Marxism Research Network
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Gong Yongdan: Western Leftist Critiques of the "New Alienation" of Humans under Digital Capitalism and Their Implications

Marxism Abroad

Humanity is currently experiencing a "digital-intelligence revolution." The social acceleration and abrupt life changes triggered by digitalization and intellectualization have become landmark "ontological events" of the era of economic globalization. This ongoing, accelerating, and far-reaching upheaval has greatly improved the human condition and enhanced collective well-being, yet it has simultaneously led humanity toward a "world of extremes." In this world, capital and digital technology continuously engage in "marriage" and "collusion." Digital-intelligence technology has gradually "lost its defensive position" and been reduced to an object of "enclosure" [1] by capital, while capital itself has emerged in a digital form. It must be said that the burgeoning "capitalization of the digital" and "digitalization of capital" are leading humanity toward a "New Empire" dominated by the logic of capital, forming international digital capital oligarchies represented by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. Within this vast empire jointly constructed by digits and capital, the human being as a historical subject has "fallen" [2]; the subjective status of the person is deeply dominated by this "abstract empire." This trend manifests as follows: the more powerful the technology becomes, the more the human being—the subject of technological creation—tends toward "dehumanization." The innovative German scholar Hartmut Rosa also argues that in the current era where digital technology and capital are linked, humans are ruled by a new, alien, and abstract power (the logic of digital capital). The authentic domain of human existence is gradually being infected by digital capital, resulting in a "new alienation" of human space, the world of things, action, time, the self, and society. This indicates that in the era of digital capitalism, human existence seems to have once again fallen into the "logic of subjugation to things" [3] criticized by Marx. People in the digital age are transforming from the real to the virtual, from the physical to the ethereal, and from independence to singularity. This transformation represents a new challenge to human development posed by digital capitalism. Based on this, we shall systematically comb through the Western Left's critique of this "new alienation" of the person under digital capitalism, examine the "ontological revolution" triggered by the alliance of capital and digital technology, and analyze the realistic manifestations of the "new alienation." The objective is to return to the horizon and path of human liberation pioneered by Marx and to explore possible schemes for sublation [4] of this "new alienation" of the person.

I. The Ontological Critique of the "New Alienation" of the Human under Digital Capitalism by the Western Left

In an era defined by the hegemony of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence and the rise of the Metaverse, digitalization appears to have constructed a more transparent, open, and democratic social structure, greatly promoting social progress and human development. Yet it is undeniable that "today, the entire planet is a capitalist factory." Under the dominance and enticement of the logic of capital, the "capitalization of digital technology" and the "personification of digital capital" [5] have jointly launched an unprecedented challenge to modern society and the human condition. Bernard Stiegler pointed out that the development of AI makes the convergence of digital technology and capital possible. In this sense, "technology has produced a variety of unprecedented new apparatuses: machines applied to all fields such as circulation, communication, vision, sound, entertainment, calculation, work, and 'thinking'; in the near future, they will also be applied to sensation, avatars (telepresence, remote sensing, simulated reality), and destruction. Machines of life: the spectacle of life, akin to a 'Sphinx,' now touches not only the organization of inorganic matter but also affects the reorganization of the organic." The Western Left believes that the "marriage" between the logic of digital technology and the logic of capital valorization has accelerated alienation in modern society. The disorderly development and frenzied expansion of digital-intelligence technology, driven by capital, are threatening human subjectivity and empathy. They are even driving humans toward a state of virtualization, atomization, symbolization, and singularity, resulting in the mechanized and one-sided development of the person. Zygmunt Bauman noted: "The disappearance of time-space distance due to technological factors did not lead the human condition toward homogenization; rather, it caused it to polarized." In the era of digital capitalism, the controlling forces humans face are more complex, diverse, and massive. To some extent, the actual situation of the human being is undergoing a revolution in the ontological sense.

1. A Critique of Digital Existence: From "Physical Reality" to "Abstract Virtual-Entity"

The radical Western Leftist scholar Slavoj Žižek, focusing on the datafication of reproduction and the "spectral" characteristics of digital commodities in the digital age, has launched a fierce critique of digital capitalism. He reveals the new alienation caused by human obsession with "things" within the domain of digital capital and conducts a critique of "commodity-less" fetishism. Žižek argues that digitalization has led to a deep fission of the person: "Human individuals also become 'things,' their states and activities being continuously recorded and transmitted without their knowledge: their physical movements, financial transactions, health conditions, eating habits, what they buy and sell, what they read, listen to, and watch—all of this is collected in digital networks that know them better than they know themselves." From an ontological perspective, Žižek believes that the Real cannot be symbolized; it can only manifest through "symptoms," while the person is the physical entity within the Real. As Marx stated: "Matter, existence, substance are one and the same real idea. One cannot separate thought from matter which thinks... Only my own existence is certain and credible." That is to say, "my own existence" is the existence of the concrete subject; obscuring the "I" within an abstract "substance" is unreliable. The real subject is the "I"—the human being as a concrete existence. Žižek argues that the collusion and fusion of capital and digital technology are transforming the human physical existence, making the person transition from a "physical entity person" to an "abstract virtual person." In particular, digital capitalism has changed the physical representation of the person, incorporating human relationships into digital platforms that were originally externalized. The "physical reality" of the person is transformed into a "digital virtual-entity" within the digital network, and the digital products created by humans are "no longer material objects, but the new social (interpersonal) relations themselves." In digital production, the person is demoted to a "subjectivity without substance," a type of digital "virtual-presence" (xūzài).

