Zhuohong Liu, Xiaoqing Guo: Capital Valorization, Labor Alienation, and Algorithmic Power
In the era of big data, digital technology—as a tool and means for the expansion of capital—possesses a natural coupling with the logic of capital. It has not only permeated every aspect of society to become a key factor in controlling human activity, but has also, under the aegis of digital capital and the algorithmic order, opened up a broader space for profit-seeking and a more concealed path for exploitation. It is worth noting that, as the latest manifestation of immaterial labor, digital labor is a new modality that has inevitably emerged during the current stage of the development of the productive forces. In capitalist society, on the one hand, digital labor depends on specific technical means and social media, leaping into a "heaven" that drives capital valorization and releases economic potential; on the other hand, under the packaging and beautification of digital technology, digital labor descends into a "hell" that dismantles the stability of labor and weakens the essential power of the laboring subject. In the process of technology-mediated labor, capital no longer simply and nakedly plunders the surplus value created by laborers in a direct manner; instead, it retreats behind technology. In the name of freedom, it constructs an absolute power that stands above the laborer, becoming a "malignant tumor" that the capitalist system itself cannot cure.
Reflecting on the issue of capitalist digital labor in the era of big data, there are several representative contemporary Western Leftist figures and their main ideas: first, the school of the political economy of communication represented by Dallas W. Smythe, who, in Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada [1], focused on the economic value created by audience labor and the problem of ideological reproduction; second, the Italian autonomist Marxist school represented by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, who, in Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth, emphasized exploring the distinctions and connections between immaterial labor and biopolitics; third, Christian Fuchs, who, in Digital Labour and Karl Marx, created a systematic Marxist critical theory of digital labor centered on digital capitalism, digital labor, and Marxism in the digital age; and fourth, the Left-accelerationism represented by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, who, in the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics, emphasized that productive forces and technical progress are powerful weapons for breaking through the shackles of capitalist production, among others.
Domestically, the main contributors include: first, scholars represented by Lan Jiang and Wu Jing, who, in works such as Critique of Platform Capitalism in the Digital Age: Starting from Marxist Political Economy and Total Subsumption: New Characteristics of Exploitation in Platform Capitalism, carried out a critique of digital labor from the perspective of Marxist political economy, aiming to decode the phenomenon of labor alienation and the essence of the logic of capital contained therein; second, scholars represented by Tong Xin and Wu Dingming, who, in Digital Labor: Freedom and the Cage and A Study of "Digital Laborers" in the Internet Era, conducted critical research on digital labor based on the perspective of biopolitics, analyzing the ontological problem of digital capitalism's control over production and life from the meaning of vital existence; third, scholars represented by Yao Jianhua and Xia Bingqing, who, in Digital Labor: Theoretical Frontiers and Local Experiences and Concepts, Schools, and Subjectivity of Digital Labor: A Review of the Development of Western Digital Labor Theory, focused on the future landscape and development strategies of digital labor, striving to explore effective paths to escape digital shackles, achieve the sublation of alienated labor, and realize the ultimate liberation of digital labor. These intellectual resources not only provide enlightening viewpoints for developing a critique of capitalist modernity but also offer useful reflections for the domestic academic community's research on digital labor. They hold significant theoretical and practical importance for deep explorations into the fact that, beneath the thriving appearance of digital technology and algorithmic power, capitalism has undergone manifest changes in capital, labor, and social systems due to the emergence of digital technology. At the same time, it must be recognized that in terms of dissolving the limitations of digital capital and exploring paths to harness capital relations, there is still a need for continued deep cultivation. Following the analytical framework of "capital valorization—labor alienation—algorithmic power," this article creates positive conditions for us to grasp opportunities for digital development and dissipate digital risks in a new practical context by exposing the alienation phenomena of digital capitalism and conducting a critique of the exploitative essence of digital capital.
