Li Quan and Du Min: Western Left-wing Digital Socialist Theory: Dynamics, Characteristics, and Struggles
In the 21st century, the development of world socialist trends of thought has arguably proceeded in tandem with capitalist economic crises. Against the backdrop of the digital technology revolution, socialist theory has continuously innovated, and the socialist discourse system has steadily expanded within the fissures of capitalist discursive hegemony. After Kevin Kelly introduced the concept of "digital socialism" in 2009, issues regarding its theoretical positioning and connotations triggered intense debate in Western academia and have since been continuously extended. Generally speaking, Western scholars have used the material conditions of digital technological development as a theoretical fulcrum to shape new currents of thought under capitalist conditions. Broadly defined, various socialist trends based on digital technological development—such as cyber-communism (or cyber-socialism), communicative socialism, platform socialism, and Kevin Kelly’s narrow definition of "digital socialism"—are theoretical forms built upon reflections on socialist elements and critiques of the capitalist system prompted by digital technological innovation. Compared to the narrow concept of "digital socialism," the broad category of digital socialism possesses richer connotations, a wider extension, and more prominent theoretical value. The logic behind these various types of digital socialism reflects both a shared interest in common values and the direction and epochal characteristics of world socialist theoretical development in an era of digital transformation.
I. Historical Types and Drivers of Western Left-wing Digital Socialist Theory
(1) Historical Types of Western Left-wing Digital Socialist Theory
1. Cyber-communism "Cyber-communism" is a theoretical concept proposed by thinkers such as Vicente Moreno Caxa and Paul Cockshott, also referred to as "cyber-socialism" or "network socialism." Cyber-communism aims to arm socialist market decision-making systems with modern networks and digital technology to achieve an economically efficient "communist" society. It is a product of the fusion of digital technology and post-capitalist society, as well as the inevitable result of the development logic of market socialism in the digital age. Cyber-communism has two prominent characteristics: first, it uses the computing power of current high-performance computers to achieve rational calculation of labor time and other market elements, facilitating the efficient and real-time distribution of economic resources within a socialist institutional framework; second, it allows individuals to choose their own consumption preferences alongside democratic collective decision-making to solve the problem of the complexity of using knowledge in society.
2. Digital Socialism In the late 20th century, internet technology developed rapidly, its user base grew continuously, and the integration of the internet with production, circulation, and consumption became increasingly close. Since the 21st century, the digital economy, relying on internet technology, has become a major type of modern economic development. Information and data flows transmitted through networks have become embedded with more socialist elements. Kevin Kelly’s "digital socialism" interprets the socialist elements emerging within the contemporary capitalist system and the communist direction of future society from a unique perspective. He understands "digital socialism" as the "socialist forces" of "sharing, cooperation, collaboration, openness, free pricing, and transparency" that permeate every corner of the internet. Therefore, "digital socialism" examines subtle changes and development trends in social relations within the capitalist system through a socialist lens; its core element lies in the common ownership and sharing of data and information in its production and distribution during the digital age.
3. Communicative Socialism Communicative socialism is a type of socialism based on the development of internet technology proposed by left-wing theorists such as Christian Fuchs and Dimitris Boucas. Communicative socialism holds that while digital-age capitalist society contains public service media and community media that embody values of solidarity, respect, and diversity, there also exist media and cultural forms that differ from and oppose the logic of capital. Thus, communicative socialism describes a potentially achievable future socialist state built on digital technology that realizes autonomous production, leisure, and social participation.