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri similarly argue that digital capitalism has triggered a shift in the mode of human existence, specifically pushing human activities and forms of labor toward immaterialization and digitalization—giving rise to intellectual labor, affective labor, technical labor, and cyborg labor. They emphasize that the "computerization" of labor has caused a crisis of subjectivity: human "subjectivity is stripped of all seemingly organic qualities, emerging from the factory as an intelligent technological configuration." Within the domain of digital capitalism, human subjectivity has undergone a dual differentiation: the person possesses both humanity and machine-nature. In digital capitalist settings, humans become "bodies without organs, humans without essence, cyborgs: these are the subject images currently being produced on the horizon while being capable of active production." In the era of digital existence, everyone's mode of being is absorbed into the communication platforms and virtual interfaces constructed by digital capitalism. Almost everyone possesses a "digital identity." In digital communication activities, a person's physical identity is fragmented, from which the "digital identity" emerges as a dominant "symbolic identity." This is the virtualization of the "physical person" in the digital network—the virtual-body (vir-body). The virtual-body is the "objectification" and "virtual reflection" of the person's physical relations on the digital interface. Digital capitalism is the digital relations of production constructed by massive digital capital through the absorption of "virtual-bodies." In this illusory digital capital community, the "physical person" gradually participates in social interaction as a "virtual person," labeled or replaced by the "virtual person," while the activities of the "physical person" tend toward "immaterialization."

The Western Left believes that digital capitalism has accelerated the alienation of the "subject-object" relationship, creating a severe "tear" between the physical entity and the virtual-entity. Various platforms and virtual spaces constructed by digital capitalism are causing the boundary between subject and object to collapse. The person is decorated with multiple identities across realms such as the real and virtual, secular and political, material and spiritual. The person is no longer merely a subset of real relations of production but "contains information and events that lack any demographic or statistical significance." It should be noted that Marx believed that in capitalist relations of production, capital is a thing that stands above the person: "the social relations between individuals ... appear as the pure product of relations of production and exchange." That is, the person does not depend on other persons, but on things (capital); in the world of capital, the person is "ruled by abstractions." Accordingly, the Western Left argues that in digital capitalism, the human "subject-object" relationship is further differentiated. Humans not only depend on things (capital) but also form a "heavy dependence on virtual relations." Human interaction and thinking activities are objectified in virtual space, and humans form a dependence on "non-substantial subjects" within virtual reality. Human activity manifests as a communication model of "Person (Body) → Virtual Object (Virtual-entity) — Virtual Object (Virtual-entity) ← Person (Body)." In the digital age, "the most intriguing emerging religion is 'Dataism,' which worships neither gods nor humans, but data." Currently, human existence is inseparable from virtual objects (virtual-entities). In the virtual community constructed by the logic of digital capital, "the subject has disappeared—the subject as a decision-making body of will, freedom, and representation, and the subject of power, knowledge, and history has disappeared, replaced by a blurred, floating subjectivity without substance." The physical subjectivity of the person is being severely challenged.

2. A Critique of Digital Rights: From "Status-bearing Personality" to "Personality-less Status"

Beyond physical existence and subjectivity, human existence is also manifested as a being with status and personality. Human status and personality are the representations of the rights of a person existing within social relations. Hegel pointed out that the subject is the person, and only when "a person is considered as having a certain status does he become a person." In this sense, a person is a "status-bearing personality." This "status-personality" confirms social attributes such as life, image, reputation, and privacy, representing the rights of the "subject-person" within social relations. Naturally, personality is not abstract or infinite but has its internal definitions and boundaries. "Status-bearing personality" is exactly the concrete substance and realistic manifestation of human subjectivity; only within real social relations can a person truly confirm their status and personality. Marx argued that in the world of capital hegemony and rule, human status-personality and the personality of the thing (capital) have been inverted: the "personality of the thing" gradually replaces the "status-personality" of the person, giving rise to "the opposition between the personification of things and the reification of persons." Theoretically, the "status-personality" of the person is the "theme" of being human, while the "personality of the thing" is the objectification of the human status-personality—it is the "subtext" of being human. However, in relations of production dominated by capital, capital achieves the unity of "thing-nature" and "human-nature" and often issues orders to humans in a personified form (the capitalist). Marx emphasized that in capitalist relations of production, capital gains an independent personality, rising to a personified existence that dominates human life, while the subject of labor (the person) is demoted, reduced to a tool-like existence without personality, becoming a "reified person." Capitalist relations of production are essentially "the personification of things and the reification of persons." In this relationship, capital—as a thing—is continuously personified, while the person—as the subject—is continuously reified. The direct consequence of this is that the "personality of capital" transcends and replaces the "personality of the person."

