intellect." They contend that the realization of labor value in the digital age lies in incorporating new productive forces (intellect) into labor, whereby labor power increasingly manifests as new types of intelligence such as knowledge, language, communication, and codes. Traditional labor power is "increasingly replaced by intellectualized and immaterialized labor power in the field of communication." Consequently, they advocate for the construction of a "new subject theory" based on a new labor theory of value, logically transforming the proletariat into individuals subjected to the control and enslavement of the network empire and digital capital. These constellational individuals, when condensed, form the "new proletariat." Obviously, the "bait and switch" approach of these leftist scholars not only abandons the theoretical implications of the critique of political economy but also overlooks the unique prerequisite of Marx's concept of the political subject: "the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live." Thus, the subjects shaped by leftist scholars are not the personification of labor or the representatives of labor power, nor are they "proletarians" who have lost the means of production, and even less are they the antithesis of the capitalist. Instead, they are a de-materialized "rabble" and a virtual, inclusive "multitude"—a "substantial constitution of diverse, indeterminate, and disorganized 'differences'." They are therefore not the "destitute living labor power" and revolutionary force of resistance in the Marxian sense.
(2) Expansion of the Referential Scope: From "Working Masses" to "Collective Masses"
In the political subject theory of classical Marxism, the proletariat is not the "masses" writ large, but the "oppressed working masses," the "wage laborers" situated as the antithesis of capital, and the actual subjects of alienated labor. In fact, Marx and Engels used "subtraction" when constructing the political subject—that is, their concept of the subject has a specific referential scope, being that particular class among many "which is claimed by radical chains." In contrast, leftist scholars use "addition" when constructing the political subject of the digital age—that is, their concept of the subject is the "flow-mass" or "multi-mass" dependent on empires, networks, and digital platforms. To summarize in Dean's words: the 99% remaining after the wealthiest 1% is removed—"that 1% has appropriated the majority of the commons, while the remaining 99%..."
The possession of surplus things." Dean's summary represents the contemporary trend in Western Leftist subject theory, which consistently expands the "working masses" into the "anonymous masses," "cyber-masses," and "digital artisans" of the post-Marxist era, thereby shifting the actual field of the subject’s existence. This shift involves four logical approaches: first, the "evental subject" constructed by Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou based on the "evental sites" of the era of globalization, including global migrants, refugees, slum dwellers, and the "homo sacer" [8] introduced by Giorgio Agamben—life that is abandoned and reduced to "bare life." These subjects "are the 'extra' social elements excluded from civic welfare; they are displaced and have no one to rely on." Second, the "symbolic class" constructed by scholars such as Luc Boltanski, Jodi Dean, Dyer-Witheford, and Franco "Bifo" Berardi, including programmers, digital workers, internet users, "traffic fans," and "media consumers who produce social meaning." These subjects are arranged according to the power-law distribution of complex networks and are "parasites" within the network. Third, the "multitude" [9] constructed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, which is "broader than the concept of the working class" and consists of a mobile and precarious mass. Fourth, the "digital workers" constructed by scholars such as Christian Fuchs and Ursula Huws from the perspective of the political economy of communication, including digital analysts, information processors, electronic workers, and knowledge workers—the "high-tech proletariat" engaged in virtual work in the real world.
Clearly, Western Leftist scholars have deviated from the method of class analysis. Consequently, the political subjects they construct are no longer "wage laborers" and "proletarians," nor are they "the exploited" and "social revolutionaries" in the Marxist sense. This is because such political subjects encompass almost all "diverse groups," including the poor, the marginalized, the self-employed, the lower-middle class, and the masses at the bottom of society. They include every individual who is directly or indirectly parasitic on the capitalist mode of production. Because these groups expand the referential scope of the proletariat, they dilute its inherent qualities of collectivity, revolutionary character, and class nature. More importantly, these grand and all-encompassing inclusive subjects do not all engage in productive labor, nor are they the creators of surplus value discussed by Marx. Instead, they are individuals parasitically dispersed across cyberspace and various social strata. They are a composite that has lost the "group identity" of the proletariat, representing "a retreat from an economic and political category into an abstract collection of atomized individuals."