(2) Drivers of Western Left-wing Digital Socialist Theory
1. The Transformation of Traditional Socialism In the 20th century, the focus of the Vienna School’s [1] opposition to socialism was their denial of the feasibility of a planned economy. They argued that socialist attempts to construct an economic model through planned targets and data lacked possibility and scientific validity. Scholars such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises of the Vienna School combined the insufficient computing power of 20th-century quantitative calculation with market complexity to advocate for the rationality of the price system in a liberal market economy. Consequently, left-wing scholars like Fred Taylor, Abba Lerner, and Oskar Lange proposed market socialism during their debates with right-wing theorists. In the mid-to-late 20th century, as information network technology developed, left-wing scholars—buoyed by confidence in digital-age technological progress—once again applied the advancement of computer processing power to prove the feasibility of calculating labor volume, putting forward the perspective of cyber-communism. The planned economy of the former Soviet Union was the first attempt to achieve communism through economic planning, but right-wing critiques of the planned economy did not stimulate rapid computer development in the USSR, nor did they lead to bold experiments with cyber-communism within the Soviet socialist system. Paul Cockshott argues that the former Soviet Union's failure to effectively combine computer technology with the planned economy led to the economic stagnation of the Brezhnev era and a missed opportunity for cyber-communism. He firmly believes that the computerization of the planned economy will enter a brand-new stage of cyber-communism with the emergence of new computers and information technologies. Additionally, in the early 1970s, during the nationalization process of the Allende government, the "Cybersyn" project was launched using emerging computer technology and Stafford Beer’s cybernetics, employing a pioneering cybernetic model of complex systems to run the national economy. Chile’s "market socialism" practice was another important attempt at cyber-communism. While these two attempts to advance socialism through computer technology ended without fruit, reflection on the theory of cyber-communism did not cease.
2. Critique of Contemporary Capitalism Amidst the digital technological shifts of the 21st century, capitalism has not only failed to escape its fate of recurring crises but has also used the development of network information technology to reinforce the "universal values" of "democracy" and "freedom." It attempts to project its internal contradictions outward by creating "others" to its own system and promoting an "ideology of background imperialism." To maintain political, cultural, economic, and military hegemony and advantages in the industrial chain, Western developed capitalist countries, led by the United States, do not hesitate to manufacture regional armed conflicts and artificially increase the risk of nuclear war. Michael Roberts claims that in the 21st century, capitalism is creating new contradictions for itself that threaten the existence of a healthy planet. Driven specifically by this scrutiny and critique of capitalism and neoliberalism, international left-wing scholars have attempted to return to the Marxist discourse system to reflect on the question of systemic alternatives to capitalism. Because Western scholars do not fully identify with traditional socialism, they seek a new type of socialism that can replace capitalism—one that differs from both the 20th-century centralized model of traditional socialism and the social governance model of market liberalism. Thus, participatory democracy has been integrated into 21st-century socialist theoretical practice. Naturally, there are voices questioning left-wing participatory democracy. These doubts often center on a lack of trust in the decision-making efficiency of this new socialist participatory democracy; for instance, B. Guy Peters suggests that participatory decisions are difficult and impossible to make quickly, requiring more time and resources.
Doubt from the right regarding participatory democracy stems, on one hand, from a distrust of socialism itself, and on the other, from a lack of effective reflection on the path toward realizing participatory democracy. Contemporary left-wing scholars are striving to find a unique socialist path between capitalism and traditional socialism. The progress of digital technology has opportunely provided valuable material conditions to open up this intellectual space. In the digital age, Western left-wing scholars insist on the vital value of participatory democratic decision-making for developing socialism and seek to explore the vitality of socialism through digital technological progress. Marta Harnecker, a theorist of "21st-century socialism" in Chile, drawing on Hugo Chávez’s governing experience, advocated for decision-making units based on new community councils—specifically, forming councils of 150 to 400 families in densely populated urban areas and 50 to 100 families in sparsely populated rural areas to realize a decentralized, dispersed participatory decision-making system with a socialist character. Within the paradigm of cyber-communism, Cockshott has examined the feasibility and effectiveness of centralized socialist decision-making from a digital technological perspective.