Based on this, the Western Leftist scholar Giorgio Agamben argues that within the logic of digital capitalist hegemony, the "identity-personality" of the human being is further reified (digitized), while the personality of the thing (capital) is further virtualized. Man has been reified from a "personality with identity" into an "impersonal identity," becoming a marginalized "other" within the modern capitalist spectacle. Agamben emphasizes that the original meaning of personality is the "identity" acquired by a human being within social relations; it is an intersubjective cultural and social recognition. However, in the era where modern digital technology colludes with capital, for the first time, a person's identity "no longer has the function of social 'personality' and recognition by others, but only a biological data function, which can have nothing to do with personality." In Agamben's view, humans in the era of digital capitalism are less human beings than they are "pure biological data," because digitization has thoroughly torn away the "social mask" and "relational identity" of the human, replacing them with a "false mask" woven from virtual imprints such as fingerprints, genetic codes, digital photographs, digital information, and electronic IDs. Within the modern capitalist community woven by digital-intelligent technology and capital power, "man falls once again into an animal-like state of non-human existence," manifested by humans constantly disguising themselves with false masks in the virtual digital field and continuously reducing their social identities, thereby constructing a rift between real identity and the digital mask (false identity). Agamben emphasizes that contemporary capitalism is "forging" embodied living people into the bare life of the "living dead" [6]; their lives are cast aside, leaving only a languageless body that has fallen into an animalistic existence, becoming the "contemporary homo sacer," and finally turning into an "impersonal identity." "The new impersonal identity confirms a kind of illusion; it is not a whole, but an infinitely multiplied mask. When an individual is reduced to a purely biological non-social identity, he is simultaneously endowed with the capacity to put on various masks, to lead a second or third life on the internet, even though none of this truly belongs to him." Therefore, in the networked and digitized relations constructed by digital capitalism, humans depend on the virtual spaces built by intelligent machines for interaction. Humans increasingly lose intimate relations, personal identity, and various forms of authentic possession, gradually turning into "virtual digital humans" under the identification of machines and the parsing of intelligence. In this sense, the confirmation of human existence relies more on the digital field because digital-intelligent machines record data on human activities and digital information, and it is through this that the human is not forgotten.

3. A Critique of Digitized Interaction: From "Independent Individuals" to "Singular Collectives"

Marx believed that capitalist relations of production were "the most developed social relations to date." Within these relations of production, humans establish "universal interaction" across ever-expanding communities or regions, and humans acquire "human independence based on objective dependence"—that is, humans possess independent interaction based on self-consciousness and construct relatively independent social relations. Especially in the highly developed commodity economy of capitalism, the fine division of labor makes humans independent "private producers," and buyers and sellers in commodity exchange both achieve mutual independence; at least on the surface, everyone can manifest their own power and individuality within this relationship. However, capitalist relations of production are, in the final analysis, a communal form where capital dominates and controls humans. Human independence is merely relative and temporary, whereas the independence of capital is absolute and permanent. "In bourgeois society, capital has independence and individuality, while the active individual has no independence and individuality." In other words, the independence of humans in capitalist relations of production is, ultimately, a "limited" independence under the domination of the independence of capital. In this relationship, "the mutual independence of individuals is supplemented by a system of all-round objective dependence."

The Western Leftist scholar Andreas Reckwitz argues that, unlike the independence of people in the era of industrial capitalism that Marx lived in, digital capitalism has accelerated the independence of human interaction, causing humans to move from "independent individuals" toward "singular collectives" [7]. Reckwitz argues that digital capitalism is a brand-new system of value valorization derived from the transition from mechanical to digital technology, and it catalyzes the singularization of humans with unprecedented depth and breadth. In a modern society paved by digital technology, what humans pursue is no longer the "universal" but the "unique." Humans hope to be outstanding and unique in the online world. Digitization continuously produces the "phenomenon of singularization"—that is, "the competitive individual images and social networks pursuing distinctiveness and attention, ranging from the tracking of users' 'digital footprints' to unique online social groups, to digital 'tribes' with their own worldviews; it includes all of these." How exactly should we understand "singularization"? Reckwitz emphasizes that digitization is singularization: "It is precisely the intensification of the logic of universality in the digital-algorithmic field that enables subjects, objects, and collectives to undergo singularization." In reality, the singularization of the human is the act of reproducing oneself in an "unconventional" form to obtain the attention and recognition of others on digital interfaces, hoping to deeply attract others to increase one's attention-share and obtain "value assignment." In social platforms and interfaces constructed mainly by digital capitalism, the self-shaping of the digital subject is the process of driving oneself to be singular from others. This is because if a digital subject wants to achieve "traffic armament" and "value assignment," it must manifest its own singularity (distinctiveness) in the competition for attention and assignment, shaping its own eccentricity and "individualized 'I'" according to the principle of individualization. Thus, in the virtual environment, they "continuously accumulate singularity capital to guarantee their status and recognition in the social game... only by being seen can social recognition be guaranteed, while not being seen means the death of the subject in the digital world. This is a fundamental principle of the society of singularities, and a fundamental consequence caused by the media technology of the society of singularities." Viewed this way, digital capitalism has actually swept humans into a whirlpool of virtualization and singularization, causing them to abandon universality and commonality to display heterogeneous activity characteristics on digital interfaces. These activity characteristics evolve into "commodities" in the market, constantly vying for visibility and assignment.

Therefore, Reckwitz emphasizes that digital capitalism not only manufactures human multi-facetedness but also facilitates the singularization of the collective. The singularization of the human is not the eccentricization of a single individual, but the singularization of the entire collective absorbed into the system of digital capitalism. Digital capitalism has constructed entirely new "social circles," and singularization is the "collective downfall" [8] produced within countless "social circles." In platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, whoever receives attention is likely to receive even more attention; people determine their own attention levels by means of visit counts, retweets, likes, and friend counts. In fact, links and likes are accelerating the singularization of the collective. In the interaction circles constructed mainly by digital capitalism, a few individuals obtain value assignment according to the "winner-take-all" rule, while the vast majority of people are reduced to the singular mass; their existence is not confirmed through a real identity. The "link" and "like" functions embedded in Facebook precisely illustrate the existence of the singular mass—that is, "I link, therefore I am" and "I like, therefore I am."

