Li Caiyan: The New Industrial Revolution and the Development of 21st Century Socialism
The new industrial revolution began at the end of the 20th century as a continuation of the third industrial revolution, and is thus also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Driven by intelligence, networking, and digitalization as its core forces, and based on the fundamental concepts of highly efficient personalized custom production and services, it primarily exhibits the following characteristics: First, deeper digital technologies, with levels of digitalization and informatization higher than the third industrial revolution, stronger computing power, and exponential innovative growth. Second, a trend toward integrated development, where the physical, digital, and biological spheres deeply converge; new phenomena such as autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing, the Internet of Things (IoT), automatic identification, and human-computer conversation will become ubiquitous in daily life. Third, the power to trigger systemic economic and social transformations in all countries, promoting smart factories and the customization of product manufacturing, catalyzing entirely new economic and organizational structures, and facilitating the adjustment and self-reinvention of government operations. A review of the history of socialist development reveals that every industrial revolution and the development of socialism have mutually reinforced and driven one another. Currently, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by the application of information technologies such as AI, big data, and cloud computing, has commenced globally. It has driven exponential growth and disruptive transformation in the social productive forces, thereby altering people's modes of production and lifestyles and influencing the class and social structures of contemporary society. How to understand these changes and challenges is a theoretical and practical issue worthy of in-depth study. This article places the development of 21st-century socialism upon the "realistic foundation of the new industrial revolution," analyzing new situations and changes in the development of social productive forces, the subjectivity of the working class, the association of the proletariat, and the free and well-rounded development of individuals.
I. Exponential Growth of Social Productive Forces and Global Polarization of Wealth
Science and technology have long been a powerful force driving the transformation of productive forces. The new industrial revolution, with big data, cloud computing, the IoT, and blockchain as its core technologies, has brought about exponential growth in productive forces. Statistical estimates from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) show that from 2012 to 2021, the scale of China’s digital economy grew from 11 trillion yuan to over 45 trillion yuan; its share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose from 21.60% to 39.80%, with an average annual growth rate as high as 15.90%. According to estimates by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), the scale of China's digital economy rose to approximately 50 trillion yuan in 2022, a year-on-year increase of about 10%, accounting for over 41% of GDP. According to predictions by the renowned American consulting firm PwC, by 2030, AI will increase global economic growth by at least 14%, approximately $15.7 trillion—more than the current combined GDP of China and India. Clearly, the digital economy has become a new engine for economic development. Although new technologies like blockchain are still in their infancy, their role in boosting the economy is already unprecedentedly immense.
Despite the digital economy significantly elevating the development of productive forces and increasing the total volume of material wealth, the fruits of its development have not benefited everyone. Instead, they have produced a "digital divide"—that is, an information gap and a further widening of the wealth gap between different countries, regions, industries, and groups during the global digitalization process, caused by differing levels of ownership, application, and innovative capacity regarding information and network technologies. This polarization is mainly reflected in the vast divide between the so-called "core countries" led by developed capitalist nations and developing countries, as well as the massive wealth disparity within Western capitalist nations themselves. On a global scale, the "new economy" that uses information technology and knowledge to create value is a "rich-country phenomenon." Although digital technology is spreading rapidly in developing countries, the gap in its promotion and application persists; many developing nations, especially underdeveloped countries and regions, are unable to catch the "express train" of the digital economy. Meanwhile, developed countries, by virtue of their dominant positions in global industrial chains, have become the greatest beneficiaries of technological progress, and the global gulf between the rich and the poor has further widened.