(III) Loss of Essential Definition: From "Proletarians" to the "Partless"
In Marx's vision, the most essential definition of the proletariat is being "without means of production." Because they are "propertyless" and rely on selling their labor power to create social wealth, they are the true laboring class among social groups. From a broader perspective, the proletariat represents "a social function that both constructs history and realizes itself in socialism," and is thus the most revolutionary class in social transformation. However, it must be clarified that the political subjects constructed by Western Leftist scholars do not possess the identity of "proletarians"; or rather, the "new proletariat" they promote has shed the essential characteristics of the "proletarian." In their view, in the era of digital production, the determination of the proletariat is no longer measured by "propertylessness" but by "partlessness." This so-called "partlessness" refers to "not being counted as a constituent member" or having "no share in participation." Consequently, the proletariat in the era of digital capitalism consists of the "invisible ones" excluded from the mainstream classes—the "partless" [10]. Dean argues: "As a code name for the contemporary communist subject, it is better to use 'surplus people' or 'the partless' than 'proletariat' or 'multitude'." In the eyes of Leftist scholars, today's political subjects are those excluded by capital, the people differentiated out by capital; they are both a nullity and a lack within the social community—the impoverished marginalized and those with no share. Whether it is the digital workers and the precarious "lower-middle information class" struggling for survival emphasized by Fuchs, or the "surplus people" constructed by Dean, or the "intellectual workers," "symbolic class," and "cyber-masses" constructed by other Leftist scholars, their common trait is that of the "excluded" and "invisible" abandoned by social elites and mainstream classes. Therefore, "the real-world proletarian is precisely the identityless person who is excluded and expelled at another invisible, sensible level of bourgeois society." Viewed this way, the commonality of the new subjects constructed by Leftist scholars is that of the "excluded marginalized Other." They are a silent rabble—no longer "propertyless" and "employed" masses, but "partless" and "anonymous" crowds.
(IV) Dissolution of Historical Mission: From "Gravediggers" to the "New Poor"
According to Marx's understanding, in its process of frantically chasing profit, plundering wealth, enclosing resources, and absorbing labor power, capital inevitably deprives a portion of the population of the means of production, thereby pregnant with and forging its own "gravediggers." History and facts have proven that the historical mission of the proletariat is to use its own weapons to blow up the superstructure of official society, to "overthrow the capitalist mode of production and finally abolish classes." This historical mission dictates that the proletariat must liberate itself "through the political form of worker emancipation"—that is, by destroying the old world through the actual communist movement, thereby "abolishing the antithesis that conditions it and makes it the proletariat: private property." Therefore, the proletariat possesses an innate indignation toward the absolute poverty and inhuman living conditions they face, as well as a firm class consciousness. They are the revolutionary class capable of undertaking great responsibilities and are thus able to "expropriate the expropriators."
In contrast to the identity of the "gravedigger" constructed by Marx, the political subjects constructed by Western Leftist scholars are either the "partless" and "useless" masses or illusory individuals in digital networks. Some are symbol manipulators, some are routine laborers, some are the unemployed, and some are the poor, refugees, and slum dwellers at the bottom of the power pyramid. These groups are not entirely the "laboring class," but rather the dispersed "precariat" [11] of the digital age. In other words, the subjects described by Leftist scholars are similar to the "new poor" discussed by Zygmunt Bauman—"a completely heterogeneous and extremely diverse collection." Such political subjects are fragmented individuals gathered within illusory communities formed by digitalization. They do not possess radical revolutionary demands and have lost the identity of "gravediggers." On the contrary, for such political subjects, "access to limited information and social circles is far more important than money." They do not even hold expectations for the common ownership of the means of production, nor will they form a class consciousness like that of the proletariat, let alone coalesce into the political sentiment of human liberation. Therefore, the new subjects constructed by Leftist scholars are already far removed from the revolutionary class in the Marxist sense. They can neither shoulder the historical responsibility of the political subject nor lead the practices and movements to transform social relations; instead, they are the "liberated" of the digital age.