II. The Political-Economic Critique of the "New Alienation" of Humans under Digital Capitalism by the Western Left

Capitalism is the highest practical expression of human self-alienation. It causes human "de-realization," "externalization," and "reification," ultimately leading to "the alienation of man from man." The Western Left believes that in the digital age, humanity remains within the logic of alienation revealed by Marx. Far from escaping the control and exclusion of the human logic (labor) by the capital logic (capital), humanity is instead disciplined, squeezed, and overshadowed by the new empire and new spectacle constructed by digital capitalism. As Hardt and Negri have stated, contemporary capitalism has deeply intensified the contradiction between capital and labor: "Capital is increasingly becoming a machine for plundering the common, extracting the value produced by the common, and in this process creating various forms of suffering and destruction." The Western Left believes that the alienation of humans in the era of industrial capitalism was mainly manifested as physical alienation and labor alienation. However, in the era of digital capitalism, due to the dual screening of labor by digital capital and the deep monitoring of humans by intelligent algorithms, human digital activities are forcibly requisitioned by capital. Alienation penetrates into human interaction, spiritual life, and the realm of life itself, causing humans to become impoverished, marginalized, and granularized within the hegemonic logic of digital capital, gradually being reduced to the "digital poor," "surplus people," and "virtual granular people."

1. The Dual Screening of Digital Capital: The "Surplus" and "Uselessness" of Humans

The most core problem of capitalism is the contradiction between the logic of capital (capital) and the logic of the human (labor). As the two sides of the contradiction, the relationship between capital and labor can be expressed as capital absorbing labor or labor being subordinated to capital. In the Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863, Marx comprehensively examined the formal subsumption and real subsumption of labor to capital; Hardt and Negri refer to these as the formal and real subsumption of labor by capital. The former refers to the stage where capital extracts absolute surplus value and labor is formally dominated by capital; the latter refers to the stage where capital extracts relative surplus value, and due to the development of natural forces and technology and the "intervention" of machines, labor is subordinated to capital in an all-round way, with the human body, intelligence, and spirit all controlled by capital. The Western Left believes that digital capitalism is the universal realization of the real subsumption of labor by capital, a product of post-Fordist development, and the "empirical realization of Marx’s 'Fragment on Machines'." At this stage, capital has achieved intelligence, networking, and digitization, thereby invading human productive activity and daily life, penetrating human interaction, desire, intelligence, and emotion, and continuously screening, enclosing, and requisitioning human activity, rendering a segment of the population "surplus" and "useless."

First, from the perspective of things, the screening and requisitioning of technology by digital capital have caused a human "surplus." The Western Left believes that the process of capital accumulation in the digital age is the process of capital absorbing labor and screening technology (digital machines); it is the process of making "things" continuously valorize. In this process, the means of labor are continuously transformed into a system of digital machines, while living labor is transformed into a "mere appendage" of this machine system, becoming a "conscious organ" within the machine. Jodi Dean points out that in the virtual system constructed by current digital capitalism, digital capital still operates according to the laws of absorption and screening described by Marx. Especially in the production system woven by big data and artificial intelligence, "through the internet, through interaction between individuals and information technology, capitalism has found a more direct way to extract value." This is concentrated in the way digital capital penetrates into frontier fields such as intelligent production, biomedicine, financial transactions, and genetic engineering, continuously screening new technologies with powerful capital-valorizing potential and merging with them. Those who do not possess digital skills are reduced to "obsolete products" and the "expelled," becoming subaltern "others" in the data network and "marginalized people" excluded by digital capital. In frontier fields such as knowledge, skills, and social intelligence absorbed by digital capital, digital technology is incorporated into new modes of exploitation and accumulation by capital, and human labor in its independent form (physical labor) becomes "superfluous." Because humans are decoupled from the new technologies screened, entangled, and enclosed by digital capital, a large number of workers drift away from the field of digital capital hegemony, becoming "separated people" and "excluded people," ultimately falling into the "surplus people" of the power-law distribution [9] of the digital network—that is, "proletarianized people."

Second, from a human perspective, the selection and absorption of labor by digital capital has created a sense of human "uselessness." In capitalist production, the social form of human labor exists in two modes: the subjective and the objective. the former is the exertion of human conditions within the labor process, while the latter is the exertion of material (machine) conditions. "With the development of machine production, the conditions of labor also appear technologically as a power dominating labor; at the same time, they replace labor, oppress labor, and make the independent form of labor redundant." Based on this, the Western Left emphasizes that capital’s selection of the objective form of labor is "using machines to displace people," while its selection of the subjective form of labor is "using labor-power to displace labor-power." This selection of labor-power by capital incorporates one segment of the population into the system of capital valorization while plunging others into unemployment and poverty—that is, "the wealthiest become wealthier and more influential, while those lacking skills become poorer and more marginalized."

The current expansion and valorization process of digital capital is profoundly manifested in this selection and absorption of labor-power. On one hand, digital capital tries every possible means to absorb the intellectual elite, technical experts, and "intellectual superstars" who represent "general intellect" [10], while the majority of laborers are not "visited" by digital capital; they may ultimately degenerate into a "useless class." On the other hand, digital capital constantly filters the data generated by human activities, persistently digitizing daily life data such as social interaction, emotion, and experience. It assigns capitalized value to human words, deeds, and habits, ultimately incorporating physical movement, health, dietary habits, and consumption records into digital systems loaded with apps. Under this screening and requisitioning of human activity by digital capital, the individual seems to be transformed into a useless "object," while the data of human activity becomes the "raw material" of digital capital. This "data is a substance that is extracted, refined, and used in various ways. The more data there is, the more uses it has." Whoever possesses more data possesses stronger power of dominion. Conversely, those left behind after digital capital’s selection become "functionally stupid zombies" and "black holes of informational capitalism."