I. Digital Technology Drives Capital Valorization
To this day, capital remains the all-dominating power in modern capitalism. In the era of big data, digital capital, as a new modality of capital, uses various internet platforms to more closely unite capital owners, producers, consumers, and even the entire society, gaining absolute power to manipulate the economic mechanisms of capitalism. Within the system of objects connected by data, "all the digital information we collect can now be exploited in new ways. We can try new things and unlock new forms of value." The rise of digital technology is driving the core of digital capitalism—the valorization of digital capital—with maximal force. It must be admitted that as digital technology conducts an all-round "erosion" of social media, it is also releasing the productivity of data elements to the greatest extent and accelerating the speed of capital turnover. Srnicek argues that "in the twenty-first century, the advanced heart of capitalism is centered upon extracting and using a particular raw material: data." As the core of the means of production, data is not only an "extensional" carrier of memory but also a key material that can be extracted, stored, analyzed, and used. Under the influence of the logic of market expansion, data—"this raw material will inevitably represent a massive new resource to be extracted." Clearly, once data becomes an indispensable foundational factor in capitalist production and social intercourse, it means the possibility of digital technology constituting the core driver of capital valorization becomes a reality.
Entering the era of big data, the status of labor as the substance of value and the immanent measure still exists, "but in the interconnected digital world, a different principle of differentiation or division of labor has indeed emerged, namely, a production principle based on data." Once data acquires the attributes of capital, operators who possess massive amounts of data rely on their monopoly over public data resources and core technologies to construct a "new digital capital order" favorable to themselves—that is, the emergence of digital capitalism. This means that a "whole new set of mechanisms for accumulation by dispossession" has opened up for contemporary capitalism. Leveraging the ubiquitous spatial advantage of data, capital attempts to demonstrate its powerful "subjective" value and its "devouring" capacity to control the entire process of labor and virtual space in all fields. People become "digital humans," followed by long "information tails" in which private data—such as personal preferences, tastes, location data, and social circle information—become "reservoirs" for capital valorization. As a productive force, data is reshaping our era and reshaping the entire value of every individual. "Surveillance capitalism," as a unique landscape of the big data era, privatizes the information infrastructure, which likewise leads to alienation. Under pervasive data tracking, people often choose to give up personal privacy in exchange for things they need or desire; privacy becomes a sharp tool for capital to seek enormous profits. Mark Andrejevic believes that internet-based exploitation is a new development of the capitalist exploitation methods Marx criticized in his time, also known as "Exploitation 2.0." In his view, with the continuous enhancement of data capture technology, "data is being collected, sorted, and correlated on an unprecedented scale, promising to yield useful patterns far beyond the ability of the human brain to detect or even interpret," serving more comprehensive data mining.
Within the framework of the digital myth, to ensure the healthy operation of society, all fields connected to capital control are opened up; "all individuality and particularity are reduced to a uniform measure—data (or information) and capital." As an important carrier for the capitalization of data, internet platforms, while obtaining massive data, also master the rules of the game, becoming the reality of capital's implementation of "hegemonic" governance. Digital capital uses the development of media to construct a public discourse system conducive to the development of the capitalist order, thereby providing a guarantee for monitoring the masses and controlling the production system. This resonates with Neil Postman’s view in Amusing Ourselves to Death that "media is epistemology" and that "the definition of truth is derived, at least in part, from the character of the media of communication." Internet platform developers encourage users to upload and share content by optimizing algorithms. On the surface, the act of creating a good environmental experience for users seems reasonable, but in reality, it suppresses and restricts the public's freedom of expression and isolates information exchange between users and the outside world. In short, social platforms resolve the struggle between the two major classes prevalent in industrial society in a peaceful and ingenious way, making those engaged in digital labor "enjoy" it with a voluntary attitude. This causes them to suffer double suppression at both the economic and political levels while simultaneously experiencing the paradoxical sensation of pleasure and exploitation, continuously creating momentum for the development of the digital economy.