III. Reconstructing the Class Logic: The Presence and Return of the Proletariat in the Era of Digital Capitalism
There is a fundamental logical flaw in the way Western Leftist scholars excavate and shape the revolutionary subjectivity and collective consciousness of the proletariat in the era of digital capitalism. Specifically, they have abandoned the Marxist approach of constructing class logic based on the logic of capital. Instead, they focus on new production elements such as "social knowledge," "immaterial labor," and "creativity," taking "intellect" as the fundamental basis for class division. This severs the identity between "physical strength" and "intellect" as essential elements of labor and confuses the essential difference between "labor" and "activity" in the digital age, thereby misjudging the logic of the proletariat's presence. The proletariat they shape ultimately falls into a vast, vague, diverse, and abstract "pseudo-subject."
In reality, whether in the era of industrial capitalism or digital capitalism, as long as the logic of capital is the ruling logic of society, as long as capital rules and dominates labor, and as long as laborers "rent or sell their labor power" under the domination of capital, the proletariat—as the personification of labor—remains present. It can be said that the proletariat of the digital capitalist era does not need to be reconstructed or rewritten; it is merely that their mode of labor and form of presence have undergone a transformation. Today, to reconstruct the political subject of the digital age, we must return to the Marxist logic of class: moving from the "logic of intellect" back to the "logic of capital," from the "virtual subject" back to the "substantial subject," and from "digital actors" back to "digital laborers," to construct a theory of the subject that accords with the operation of capitalism in the digital age.
(I) From the "Logic of Intellect" back to the "Logic of Capital"
Western Leftist scholars have firmly grasped the production logic of "general intellect" [12] in the era of digital production, using "intellectual production" as the primary measure for constructing the proletariat of the digital age. Consequently, they have cast all groups associated with "intellectual labor" as the "new proletariat." This way of thinking completely ignores the "logic of capital" as the root of the political subject's emergence, and thus fails to correctly position the relationship between "general intellect" and the "proletariat." In Marx’s classical theory of the subject, the "logic of intellect" is not the measure for class division. "Intellect" is a species-characteristic of being human, while "class" is a reflection of the relations of production. Marx pointed out: "Intelligence does not make someone a representative of the Estates; it only makes a representative of the Estates a human being." "Intellect" is a common characteristic of humans, but it is not a specific basis for dividing classes because "intellect is by no means an attribute of rank." On the contrary, rank or class is formed by people possessing intellect within social relations of production (especially economic relations); the relations of production are the true stage upon which classes emerge. Thus, Engels noted: "Social classes are at all times the product of the relations of production and exchange, in a word, of the economic relations of their time."
Since a given class is the product of given relations of production, differences in the positions people occupy in production or labor can divide them into different classes. For instance, some own the means of production and are thus the propertied; others cannot obtain them and are thus the proletarians. Some rely on physical labor and are physical laborers; others rely on intellectual labor and are intellectual laborers. However, it must be stated that judging who constitutes the proletariat does not rely on the labor difference between "intellect" and "physical strength," because the process of labor always involves both "physical strength" and "intellect" to varying degrees. Marx and Engels understood "labor power or capacity for labor" as "the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description."