The "digital divide" also shockingly exists within Western developed countries. With the support of digital technology, monopoly capitalism has entered the stage of digital capitalism, where capitalists use digital technology to intensify the exploitation of the working class. The technological monopoly generated by the global communications revolution, combined with the currently dominant Wall Street financial capital aimed at creating investment assets, constitutes the contemporary "1%." Social wealth in the United States is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few; the wealth gap is worsening and accelerating its bifurcation—a phenomenon some Western scholars call the "winner-take-all economy." The 99% are increasingly reduced to the impoverished strata of society, the proportion of the middle class is visibly shrinking, and the "sense of deprivation" among the lower and middle classes is intensifying. The wealthiest 1% of American households own nearly 40% of the total social wealth, while the bottom 80% own only 16%. With the decline of the middle class and the disappearance of its balancing role in social and political life, Western society has formed a severe antagonism between the wealthiest 1% and the 99% with low incomes. As Marx pointed out in the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association: "Everywhere the great mass of the working classes were sinking down to a lower depth, at the same rate at least that those above them were rising in the social scale."
II. The "Precariatization" of the Proletariat and the Subjective Responsibility for Social Transformation
The new technological revolution has triggered a disruptive transformation in the social mode of production. Under its influence, the instruments of labor have evolved from machine systems into cyber-physical systems, the objects of labor from material goods into massive datasets, the subjects of labor from industrial workers into digital laborers, and the mode of social combination from the "assembly line" to the "online gig." Under these changes, can the working class still shoulder the subjective responsibility for transforming society?
(1) The working class remains the subjective force for social transformation in the digital age
In the information age, traditional industrial workers have shrunk significantly and been replaced by digital employees. They are characterized by a diversification of the nature of their work and ideological conditions, the decentralization of workplaces, and a "fluid" state of work and life. The American leftist scholar Judith Butler argues that the digital age places ordinary people at the bottom of society—whether in work or life, income or consumption—in a state of high precariousness. Their lives are precarious, becoming the most vulnerable of lives, existing in a state of flux and instability. The British economist Guy Standing synthesized Butler's concept of precariousness with Marx’s concept of the "proletariat" to coin a new term—the "precariat," specifically referring to this new proletariat living in a state of uncertainty [1]. Unlike the traditional working class, the precariat does not have a stable employment relationship with employers; their income comes from accidental opportunities scattered throughout cyberspace and social space.
Some Western scholars argue that the shrinkage of the traditional proletariat means it can no longer undertake the role of the primary subject of social transformation, and they thus advocate for a plurality of subjects. For instance, the Spanish sociologist José Félix Tezanos suggests that the 21st-century socialist movement must overcome the idea that "the revolution has only one subject" and realize a transition from "the theory of a single revolutionary subject to a plurality of socialist subjects." The Russian scholar V.M. Mezhuyev believes that the subjective force for social transformation is the "new middle class," a group characterized by high education levels and the ability to continuously improve themselves.
In fact, whether it is the "precariat" or the "new middle class," their class attribute remains the working class. Changes in the mode of production only alter their employment patterns; they cannot change their proletarian status as people who do not own the means of production and who are exploited and oppressed. Marx and Engels provided a clear definition of the working class. Marx pointed out: "By 'proletarian' must be understood in the economic sense nothing but the wage-laborer who produces and increases 'capital'." Engels also stated: "The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital." It can be seen that Marx and Engels defined the working class from the perspective of the ownership relations of the means of production, rather than the form of labor. Based on this standard, one finds that although changes in the mode of production in the digital age have caused major shifts in the content and form of laborers' work, they still fall within the category of the working class. Digital labor is, in essence, still labor that gathers workers with different labor capacities to perform production. Laborers are the "living machines" producing digital products, and capitalists extract surplus value from the digital labor of workers. The exploitative nature of digital labor exists in an even more concealed manner. Therefore, Marx's analysis of class relations in capitalist society is not obsolete; the working class remains the subjective force for social transformation.