In conclusion, digital capital—as "a specific, uniquely historically determined mode of production"—unquestionably releases positive forces in improving social productivity. However, once the "digital economy becomes an increasingly pervasive infrastructure in the contemporary economy," it fuels the extreme expansion of digital capital, becoming the latest modality for enhancing the capacity for capitalist exploitation and control. Compared to the era of large-scale machine industry in which Marx lived, the digital economy has birthed more diverse forms of labor and competition, becoming an effective means for capital valorization. Among these, the emergence of "immaterial labor" has shifted traditional wage labor toward an internet platform economy model based on unpaid labor; today's "audience labor" is no longer limited to the transformation of viewers into commodities but emphasizes the unique role of user-generated content (UGC) in the process of platform capital valorization; the overwhelming "information flow" provides data sources for the precise prediction of user behavior, and by virtue of hegemony over data and technology, a seamless "digital cage" is woven, binding users tightly to the platform; internet platforms utilize various "trending searches," gimmicks, or ways of stimulating users' fragile emotions to gain massive public attention and generate huge profits, thereby verifying the unpaid and productive expansion of the subjective creative activity of "audience labor." Clearly, as a new stage for the performance of capital, internet platforms increasingly demonstrate a powerful capacity for expansion, extremely accelerating the process of capital valorization and making the dual characteristics of capital—acquiring wealth valorization and deploying power—manifest to the fullest. The diversity of employment forms and outsourcing business not only expands the channels for platform capital valorization but also accelerates the passage of time and commercial competition, "making contemporary capitalism more legitimate." As Marx said: "the relation between capital and wage labor is thus also more adequate in its form, and the formal subsumption of labor under capital is more adequate." It is precisely this shift that has allowed digital capital to complete the transition of capital's erosion of society from "formal subsumption" to "real subsumption," a process Marx criticized in his time.
It must be recognized that the essential attribute of capital accumulation requires the continuous development of new channels for expansion and modes of exploitation. As data extraction devices, platforms naturally possess an inherent tendency toward capital monopoly. The digital economy, developing on the basis of internet platforms, is gradually forming a hegemonic model. The requirement for intelligent modes of production, highly efficient and productive workers, "rationalized" trade unions and industrial organizations, and flexible, diverse modes of employment implies that the influence and control of capital are being infinitely expanded. Specifically, internet platforms collect data under the guise of "sharing," which is in substance a true manifestation of the digital economy's "exclusive" exercise of hegemony; it represents the continuous commodification of every facet of individual life across the dimensions of time and space. The exploitation of general intellect and unpaid labor by digital capital—as a new pathway for value creation—ceaselessly extracts and appropriates the surplus value of laborers. This is the concentrated expression of the greedy nature of digital capital. As Hardt and Negri stated, the "factory" of advanced capitalist exploitation has permeated beyond its walls to redefine all social relations [4]. Digital capital extends far beyond the realm of productive labor and spreads into every area of society. The expansion of capital has brought the entire society under the domain of its rule, encompassing "muscles, language, emotions, and codes to images, social intelligence, social relations, and the cognitive and collaborative elements of labor." Furthermore, the dematerialization of labor "has not only fundamentally changed the composition, management, and regulation of the labor force—the organization of production—but has more profoundly altered the role and function of intellectuals and their activities within society." This phenomenon confirms what Marx noted in Capital: "Science and technology give to the functioning capital a capacity for expansion which is independent of its given magnitude."
II. Capitalist Exploitation Triggers the Alienation of Labor
Alienated labor is one of the most typical characteristics of capitalism. In the era of big data, the emergence of digital labor has failed to eliminate alienation; rather, "it exists in productive work, in domestic consumption, and dominates most of politics and everyday life." Therefore, redefining labor under the conditions of digital capitalism and comprehensively reflecting upon and grasping the new changes in the forms of labor alienation brought about by digital labor has become a matter of particular concern for the contemporary Western Left.