3. Critique of Digital Exploitation At the turn of the 21st century, the popularization of the internet and the application of digital technology brought great tremors to the realm of thought. Using the theoretical paradigm of digital capitalism as an analytical tool, the American political economist of communication Dan Schiller opposed Bill Gates’s view of a "frictionless society," foreseeing early on that the digital society would inevitably form new patterns of social inequality. Schiller expressed concerns at the very start of the digital age, arguing that internet companies carry out fundamental neoliberal functions and play a major role in the distribution of social wealth.
If the idea that digital technology would inevitably cause social inequality was initially just a prediction, the exploitation by contemporary digital capital has now become an indisputable fact. On one hand, digital platform capital can extract massive profits by monopolizing digital infrastructure; for example, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’s net worth increased by $43.8 billion in the first few months of the pandemic. On the other hand, the labor force—including customers—who join digital platforms and online communities through digital labor provide platform capitalists with a vast amount of unpaid value and traffic through their own energy and efforts. Their labor products become commodities in the digital world, and their interactions, which were originally for social purposes, are transformed into data traffic in the cyber world. Moreover, the forms and concealment of exploitation in the era of digital capitalism are completely different from those in the era of industrial capitalism. In industrial capitalism, capitalists exploit the surplus value created by the working class by directly employing labor; in the digital age, the unique nature of digital labor often hides the phenomenon and essence of exploitation within the entertainment and gifting activities of online communities. Western Marxist scholars have keenly realized these two different scenarios of capital exploitation in the digital age and have conducted targeted discussions.
Scholars like Christian Fuchs have worked to return to the Marxist concept of labor to define and distinguish human activities in the digital age. He attempts to use the distinction between "Labor" and "Work" to analyze the nature of digital labor and the underlying logic of exploitation. Andrea Fumagalli, using the dual logic of "dispossession" and "exploitation" in digital labor as conceptual tools, advocates for a bottom-up political struggle for the democratic management of data. James Muldoon, in evaluating the exploitation of the platform economy, pointed out that in the digital age, "this exploitation is combined with new socio-technical systems that capture and control the bonds of the community itself and extract information resources from them." It is precisely these discussions on labor and exploitation in the digital age that have provided the momentum for the development of digital socialism. Amidst various debates on digital socialism, critiques of capitalism and the vision of striving for a better socialist future have increasingly been presented through clear theoretical propositions.
II. Characteristics of Western Left-wing Digital Socialist Theory
The digital age provides new support for the material conditions of life and intellectual space for socialist theoretical innovation. Against the background of the technological revolution, digital socialism integrates the social changes formed by digitalization into a new theoretical paradigm. Due to the limitations of digital technology’s coverage in production and living spaces, digital socialism currently exhibits unique epochal characteristics.
(1) Theoretical Themes: Focus and Plurality
As a social trend of thought emerging in the digital age, digital socialism focuses on the new types of social relations developed through digital technology. Marx stated: "In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations." [2] The new productive forces of the digital era have changed the mode of production while simultaneously transforming the relations of production and other social relations. Against the backdrop of the digital revolution, the digital economy—characterized by the Internet, network platforms, and the production of digital commodities—has established new types of relations of production within the capitalist system. Those who control digital capital and own data products have formed the capitalist class of the digital age; correspondingly, digital laborers and providers of digital traffic exist within the logic of capital as the subject identity of the "digital proletariat." The digital relations of production between the digital bourgeoisie and the digital proletariat in the digital age are the key to considering the nature of digital socialism and constitute the focus of the theoretical framework of digital socialism.
The digital socialism of the Western Left focuses on current digital relations of production but is not limited to them. Around these digital relations of production, diverse types of digital socialism have emerged. Kevin Kelly’s "digital socialism" emphasizes the emergence of new social relations with a public character within the digital space of networks. Scholars like Dimitris Boucas and Christian Fuchs from the University of Westminster have proposed the thesis of "communicative socialism" based on data production and informational communication on the Internet. Paul Cockshott applies modern digital technology to the socialist planned economy, demonstrating the feasibility of communist planned production in the digital age and proposing the theory of "cyber-communism." James Muldoon’s "platform socialism" attempts to establish socialist ownership of the means of production on the material basis of digital capitalism, aiming for the institutional transformation of private platform ownership. This series of digital socialist theoretical types presents theoretical reflections on the substitution of the capitalist system in the digital era.