Therefore, in the digital age, "digital labor," "immaterial labor," and "creative production" are merely new forms of the "intellectual" element within the labor process; they are insufficient to serve as the basis for defining the proletariat. The most fundamental measure for defining the proletariat is the relationship of ownership of the means of production and the resulting "employment relationship." Specifically, within capitalist relations of production, the most direct source of the proletariat is the "logic of capital." The essence of capital is "accumulated labor" and "social relations of production." In relations of production where the hegemony of the logic of capital exists, labor is downgraded to the "prey" of capital; capital devours labor, and labor is dependent on capital. "If capital does not employ workers, the workers will perish. If capital does not exploit labor power, capital will perish, and to exploit labor power, capital must purchase labor power." Within the exchange relationship between labor and capital, wage laborers are produced, who "have no other option but to be employed by the capitalist." Under the domination of the logic of capital, "the increase of capital is the increase of the proletariat, i.e., of the working class." Therefore, in the digital age, the "logic of capital" remains the key to understanding the proletariat. It is just that the logic of capital in the digital age utilizes networks, data, and intelligent technology to achieve expansion, completely severing intellect from physical strength in the digital production process, whereby "intellect is transformed into capital's power to dominate labor." In relations of production where cognitive capital, intelligent capital, and digital capital share hegemony, although people possess broader "knowledge," acquire more diverse "data," and form more multifaceted "network social circles,"
However, this "social intellect" is not the basis for validating who constitutes the proletariat. The proletariat is not a "polyhedron" within digital networks; rather, the proletariat in the age of digital capitalism must be those who do not own their own digital means of production and are employed by digital platforms. They are not the "multitude," [13] the "uncounted" (partless), the "excluded," the "networked masses," or the "surplus people" constructed by foreign leftist scholars through overgeneralization and a lack of discrimination.
(2) From "Virtual Subject" to "Substantial Subject"
Western leftist scholars have extended the political subject from the "field of reality" to "virtual scenarios." Relying on big data, network technology, and virtual reality, they have constructed categories such as the "cognitive proletariat," "user proletariat," "cyber-proletariat," "disconnected people," and "digital workers." The greatest commonality among these political subjects is their virtuality; they are "virtual subjects" and "anonymous masses" residing in the networked world and digital interfaces. The virtual subject emerged alongside the appearance of virtual capital. Especially in the digital age, capital swallows networks and intelligent technologies, dominating labor in a more concealed and abstract form. This has formed an extremely illusory "digital capital community," in which "the subject as a decision-making entity of will, freedom, and representation, and the subject of power, knowledge, and history has disappeared, replaced by a blurred, floating subjectivity without substance." Obviously, in the virtual community constructed by digital capital, real human relations have been rewritten. Humans as substantial beings interact with others in the identity of a "virtual body," and the labor of the subject is also imprinted with "virtuality." The virtual body is the reflection of the substantial person in the digital network; a substantial person can interact across multiple platforms and digital interfaces—that is, one substance can correspond to multiple virtualities. Therefore, when leftist scholars view the "long tail" and "masses" distributed according to power laws in communicative capitalism, digital interfaces, and cyberspace as political subjects, these virtual identities do not conform to the realistic and substantial characteristics of the proletariat. Similarly, the "virtual identity" of laborers in communicative capitalism and digital capitalism cannot serve as a metric for validating proletarian status.
On the contrary, to construct the political subject of digital capitalism, one should follow the opposite logical path: moving from the "virtual subject" to the "substantial subject." From the perspective of historical materialism, a political subject is a specific group situated within relations of production—a substance composed of real individuals. Marx believed: "It is only as a worker that he can maintain himself as a physical subject, and it is only as a physical subject that he is a worker." That is to say, as a political subject, the working class is a "substantial subject" composed of real individuals who rely on wage labor to satisfy direct physical needs. In the digital age, people's subjective identities are dualized and pluralistic. To judge the political subject of digital capitalism, one cannot mechanically view all the "disconnected people" and "immaterial laborers" within the digital symbolic system as substantial subjects, nor can one view all social groups manipulated by algorithms as proletarians. Imagine: if everyone engaged in mental production and intellectual labor could serve as a political subject and shoulder the great mission of history, would this not be a "gospel" for digital capitalism? The political subjects of digital capitalism are precisely those substantial people who are deeply controlled by intelligent algorithms, engaged in digital labor, and possess no means of production of their own.