(2) The intensification of class contradictions in the digital age drives the awakening of proletarian subjective consciousness
In the digital age, laborers have closer links with socio-economic activities on a global scale. The types and levels of exploitation have broken through traditional limits, and the "winner-take-all" characteristic of the digital economy has made the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie more prominent. The technological bias generated by the digitalization of the production process will not only further intensify labor-capital contradictions but also lead to the simultaneous "marginalization" and "core-ization" of the laboring strata, with the degree of "job hollowing" continuously increasing. On the one hand, the development and application of computers, particularly AI technology, have allowed smart systems to replace a large amount of low-skill, highly repetitive labor. The survival space for low-end labor is being greatly squeezed, leading to its continuous "marginalization" in the job market. On the other hand, the new industrial revolution has made human characteristics such as creativity, adaptability, and wisdom increasingly "central" in smart factories; "elite" workers who possess advanced knowledge and technology will become the darlings of the job market. However, they constitute only a relatively small portion of the entire working class; most ordinary workers, under the impact of smart technology, are relegated to the industrial reserve army. According to estimates by American scholars, by 2025, automation may cause 47% of jobs in the United States to disappear. This further verifies Marx’s discourse on the "industrial reserve army": the greater the scale of social wealth accumulation, the larger the relative surplus population and industrial reserve army, and "the larger is the orphan-layer of the working class, whose pauperism is in inverse proportion to its torment of fortune. Finally, the more extensive the pauper-layer of the working class and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation." Furthermore, under the impact of the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, a portion of the middle class has been forced back into the ranks of the working class, expanding the working class to a certain extent. Some American leftist scholars believe that the current US class structure exhibits a "double-diamond" characteristic. The "small diamond" at the top represents the privileged class, accounting for 20% of the total population, composed of capital owners, employers, and a small portion of the intellectual elite. The "large diamond" at the bottom represents the 80% "new working class," composed of the "comfortable class," the precariat, and the excluded class. A huge income gap exists between the top and the bottom and continues to expand. The 80% in the lower class have very few opportunities for upward mobility.
Whether the working class can shoulder the heavy responsibility of social transformation depends not only on its scale, but more importantly on whether it possesses a clear class consciousness. The class consciousness of the working class is primarily reflected in an explicit recognition of its own social status and the historical mission it bears. The increasingly severe contradictions between labor and capital in the digital age have become the root cause of conflict and instability in capitalist society, nurturing new opportunities for the revival of proletarian class consciousness. In recent years, labor movements in various Western countries, which had been in a state of dormancy, have shown signs of resurgence. Various mass protest movements have reached their peak since the Second World War in terms of scale, frequency, and intensity—such as the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, the "Democracy Spring" movement, and anti-racism movements in the United States; the "Nuit debout" [2] and "Yellow Vests" movements in France; and the national strike in India involving over 250 million workers and citizens. From the slogans and demands shouted by the protesters, it is evident that they have recognized that the cause of their current predicament is not any specific regulation or bill, but the entire ruling bourgeoisie. For instance, in "Occupy Wall Street," demonstrators shouted the slogan, "We are the 99%, we will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." The "Democracy Spring" movement directed its spearhead squarely at hypocritical capitalist democracy and so-called "freedom of the press," raising the resonant slogan to "Take back our long-lost democracy."
III. The Development of Digital Technology and the Association of the Working Class
Marxism holds that the association of the working class is the only path for socialism to achieve ultimate victory. The development of the internet and new media technologies has greatly shortened the spatial and temporal distance between people; their timeliness and convenience provide powerful technical support for strengthening the united struggle of the working class. During the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, traditional media outlets dominated by the bourgeoisie—such as newspapers, radio, and television—consistently marginalized this massive mass movement. Consequently, protesters bypassed traditional media and turned to new media such as mobile phones and the internet. The organization and mobilization of "Occupy Wall Street" relied almost entirely on the network; social media and smartphones provided technical support for the timely publication and dissemination of information related to the "Occupy" movement. Organizers first used the internet and mobile communications to post discussion topics to gain supporters and issue calls for collective action. As the movement unfolded, they gradually established official websites as platforms for organizational coordination, such as "We are the 99%," "Occupy Together," and the "New York City General Assembly." Throughout the movement, information was disseminated globally through social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, using methods such as uploading photos, real-time status updates, videos, opinion polls, and news stories to expand their influence. The 2018 "Yellow Vests" movement in France also fully utilized social new media to express dissatisfaction with fuel tax increases, unfair taxation, government inefficiency, and corruption. Everything from online discussions to the assembly, implementation, and planning of offline protest actions was completed through social media.