(2) Theoretical Development: Clear Approaches and Diverse Perspectives
Despite the diverse types and complex conceptual expressions of digital socialism, the underlying developmental paths involve three types of judgments regarding the new social relations of capitalism in the current digital era: factual judgments, value judgments, and logical judgments. These three judgments collectively form and present the path of digital socialism’s theoretical generation. However, many distinct viewpoints exist within these three paths.
First is the factual judgment. The socialist attribute of digital socialism is grounded in the judgment of digital social relations under the current capitalist institutional background—specifically, whether capitalist social relations in the digital era possess the attribute of generating de-privatized public goods and non-capitalist network communities, and whether the public can obtain and use the products of labor in these network communities for free. Undeniably, the theory of digital socialism points toward current capitalist social reality. Because technological development continually reduces the cost of material reproduction [3], and digital technology further reduces the cost of copying and disseminating information products toward zero, Kevin Kelly argues that network resources and digital products in the digital age can be shared for free; at the very least, digital products already possess the material conditions for free sharing. In daily life, people share experiences and disseminate knowledge through data and information that can be obtained and spread online for free. Therefore, "digital socialism" holds that the network constructs communities with a public character, forming the fact of shared public resources; that is, social relations of a non-capitalist, socialist nature have already been established in online communities. However, the theoretical confidence of Kelly's "digital socialism" hides a major judgmental error. Regarding his narrow "digital socialism," it is merely a factual description of new social relations appearing in the digital age rather than a constructive expression; it ignores the capitalist private economic institutional foundation of the theoretical framework. The "products" Kelly refers to in the network world belong more to the categories of communication and entertainment. Consequently, diametrically opposed views exist among Western scholars. For instance, Richard Sprague denies Kelly’s view, arguing that the participants in "digital socialism" are countless independent, free actors who construct network communities solely through individual self-motivated behavior; thus, Kelly’s "digital socialism" is "nothing more than an old-fashioned, decentralized, Hayekian capitalism."
Second is the value judgment. In analyzing the socialist elements of network communities, digital socialism proposes a value judgment on the state of labor after overcoming private ownership. Scientific socialist theory holds that communism is the "positive supersession of private property" [4] and an association of free individuals; in communist society, labor is no longer alienated labor forced by the necessity of survival, but rather the primary necessity of human life. Digital socialism finds that the state of labor in the digital age exhibits value attributes of "freedom" and "autonomy." The way digital laborers combine and the nature of production units show individualization and fragmentation. Furthermore, network intermediaries based on modern logistics allow the physical space of production units to be arbitrarily expanded; the "thing" in "objective dependency" [5] is no longer just a commodity, but a combination of commodity (or product) and network. Thus, producers can conduct "autonomous production" relatively independently according to their own interests and skills, making it possible to "supersede" capitalist alienated labor. Theorists of digital socialism even argue that the rapid adaptation, constant innovation, and self-production provided by its democratic free market far surpass the top-down traditional socialism of the industrial age. However, these digital labor optimists sometimes decouple labor methods from the institutional forms of social production, ignoring the constraints of capitalist material life conditions. Scholars holding negative views on the value judgments of digital socialism, such as Fuchs, specifically analyze human alienation in digital labor within the framework of the capitalist system, arguing that digital labor still suffers from the alienation of the products, objects, and instruments of labor as described by Marx.