(3) From "Digital Actor" to "Digital Laborer"
In the digital capitalist mode of production, people's modes of labor have undergone a revolutionary transformation. Everyone's life has been absorbed into virtual scenarios woven by the digital; people's "desires, longings, dreams, and oppressions are all infected by informational elements." Against this backdrop, Western leftist scholars argue that in the digital age, "the subject of revolution is no longer the traditional proletariat, but has expanded to all individual subjects across the entire level of social life." This includes the "user class" wearing headphones and manipulating keyboards, "playbourers" [14] moving freely on digital platforms in the form of play, and "laborers" obsessed with games, short videos, live streaming, and online shopping. However, a deeper analysis reveals that there is still a clear boundary between "active relations" (活动关系) and "labor relations" in the digital age. In a strict sense, digital activity is a kind of labor that creates no value; it may be passive or active, a form of laziness or a form of pastime and entertainment—in short, it possesses the meaning of "life." Digital labor, however, is value-creating labor—that is, "active, creative activity." It is labor predicated on social intellect that produces digital commodities; it is labor with the nature of work. Only by distinguishing these two different types of social relations can we distinguish "digital laborers" from "digital actors," and thus construct the political subject within "digital relations of production" rather than "digital life relations." As Marx stated: "The only worker who is productive is one who produces surplus value for the capitalist, or serves for the self-expansion of capital." Similarly, only those digital laborers who are monitored by digital platforms and produce surplus value for digital capitalists or serve the self-expansion of digital capital are digital workers. Those digital actors (netizens, users, etc.) who are deeply trapped in digital cages, despite the alienation present in their activities or even their fall into poverty, cannot be called "proletarians" in the strict sense. After all, "the poor and the laboring classes have always existed; and the laboring class has usually been poor. However, such the poor, such the worker—the proletarian—living under the aforementioned conditions, has not always existed."
In conclusion, as the latest spectacle of global capitalism, digital capitalism has brought humanity into an abstract community woven by digital capital, causing the "substantial person" within it to fall into the "logic of subjugation to things" (物役逻辑) [15] criticized by Marx. It causes people to gradually "fall" (失坠) [16] within the massive "empire" co-constructed by digits and capital, even becoming "marginalized people," "particulate people," and the "new poor." Although digital capitalism has changed the form and operating mode of capital—digital capital ruling and controlling people in more concealed and virtual forms as a new dominant mode of production and life—it has not changed the shackling of the logic of human labor by the logic of capital. Western leftist scholars have deeply examined the changes in class structure triggered by the "alliance" between capital and digital technology, analyzed the new alienation of human labor and its realistic manifestations in the digital age, and attempted to forge new subjects to resist digital capitalism; their theoretical courage deserves affirmation. However, digital capitalism is still capitalism in essence. Its primary contradiction remains the contradiction between capital and labor, and its logic of expansion and operating mechanism remain within the theoretical context of Marx’s critique of the logic of capital. Thus, the political subject (the proletariat) constructed by Marx to overthrow capitalism remains valid. Marx pointed out: "Philosophy cannot be realized without the abolition of the proletariat, and the proletariat cannot be abolished without the realization of philosophy." At present, the domination of humans by digital capitalism is an undeniable "reality"; the mission of the proletariat has not been completed, and it still possesses a logic of presence within the control of capital. Therefore, the political subject shaped by Marx will neither recede backstage, nor does it need to be "rewritten," much less "replaced." We cannot mythologize the proletariat because of the deep alienation caused by digital capitalism, nor can we abandon the proletariat because digital capitalism has created the "new poor." As long as the logic of capital is present, its antithesis will not exit the stage.
(Notes omitted) (Author's affiliation: School of Marxism, Beihang University) Online Editor: Zhang Jian Source: Marxism & Reality (马克思主义与现实), Issue 4, 2022