Third, from the perspective of consequences, the dual selection of both objects and people by digital capital has caused human "pauperization." In the capitalist production system, "the machine not only replaces living labor but also replaces the laborer and their manual tools." The Western Left believes that the current process of digital machines replacing labor is a process of dual selection by capital of both the subjective conditions (labor-power) and objective conditions (machines, etc.) of labor. The direct consequence of this replacement and selection is the "impoverishment of the worker," giving rise to "social entities engaged in cognitive labor"—the "information workers" who exist in a state of poverty, anxiety, and panic. Christian Fuchs emphasizes that in the era of digital production, digital capital—as the latest developmental form of fixed capital like machinery and the capitalized form of digital technology—commands laborers in an alienated and abstract manner. It absorbs users into digital interfaces and platforms, thereby giving rise to a precarious "informational lower-middle class" subsisting within digital capitalism and struggling for survival. They are the hidden "digital poor," the indisputably weak of the digital capitalist era. They do not own the digital means of production; instead, they exhaust their lives and time in virtual spaces, becoming a "mass of poor" dwelling within the edifice of digital capital. Accordingly, Jodi Dean points out that "these masses need to be understood in terms of the 'long tail' of power-law distributions—that is, the 99% versus the 1%." Within this, the 1% are the "superstars" at the top of the digital capital "food chain," while the 99% are the "masses at the bottom." The "digital poor" are those excluded and discarded by digital capital.

2. The Deep Control of Intelligent Algorithms: The Digitization and "Granularization" of the Human Being

The Western Left argues that in Marx’s era, the pinnacle of socio-technical development was "using machines to produce machines," but in the era of digital capitalism, the pinnacle is using intelligence to produce intelligence, algorithms to produce algorithms, and data to produce data. Within the spectacle of the global expansion of capitalism characterized by the deep control and surveillance of intelligent algorithms, the existential situation of modern humans has been inverted. Subjected to the deep control of intelligent machines and algorithms, humans increasingly resemble machines, while machines increasingly resemble humans.

On one hand, capital-driven intelligent algorithms cause the human subject to gradually extend into "Data Man" (shuju ren). Western Leftist scholars point out that in the production logic of digital capitalism, "algorithmic production" is the dominant form. Algorithms and surveillance have already become the core internal drivers for the valorization of digital capital. This means that digital capitalism incorporates the trajectories of individuals' daily lives, their desires and preferences, and their emotions into the scope of "surveillance," while the human being as a subject becomes the object of tracking, analysis, and monitoring by algorithmic technology. "In the logic of surveillance capitalism, there are no individuals, only organisms spanning the world and all the smallest elements therein." Byung-Chul Han, a Korean-German scholar, maintains a pessimistic view of surveillance capitalism in the digital age, noting that "Big Data can indeed perform control very effectively... the digital panopticon actually allows for 360-degree, all-around surveillance of every person within it." If it can be said that in the machine production system constructed by industrial capitalism, the human was an "appendage" of the machine—a "Tool Man"—then in the digital production system constructed by digital capitalism, the human is the "prey" of algorithmic surveillance—a "Data Man." "Data Man" is the result of the humanization of data and the digitization of humans; they are people parasitic upon a "servo-system" determined by surveillance, digitization, and behavioral control. They are the subjects of the reproduction of digital capitalism, individuals who succumb to the dominion of computational laws within the logic of digital production and are controlled by algorithms driven by digital capital. As some scholars have noted: "The fundamental purpose of digital capitalism lies in the continuous production of 'Data People,' making them suitable objects for algorithmic governance." Within the boundaries of digital capitalism, algorithms and digital capital together absorb real humans as "objects of domination and control," reducing them to abstract data-people without biological life—a "cyborg-style" "fake person." They are "a hybrid of machine and organism that constantly traverses the boundaries between material and immaterial labor."

On the other hand, capital-driven intelligent algorithms cause the human subject to gradually degrade into "Granular Man" (weili ren). The Western Left emphasizes that in capitalist relations of production, humans become "one-sided" or "one-dimensional" due to the domination and control of objects (or capital). Today, within the sphere of digital capitalism, humans have changed from "one-dimensional men" [11] into "granular men" due to the manipulation of intelligent objects, digital capital, and algorithms. "Granular Man" is the digitized form of the human produced by the surveillance, identification, and analysis of digitized procedural algorithms; it is the human being captured and highly resolved by digital algorithmic technology. Christoph Kucklick points out in The Granular Society that "due to the development of the digitization process, we are all stepping into a finely resolved society." It is precisely because of the large-scale requisitioning of intelligent machines by digital capital that the modern world is "analyzed" to the maximum extent by intelligent algorithms. People dwelling within it work alongside digital machines and "will be unable to understand themselves without the help of machines." If "Tool Man" represents the debasement of human development by the collusion of machines and capital, then "Granular Man" represents the digital "disassembly" of the human by capital-driven intelligent algorithms—that is, the use of digital mapping technology to perform precise identification or procedural encoding of human physical organs, character preferences, health indices, movement trajectories, and life consumption, making them digital life-forms that can be clearly distinguished, calculated, and evaluated through data sets. In this sense, some scholars believe that intelligent algorithms have swept humanity into an unceasing world of "24/7 capitalism," in which human individuals are transformed, beautified, simulated, and constructed by intelligent technology. Humanity has entered a "post-human" era; at this stage, humans are no longer purely natural or biological beings, "but rather a kind of 'artificial human' formed through technical processing or electronic and informational effects."