Third is the logical judgment. From the process-oriented perspective of the Western Left’s digital socialism theoretical system, digital socialism points toward the future of capitalism, expressing possible transformations in new social relations and institutional forms. Digital socialism as a theoretical trend of thought cannot merely be a theoretical "Logos"; rather, it should become a "science produced by the historical movement and participating in it with full consciousness." Regarding the historical necessity of capitalism, digital socialism must not only focus on reality but also transform into socialist change and movement; that is, digital socialism theory needs to become a social practice that changes capitalism, transforming realistic accidental phenomena into historical necessity. In the necessary logic of theory transitioning to reality, two judgments exist within the Western Left: the theory of spontaneity and the theory of consciousness. The spontaneity view is enthusiastically confident in the socialist elements existing in reality; it thus lacks a critical spirit toward capitalism and fails to reflect on the practical paths of institutional substitution. Richard Barbrook attempted to shape a cyber-communism distinct from both traditional socialism and neoliberal capitalism. He argued that the subjects jointly shaping American cyber-communism, including right-wing groups, have "spontaneously adopted more pleasant and effective ways of cooperating." Barbrook evaluates social change based on the development of digital network technology in the United States, directly asserting the spontaneity of future capitalist social transformation. The spontaneity view denies that digital socialism proceeds through violent qualitative change; according to Barbrook, Americans are not destroying the market economy but are replacing capitalism in a spontaneous and slow manner. In contrast, the consciousness view of digital socialist transformation is accepted by more Western Leftist scholars. They understand digital socialism as a constructive historical process and thus an activity of conscious social institutional transformation requiring the active intervention of subjects. For example, Evgeny Morozov’s economic proposals—such as the public transformation of market feedback systems, the promotion of platform cooperativism in the platform economy, and the "New Municipalism" movement—reflect that the process of substituting the capitalist system is one of consciously promoting social publicity. Only in this way can future digital socialism be realized.
(3) Theoretical Practice: Possibilities and Constraints
The consciousness view of digital socialist transformation reflects the constructive characteristics of digital socialism; that is, it not only points to the future but also searches for transformative factors within current material conditions to build that future. Dan Schiller once predicted from the material basis of digital capitalism: the Internet is not an alternative world of freedom, beauty, and democracy newly built by humanity. The soil in which the digital socialist theoretical trend grows is the capitalist system of the digital age. The realistic foundation of capitalism inevitably constrains the realization of digital socialism and restricts its developmental path, as manifested in:
First, the source of digital socialism’s generation is the field of capitalist network culture. Digital technological change involves every aspect of the capitalist system, including the economic, political, social, and cultural spheres and the overlapping spaces they form. Although cyber-communism takes the issue of planning systems in the relations of production as its main thread, its predictions for future society carry a strong color of value judgment. The socialist elements discovered by narrow "digital socialism" and communicative socialism are even more limited to the cultural sphere within digital capitalism, forming a socialist value judgment therefrom. Platform socialism belongs to the more radical and realistic theoretical category of digital socialism; it is constructed on the basis of platform capitalism and clearly points toward the economic sphere, such as digital labor and the construction of the public character of network platforms. However, its critique of capitalist platform ownership and capitalist private ownership remains relatively mild. Other debates on digital socialism focus primarily on digital labor, product distribution, and network communication, while rarely addressing political transformation.
Second, from the historical perspective of institutional substitution, scientific socialist theory advocates that socialist revolution is to "revolutionize the existing world, to practically come to grips with and change the things found in existence." It is a thorough transformation of the capitalist institutional system; one must destroy existing social relations, break the bourgeois state machine, and undergo a genuine revolution to establish a new state system. For digital socialism to develop from a theory into a reality of practical activity, it must break the capitalist ownership structure of the digital age, establish a socialist institutional system, and use digitalization to promote socialist construction. Current digital socialist thought elucidates the possibilities of future socialism but has not yet been able to shape the revolutionary enthusiasm of netizens or transform digital laborers into a true digital proletariat capable of changing social material forces. Within socialist movements, digital socialism is more reflected in Leftist forces using network platforms for mobilization in social movements, meaning its historical transformative effect remains limited.