At the same time, however, changes in the social modes of production and lifestyles in the digital age have intensified the fragmentation of the working class, posing new challenges to its association. First, digital economic organizational forms have decentralized working-class workplaces and diversified ideological perspectives. It is difficult for workers to form relatively stable cooperative relationships, which is detrimental to establishing effective associations. Second, the era of digital capitalism has further strengthened individualism. Although information technology has made communication more convenient, real-world connections between people have not been strengthened, but rather weakened. What is fed back from the internet and smartphones is only a "mapping" of individual will, rather than authentic social relations. This situation makes it more difficult for the working class to unite into a whole in the process of resisting capitalist rule. Third, the "digital divide" between countries and regions has led to a further widening of the wealth gap between developed and developing countries. The gaps in income, living standards, and ideology among the working classes of different nations have expanded accordingly, which is unconducive to mutual understanding and transnational association. Fourth, bolstered by digital technology, capital finds it easier to seek low-cost labor globally to obtain higher profits. Competition among workers has become more intense, thereby exacerbating contradictions between the working classes of different countries, especially between those in developed and developing countries. The recent trend of de-globalization in Western countries is, to a large extent, caused by the intensification of this contradiction.
The association of the proletariat is an inevitable requirement for the working class to oppose bourgeois exploitation and oppression and to achieve the liberation of themselves and all humanity. Whether the proletariat in the digital age can make good use of the advantages of digital tools to open a new phase of class association under new historical conditions fundamentally depends on whether they have scientific theoretical armament and effective organizational strength. Marxist ideas on class association remain the fundamental guidance for promoting the united struggle of the proletariat.
IV. The Application of AI Technology and the Free and Comprehensive Development of Individuals
The wide application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is changing and shaping the ways people interact and act at a speed unparalleled by any other science or technology, exerting a huge impact on individuals. On the one hand, the extensive use of AI further liberates people from heavy, monotonous, and repetitive labor, providing more free time for self-improvement and study. This enables people to engage in more interesting and creative work, promoting the free and comprehensive development of individuals. On the other hand, AI technology is leading to a "new alienation" of human beings. As the entire society becomes more intelligent, humans are becoming "appendants" to a vast and complex intelligent social system. If the Industrial Revolution from the 1760s to the mid-19th century primarily "liberated" human physical strength through machines, then the information and intelligence revolutions since the 1970s, and particularly the 21st century, "liberate" human brainpower. In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, Marx profoundly exposed the alienation of humans by machines: "Labor substitutes machines for manual work, but it throws a section of the workers back into a barbarous type of labor, and it turns the other section into a machine. It produces intelligence, but for the worker, idiocy and cretinism." Entering the intelligent era of the 21st century, the alienated condition of "humans becoming machines" and becoming increasingly "idiotic and cretinous" is showing an "upgraded" trend. A clear trend is that intelligent machines are not only replacing humans in mechanical and repetitive tasks, but are also increasingly used in highly creative industries such as traffic police, judges, lawyers, teachers, and painters. Unmanned driving, "dark factories" (unmanned factories), unmanned stores, and unmanned banks are booming. Labor and work are no longer the "monopoly" or the unique essential activity of human beings. As is well known, "labor created man," and it is through labor that humans "become human." Labor is the mode of human existence and the active confirmation of human essential power; it is also a sacred human right and an essential activity for self-affirmation, value realization, and dignity maintenance. In the communist society predicted by Marx, labor is "not only a means of life, but life's prime want." However, in an intelligent society, some people are constantly excluded and replaced by intelligent systems, losing opportunities for and the value of labor. They are marginalized and discarded by the economic and social systems, losing the meaning of life as their existence becomes nihilistic and absurd.
It is worth reflecting: Is the comprehensive digitalization represented by AI and the Metaverse truly the direction for human progress? Does digital technology empowerment bring humans closer to the goal of free and comprehensive development, or the opposite? How can science and technology truly become a booster for achieving the free and comprehensive development of humanity?