3. The Forced Requisitioning of Digital Activities: The Reification of Human Intellect and Spiritual Alienation

Humans are conscious active beings; "conscious life-activity distinguishes man immediately from animal life-activity." The free and conscious activity of humans marks their subjectivity and is the foundation of human existence. The Western Left argues that in the digital age, human activity extends from the "real field" to "virtual scenarios," and people’s "wishes, cravings, dreams, and oppressions are all infected by informational elements." Particularly within the domain of digital capitalism, with the acceleration and capitalization of human social activities, human creativity and intellectual activity are forcibly requisitioned by capital, and human emotions, spirit, and social activities undergo alienation once again.

First, digital capital requisitions human intellectual activity, causing the continuous reification of human intellect and creativity. The Western Left believes that in the production system driven by digital capital, human intellect and creativity become the primary internal drivers for the valorization of digital capital. The production of digital capital is, in the final analysis, "immaterial production" dominated by intellect and creativity. In this relation of production, traditional labor-power is "increasingly replaced by the intellectualized and immaterialized labor power of the communicative sphere," and human intellect and creativity are subject to the forced requisition and dominion of digital capital. Unlike industrial capitalism, which exploited human physical labor and caused its alienation, digital capitalism exploits not only physical labor but also intellectual and creative activities. Yann Moulier-Boutang points out that contemporary capitalism features two levels of exploitation: Level I is the exploitation of physical labor by capital, and Level II is the exploitation of intellect and creativity, and "these two forms of exploitation can coexist in the same activity." Digital capitalism is an accumulation model dominated by the requisitioning and exploitation of human intellect and creativity. In this model, as long as a person "acts" within the interface constructed by digital capital, their intellectual activities (online games, entertainment, leisure) will be requisitioned, encoded, and assigned value, and the results of their activities (data, etc.) become a reified existence independent of them.

Second, digital capital infects human emotional activity, causing the alienation of human emotions and spiritual activities. Moods, emotions, and desires are the instinctive existence of human beings, but under the inducement of digital technology and capital, these elements are also deeply manipulated. Human "emotional activity" gradually evolves into "affective labor" [12] within digital interfaces. "This labor is immaterial, even if it is collective and affective, because its product is intangible—a feeling that includes relaxation, happiness, satisfaction, excitement, or agitation." Within the realm of digital capitalism, social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have constructed "friend circle" style interaction models, realizing the self-expression of the audience's emotions; users can vent their feelings, record their moods, share joy, and even attract followers (traffic) or express "fan emotions." This emotional interaction is no longer a value-less instinctive interaction; rather, it is an activity manipulated by digital capital that is capable of creating economic value. "In the era of digital capitalism, billions of people use Facebook, Google, Twitter, Weibo, iPhones, music players, online banking, online news sites, and other media in work, politics, and daily life"—all of which are the sites where human affective labor occurs. In the affective labor of the digital interface, individuals seemingly obtain unlimited channels for the autonomous expression of emotion, but these channels are gray passages through which digital capital—for the sake of valorization—incorporates human moods, emotions, desires, attention, and other subjective elements into a "system of digital colonization." In this process, capital monitors and utilizes these subjective factors to achieve total control over the human spiritual world.

Finally, digital technology quantifies human communicative activities, making interpersonal relationships increasingly "out of control." Digital communication is a major manifestation of current human praxis; this type of interaction is a "virtual communication" that degrades real human communicative relations, causing social relations to be gradually replaced by illusory ones. Currently, "digitalization controls the world as never before. The distance between the world and us is just a couple of swipes on a screen." Rosa emphasizes that to us, the entire world seems visible at a glance and fully controllable through smartphones and search engines; even human bodily indices (blood pressure, heartbeat, steps, blood sugar, sleep duration, etc.) can be "controlled 24/7" via smart bracelets. Paradoxically, however, people's real communicative activities today have become increasingly "out of control." This is because the more people expand their interactions within digital interfaces, the more they narrow their real relationships; the richer their digital relationship interactions, the more impoverished their real-world relationships become; the more they emphasize the shaping of "digital body" interactions, the more they depend on them. In the digital age, people construct their virtual selves every day, browsing the online virtual world to engage in communication and enrich their spiritual lives. However, once people detach from their virtual selves and leave the digital world, feelings of loneliness and anxiety arise spontaneously or even multiply. The more one constructs the self in the digital world, the more one depends on it; the richer one's digital world is, the more lonely, empty, and devoid of familial affection one feels upon leaving it, feeling increasingly rejected by the masses. "The day-and-night work we face in contemporary society is rarely pleasant; it often makes one feel bored and monotonous, even painful and tormented. Work in capitalist society repeats day after day, like a prison enslaving our strength; it steals our time, and the remaining leisure time seems only to make us feel passive and powerless." Today, as people "post more authentic self-expressions and participate in more interpersonal interactions in the virtual world, they will become more reified, and thus more alienated. Viewed from another perspective, the more they labor and the more surplus value they create, the deeper the degree of their exploitation becomes." Therefore, the alienation of humans in the era of digital capitalism has expanded into the alienation of digital communicative relations and the alienation of the human mind and spirit.