III. The Struggle of Western Leftist Digital Socialism Theory Against Capitalism
Digital socialism is a social-theoretical framework generated by changes in social relations caused by the development of digital technology under the capitalist system. Digital socialism theory contains both descriptions of the developmental state of capitalism and critiques and reflections on capitalist social systems and economic types. It expresses a desire for the institutional substitution of capitalism by socialism and resistance against capital logic and liberalism colonizing digital production and network communities. From a forward-looking theoretical perspective, digital socialism resists capitalism while demonstrating the necessity of capitalism's historical temporality.
(1) The Hypocrisy of Capitalist Ideology
In the digital age, capitalist ideology maintains the inequality between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat through the reified forms of the digital, making class antagonism and exploitation more concealed. Fuchs understands the new forms of reification exhibited by cultural and media labor in the digital age as: "nurturing an atmosphere of non-alienated labor by cultivating creativity and autonomous labor, thereby diverting people's attention from the fact that such labor is usually extremely insecure and precarious." The hypocrisy of capitalist ideology in the digital age is manifested through forms such as the commodification of digital products (the objects of labor), the gamification of digital production (the mode of labor), and the "traffic-ization" [6] of digital social interaction. Digital socialist theory attempts various efforts to overcome the hypocrisy of capitalist ideology, such as: reclaiming digital labor that has been commodified by capitalism, transforming the colonized fruits of digital labor into products shareable by the digital proletariat, and shaping a socialist public digital sphere; and transforming digital labor from its unconscious, entertaining, and alienated forms into autonomous, parallel production with common goals in the future development of digital socialism. Digital socialism seeks to break through the ideological control of capitalism, rescue the army of labor caught up in internet crowdsourcing, and promote the awakening of their consciousness as unpaid value contributors—such as fans who serve capital by providing traffic.
(2) Capitalist Predacity Although digital socialist theory captures the new types of social relations occurring in the digital age, it cannot eliminate nor deny the fundamental fact that capitalism in the digital age appropriates the value created by digital labor in a low-cost or unpaid manner through the capitalization of digital products. Digital socialist theory posits that users of social media and network platforms are active producedrs of digital information who are engaged in social activities and possess creativity. Their main types of productive activity include participating in sharing, producing network information data, and constructing the network culture of the digital age, thereby creating social use value in these work activities. Christian Fuchs and Sebastian Sevignani point out that on corporate social media using targeted advertising, digital labor is the source of value for digital commodities. However, the value brought by the data commodities created by digital laborers does not belong to the digital laborers themselves, but is instead appropriated by platform capitalists to create profits. Because of this, scholars such as Fuchs propose that the only choice to evade internet crises and the economy of exploitation is to withdraw from digital labor, overcome alienation, replace the logic of capital with the logic of the public, and transform digital labor into "play-work." Concurrently, digital socialists such as Fuchs and Morozov advocate for overcoming the colonization of the internet public sphere by capital and resisting capitalist predacity by transforming digital infrastructure and promoting the socialization of the digital production process.
(3) The Constraints of the Logic of Capital As previously mentioned, the practical value of digital socialist theory possesses the dual dimensions of potential realization and realistic constraints. The constraints imposed by capitalism on the practical path of digital socialism reflect digital socialism’s negation of capitalist private ownership and its resistance to the logic of capital. In response to the colonization by capital of the public spheres that may exist or are being shaped in the digital age, digital socialist theory attempts to resist from two aspects: First, starting from the ownership of digital products and the democratization of governance in the network society of the digital age, it resists the universal invasion of life-space by capital, returns digital products to net users, and promotes the sharing of digital products. James Muldoon advocates for a "data-owning democracy," arguing for the vision of citizens controlling digital services and participating in digital governance to achieve the common good. Second, it emphasizes opposing the logic of capital—which is profit-oriented and based on the privatization of digital information infrastructure—and its foundations. Evgeny Morozov's proposition is the most representative; he proposes that the Left should seize control over "feedback mechanisms." Additionally, he believes that when the replacement of the capitalist system cannot be realized, the focus of struggle should be placed on nurturing diverse methods of social coordination. Furthermore, Dimitris Boucas proposes resisting the monopoly of digital platforms over digital labor, product distribution, and data power, arguing that such a monopoly harms digital publicity [7], mainly manifesting in the manipulation and "colonization of subjectivity" regarding behaviors such as work, production, and leisure in the digital age by private feedback infrastructures. From this, it can be seen that scholars such as Evgeny Morozov and Dimitris Boucas attempt to establish digital infrastructure with socialist publicity to resist the capitalist logic of capital. These struggles have already touched upon the capitalist system itself.