Science and technology themselves do not have a value stance; the key lies in how they are applied. Although the new industrial revolution poses certain challenges to the development of world socialism, the planned nature, sharing, and fairness inherent in socialism also possess a certain degree of connectivity and adaptability to the new industrial revolution. On the basis of promoting the development of productive forces and the transformation of the mode of production, the new industrial revolution can also promote the new development of world socialism.
First, the wide use of the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data will greatly improve the scientific nature of the planned economy, effectively supplementing the blindness and lag of market resource allocation, and promoting the healthy and orderly development of the socialist market economy. Planning and the market are the two basic means of resource allocation. To solve the problem of anarchy in the capitalist free economy, Marx and Engels proposed the idea of organizing social production according to a plan. The planned economy was once regarded as the basic economic form of socialism and became a major reason for supporters of free-market economic theory to oppose socialism. In their view, it was impossible to collect, organize, screen, and calculate the massive amount of information for an entire society. However, the wide application of the modern internet, IoT, and AI technology provides the possibility to solve this problem. Relying on the powerful statistical and predictive functions of big data and cloud computing, the advantages of planning and foresight in a planned economy will be fully highlighted, effectively overcoming the blindness and lag of market resource allocation. Utilizing big data and AI can more fully exert the guiding role of a "promising" government [3], promoting a more scientific and efficient development of the socialist market economy.
Second, socialism can overcome technical paradoxes, bridge the "digital divide," and promote social equity by transforming the relations of production. The profit-seeking nature of capital determines that technological progress and the development of productive forces in capitalist countries, rather than improving the living standards of laborers, exacerbate the disparity between rich and poor and the class contradictions between capitalists and workers. Common prosperity is an essential requirement of socialism. Socialism can utilize its institutional advantages to allow the fruits of productive forces brought by science and technology to benefit more people, narrowing the wealth gap, promoting social equity, and ultimately achieving common prosperity.
Third, the sharing and universal characteristics of internet technology are highly consistent with the value pursuits of socialism. A prominent feature of the digital age is that various types of information can be shared through the internet; knowledge and information can quickly become common to the collective and the society. However, monopoly capital often artificially controls information resources for the benefit of individuals or groups, hindering technological progress and thus intensifying the contradictions between the productive forces and the relations of production, and between the economic base and the superstructure. As the Dutch scholar Kees van der Pijl stated, from a technical perspective, new productive forces should move the world toward a more humane society, but the various strategies currently being implemented are forcing them back into the "straitjacket" of capitalism. The socialist pursuit of collective values is highly compatible with the universality and sharing nature of information technology. Under socialist conditions, the unifications of technological innovation and benefit sharing, and the benign interaction between productive forces and relations of production, can be achieved.
V. Conclusion
Like the three previous industrial revolutions, the fourth industrial revolution will certainly bring new opportunities for the development of socialism. The wide use of new technologies brings exponential growth in productive forces, creating a strong material foundation for the development of socialism. The more serious wealth polarization caused by the "digital divide" leads to further intensification of class contradictions, objectively providing new opportunities for the revival of working-class consciousness. The convenience of communication brought by the wide use of digital technology provides technical support for strengthening the association of the proletariat on a global scale. Although the application of AI technology has produced a "new alienation" of humans, socialism can use its own institutional advantages to overcome the negative impacts of new technologies, fully seize historical opportunities, and open up a new realm of development. Of course, we cannot be blindly optimistic. As Mao Zedong pointed out when reading the Soviet Union’s Textbook of Political Economy: "The textbook says that with the socialist socialization of the means of production, 'people become masters of their own social and economic relations,' and are 'able to fully and consciously master and utilize laws.' This makes things sound too easy." We should seriously treat and actively respond to the various changes brought by the new industrial revolution in terms of cognition and systems, give full play to our institutional advantages, and ensure that while the new industrial revolution promotes the development of human society, it also injects new momentum into the development of socialism in the 21st century.
(The author's affiliation: Social Sciences in China Press) Web Editor: Zhang Jian Source: World Socialism Studies, Issue 6, 2023