III. Enlightenment for China from the Western Left’s Critique of the "New Alienation" of Humans under Digital Capitalism

With great theoretical courage, the Western Left has conducted critiques of the "new alienation" of humans under digital capitalism from the perspectives of philosophical ontology and political economy. They have revealed the existential predicament and real-world situation of human beings within the hegemonic logic of Western digital capitalism, writing, to a certain extent, a "new chapter" in Marx’s theory of the critique of alienated labor. However, the analysis and critique of the human existential predicament by Western Leftist scholars has neither transcended Marx’s logic of critique nor delved deeply into the "contest" between the logic of capital and the logic of humanity in the digital age. In contemporary China, our Party has successfully advanced and expanded Chinese-path modernization. This modernization has successfully resolved the paradox between the "logic of capital" and the "logic of humanity." It has both activated the "civilizing aspect of capital" and effectively promoted "human development," forging a new path of synergistically "promoting the comprehensive abundance of material goods and the well-rounded development of people," effectively evading the "alienation" caused by digital capitalism to human development. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized in the report to the 20th National Congress of the CPC that we must "accelerate the development of the digital economy, promote the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, and create digital industry clusters with international competitiveness." Facing the future, in the process of building a "Digital China" and developing the "digital economy," we must actively respond to the challenges digital capital poses to human development. We should return to the classic domain of Marx’s critique of capitalism and, combined with the "new context" of the Western Left’s critique of digital capitalism, actively explore ways to effectively evade the "new alienation" of humans in the digital age, thereby promoting the free and well-rounded development of people within the practice of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

  1. Persist in Putting the People First: Using the Logic of Human Labor to Harness the Logic of Digital Capital

Western Leftist scholars have seen the challenges digital capitalism poses to human existence and analyzed the manifestations of "new alienation" within the sphere of digital capitalism. However, they have not found a feasible path to break the control and suppression of humans by digital capital. They remain at the level of symptomatic analysis and pessimistic outcry regarding wealth polarization, class antagonism, and social fragmentation in Western society during the digital age, failing to find the path to sublate [13] "new alienation." Even as Rosa proposed the "Resonance Theory" to sublate alienation within the "acceleration society," he overlooked the self-valorizing nature of the logic of digital capital. In fact, Marx long ago pointed out that "Communism is the positive sublation of private property as human self-alienation, and therefore is the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man." It must be said that within the hegemonic logic of digital capitalism, the chief culprit of "new alienation" remains the logic of capital and the expansion of digital technology under its control. Therefore, to sublate human alienation and promote human liberation and well-rounded development within the logic of digital capital, we must persist in putting the people first and promote the logic of human labor.

First, persisting in putting the people first means persisting in the logic of human labor. Capitalist production is production where capital drives labor. In this production, capital is the subject and labor is the predicate; capital is the end and labor is the means; capital is the ruler and labor is the dependent. "The purpose of capitalist production (and therefore the purpose of productive labor) is not the survival of the producer, but the production of surplus value." In production dominated by the logic of capital, a severe rupture between capital and labor occurs, resulting in the humanization of capital and the reification of humans, the valorization of capital and the devaluation of labor, and the opulence of capital and the poverty of labor. To break the "alienation" of humans within the sphere of the logic of capital, it is necessary to carry out a "complete economic revolution" against capitalism, liberating and developing humans from the logic of capital, and ultimately reshaping the logic of human labor. In Marx's view, the most direct path to sublating human alienation is to abolish the enslavement of labor by capital, "to transform capital into common property, belonging to all members of society," and finally to make the logic of human labor the dominant logic of social production. In contemporary China, we always persist in putting the people first and persist in the logic of human labor.

Second, using the logic of human labor to harness the logic of digital capital. The logic of digital capital is fundamentally a development mode that elevates "thingness" and devalues "humanity." It takes digital capital as the supreme existence and treats humans as appendages and tools of capital, reversing the "subject-object" relationship between humans and capital. Conversely, the logic of human labor is a development mode that transcends the logic of digital capital. It constructs labor and lifestyles belonging to humans in the digital age around the existential situation, shared destiny, and individual freedom of contemporary people. It promotes human subjectivity in the digital age, treats human development as the goal of digital technological progress, and focuses on solving the common dilemmas faced by humanity in the digital age. Marx pointed out: "The whole of history is a preparation, a development, for ‘man’ to become the object of sensuous consciousness and for the needs of ‘man as man’ to become needs." In the digital age, persisting in the logic of human labor means taking human intellectual labor and creative activities as factors of value creation, respecting the subjective status and creative spirit of humans in digital production. It is the "logic of goodness" inherent in historical laws—a value logic that conforms to human nature and promotes human existence and development. Persisting in using the logic of human labor to harness the logic of digital capital in the digital age means persisting in the supremacy of labor and life, letting "productive labor offer every individual the opportunity to develop and exercise all their faculties, physical and mental, in all directions," ensuring that digital labor is not enslaved by digital capital but instead becomes a means of liberating humanity.

Third, setting limits for digital capital and constructing a distribution mechanism that conforms to the logic of human labor. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "To promote the healthy development of the digital economy, we must persist in both promoting development and regulating it with a firm hand—regulating in development and developing in regulation." Currently, to restrain the enclosure [14] of human labor by the logic of digital capital, it is necessary to set limits for digital capital. Specifically, within digital relations of production, "traffic lights" should be set for digital capital according to ownership principles to prevent digital platform monopolies and the disorderly expansion of digital capital. At the same time, we must continuously improve the property rights of digital labor, construct basic data systems, establish and improve data rights confirmation mechanisms, and clarify the rights of possession and use for data. We must clarify the status of different subjects such as data users, digital enterprises, and digital technicians, and construct a distribution mechanism based on data factors. For example, we should persist in constructing the subjective principle of digital labor through "human-centered priority," emphasizing the subjective status of "living labor" in human-computer interactive labor, digital wage labor, or digital free labor, and constructing a distribution-according-to-work mechanism under the human-centered principle. Furthermore, we must persist in the "equal possession" to construct the ownership principle of digital labor. In digital relations of production, there are both owners of digital means of production and digital laborers. We should explore the principle of equality for data factors participating in income distribution according to these two types of subjects, persisting in the simultaneous implementation of equal possession of digital means of production and distribution according to work for digital products.