IV. The Value and Limitations of Western Leftist Digital Socialist Theory
(1) Forward-looking Reflections on Socialism Since the 21st century, the development of science and technology, represented by digital technology, has manifested a rapid leap in the level of productive forces. The resulting changes in the relations of production and network social relations have also laid the material foundation for digital socialism. Western leftist scholars have keenly perceived the changes in social relations brought about by the development of productive forces in the digital age and have used the theoretical paradigm of socialism to seek a historical alternative to the capitalist system, pointing out the direction for future social development. Digital socialism regards network communities as a leading field for social change and explores the possibility of carrying out social transformation in this special arena of a socialist nature. Digital socialism provides highly forward-looking reflections in terms of the direction of transformation and the paths for its realization, providing valuable clues and guidance for the world's progressive forces to promote the socialist movement.
(2) The Critical Value regarding Capitalism Digital socialism is rooted in the soil of capitalism. Under the dual erosion of liberalism and the logic of capital, digital socialism is unable to unify the effects of historical progress with the principles of scientific socialism. However, digital socialism’s theoretical reflections on the historical replacement of capitalism, while pointing out the future historical direction, contain reflections on the contradictions and conflicts of capitalist society. Digital socialism uses value systems such as "sharing" and "publicity" to criticize the erosion of digital production and network communities by capitalist private ownership and the logic of capital; it uses "free" and "gift" economies to indict the colonization of the network world by capitalist commodities—namely, the turning of products created by digital laborers into commodities while indicting the reality that the value of such commodities is appropriated by digital capitalists; and it uses socialist labor concepts such as "freedom" and "autonomy" to criticize the ideological control of digital labor by capitalism and the resulting new forms of alienation, which reduce digital users to a digital proletariat without class consciousness. In short, while speaking of the possibilities of a beautiful future development, digital socialism creates immense critical value regarding capitalism and prompts it to become the "new, higher conditions" gradually developed by capitalism itself, making capitalism "obsolete and without reason for existence."
(3) The Historical Limitations of Digital Socialist Theory Digital socialism is a theoretical product of the digital age, and its historical progressive significance is self-evident. How digital socialism can be transformed from theoretical reflection into a driving force for historical progress, and how it can be effectively integrated into the contemporary world socialist movement to become a blueprint for transforming capitalism, remains a chasm that is difficult to cross. Lenin once understood the transition from capitalism to the higher stage of socialism as historical "forward development," and proposed that to "develop forward" one "must pass through the dictatorship of the proletariat; there is no other road." The classical Marxist writers all affirmed the role of the proletarian movement in replacing the capitalist system. The revolutionary spirit of digital socialist theory is reflected in: on the one hand, advocating for the reshaping of de-capitalized network communities; and on the other hand, attempting to transform capitalist digital infrastructure to realize socialism. Regarding the latter, it ignores how to nurture the class consciousness of the working class in the digital age and stimulate the consciousness of participation in class struggle to launch a socialist movement to overthrow capitalism. Therefore, the inherently rich revolutionary spirit of digital socialism is largely confined within the narrow space of theory.