  1. Constructing a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace: Regulating the Digital Capital Community with a True Community

In a society dominated by the logic of capital, "capital is the acknowledged universal generality and power of the community." In the era of digital production, digital capitalism degrades the relationship between people into a relationship between virtual objects, taking the valorization of digital capital as the goal and demoting human subjectivity to a means, causing human relationships to extend from reality into virtuality. Marx pointed out: "The human essence is the true community of man." But within the sphere of digital capitalism, humans gradually become detached from their true communal essence and their real existing communal relationships, becoming people within a virtual community. Erich Fromm once said: "The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots." People in the digital age have not become "robots," but they are permeated with virtuality, digitalization, and maskedness, becoming living "fake persons" dwelling in virtual communities. These "fake persons," stamped with digital labels, are entirely the result of the alliance between digital technology and capital. Currently, "in the digital age of 'globalization,' there is an increasing decoupling between social proximity and physical proximity." Human feelings of closeness and empathy are gradually "fading," and human real-space positions and time sequences are becoming "disembedded" within digital virtual communities. In virtual communities, people obey data and games, becoming makers of and dependents on virtual reality or data. It can be said that the current "flood of precise information and the popularity of dull games, while improving human intellect, also make people more foolish." Therefore, sublating the alienation of humans within the sphere of digital capitalism requires continuously regulating the virtual communities formed by digitalization, allowing humans to return to true communal relationships. We must use true communal relationships as a guide to regulate the communicative institutions, ethics, and culture of virtual communities. Marx believed that the essence of human social relations constitutes the core of the human essence; the goal of human development and liberation is to construct "human society or socialized humanity." This goal is the key to guiding human development today. To sublate human alienation in the digital age, we must follow the path of human liberation envisioned by Marx, continuously transcending the "encirclement" of human development space by digital capitalism. Guided by Marx’s concepts of the "true community" and the "association of free individuals," we must continuously transcend the negative effects of "virtual reality," "endeavor to promote the building of a community with a shared future in cyberspace," and allow "man to appropriate his comprehensive essence in a comprehensive manner, that is to say, as a whole man."

  1. Persisting in the Public Ownership of Digital Means of Production: Bridging the "Digital Divide" through Data Commonality and Sharing

Within the capitalist mode of production, the most typical manifestation of the alienation of man is the alienation of human labor, which is marked by the rule of private property over the human being. Marx believed that "the positive transcendence of private property, as the appropriation of human life, is the positive transcendence of all alienation." Similarly, within the domain of digital capitalism, the alienation of man is, in the final analysis, the capitalization and privatization of human activity relations, human digital products, and human digital property. Specifically, in the domain dominated by digital capital, the privatization of digital means of production and the capitalization of human digital activities have widened the development gap between people, thereby giving rise to the "digital divide." The "digital divide" is a new phenomenon of inequality created by digital capitalism; it is a global information gap, an inequality of digital knowledge, and a data deficit. From a more macro perspective, "the digital divide refers to the gap in social power regarding the formulation of policies for the production and distribution of information resources." In practice, digital capitalism is leading humanity toward an outright digital imperialism, which has profoundly altered the pattern of appropriation of digital technology, further widened the development gap between nations, and triggered new divisions and contradictions on a global scale. It can be said that digital capitalism is suffused with inequality and injustice due to the private appropriation of digital means of production, and it keeps humanity deep within the shackles of capital due to its inherent new logic of exploitation. To this end, to transcend digital alienation and bridge the digital divide, we must return to the public ownership of the means of production advocated by Marx, and promote and activate communism in the digital age, "replacing the logic of capital with the logic of socialization, and transforming digital labor into digital work." To transcend the alienation of man in the domain of digital capitalism is to persist in bridging the "digital divide" through the common ownership and sharing of data, to effectively suppress the privatization and capitalization of public data, and to evade the social injustice caused by digital technological monopolies and data cornering.

General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that we must "promote the implementation of the National Big Data Strategy, accelerate the improvement of digital infrastructure, advance the integration and open sharing of data resources, ensure data security, accelerate the construction of a Digital China, and better serve our country's economic and social development and the improvement of the people's lives." In the development of contemporary China's digital economy, we consistently adhere to the principle of sharing, constructing and perfecting a digital sharing mechanism under the people-centered principle. We cultivate a value chain of shared interests in the digital era, promote value compensation for "private data" and the co-management and sharing of "public data," and actively explore institutional mechanisms for data elements to participate in distribution, providing a brand-new Chinese solution for humanity to break free from the constraints of digital capital. In summary, under the guidance of the strategic goal of achieving common prosperity in the New Era, contemporary China continues to stimulate the vitality of the digital economy, narrow the distribution gap in digital labor, and promote the healthy and orderly development of the digital economy. This has effectively suppressed digital capital's enclosure [15] of human production and life, laying a new roadbed for the transcendence of human alienation and the attainment of the "human society" envisioned by Marx.