First, from the dimension of the subject of labor: unlike the era in which Marx lived, "today, exploitation can occur even without domination." When the scope of exploitation extends from paid wage relations to unpaid daily life, it can be said that every one of us has become a digital laborer. On one hand, instant communication and convenient transportation seamlessly connect the spatial and temporal dimensions of work and life; both inside and outside the home have become the workplace. On the other hand, in the process of digital transformation, laborers are "degraded" into "powerless tools" of capital, slowing their own "intellectual capacity for theorization and deliberation," falling into a predicament of dispossession and precarity. Guy Standing used the term "precariat" to describe the current precarious living conditions of laborers. In terms of its characteristics, the majority of the "precariat" live in constant anxiety over their hand-to-mouth existence; their sense of purpose and professional identity are shallow, their economic income is relatively low, and they cannot enjoy stable labor protections. They are like small, replaceable parts on a machine, oscillating in instability. To this end, some scholars have proposed that "the pursuit of surplus value by capitalists drives them to treat workers as machines or objects; this is the fundamental cause of 'alienation' (and the essence of capitalist production)." The rise of non-material labor precisely proves the internal correlation between the logic of capital and the alienation of the labor subject. With the rapid development of the ICT industry, the "cognitariat" [5] composed of non-material laborers has leaped to become the primary subject of labor in the field of reproduction. The non-material labor they perform has become an important component for maintaining the normal operation of the capitalist system. On the surface, the "cognitariat" seems to possess more autonomy in terms of participating in labor rights; in reality, however, capital has "reduced the status of the person to a silent cog"—though they can speak, they cannot become political subjects in the true sense of the term. Furthermore, the productive activities engaged in by non-material laborers, where exploitation and "pleasure" coexist, also serve as a fuse for psychological alienation. Individuals living for long periods in "information cocoons" [6] are more likely to lose their subjective consciousness and develop social pathologies such as depression, anxiety, burnout, attention deficit, and social phobia, intensifying the constraints of alienation on the labor subject.
It must be acknowledged: "Capital is a wage relationship between capital and labor, and it is precisely this relationship that opened a New Era." When the process of informatization is tightly linked with the spatial expansion of global capital, the "freedom" that accompanies the development of digital technology is "merely a namesake." In the past, people actively sought information; today, information arrives uninvited. Various kinds of information overwhelm us, forcibly squeezing our living space. The trend toward "spectacularization" is intensifying. Data is controlling the masses through a "panoptic" method, influencing people's lifestyles through non-coercive "internally pastoral" [7] means, causing the masses to fall into a "digital panopticon." Members within this panopticon simultaneously carry a dual identity: they are both the exploiter and the exploited, the perpetrator and the victim, suffering both exploitation from others and self-generated exploitation. Fundamentally, this new method, which aims to deprive subjective consciousness and encroach upon subjective freedom, is the typical manifestation of alienation in the era of big data. As Byung-Chul Han has stated, "Today, people have an almost obsessive, compulsive relationship with digital devices. Here, freedom also manifests as compulsion. Social media greatly reinforces this compulsion," and the lack of freedom of the subject is infinitely magnified. Ultimately, this compulsion stems from the logic of capital. The laws of capital's operation imprison us all; we can only do what capital wants us to do. Whether it is the "functional algorithm" linking digit and capital or the "active manipulation" under the trend of neoliberal thought, both expose a passive state in which the subject is voluntarily enslaved and shackled, and the laborer succumbs to technology without even knowing it. The Western accelerationist Hartmut Rosa proposed a similar view in Alienation and Acceleration: Towards a Critical Theory of Late-Modern Temporality. Borrowing Hermann Lübbe's concept of time, he argues that, driven by competitive factors, modern Western society experiences a "contraction of the present." While managers try every means to seize labor time and drive the operation of the entire social economy, they continuously squeeze the living space of laborers. Even in a state of existence without labor, one might become merely a "surplus existence" [8] to be plundered.
Second, from the dimension of the results of labor: Marx discussed the possible outcomes of alienated labor in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (hereafter referred to as the Manuscripts): "The exteriority of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else's; that it does not belong to him; that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another." Even in the era of big data, the condition of labor alienation remains the same: various social activities, including productive activities, are restricted and controlled by technology; the means of production, previously determined by money and the market, are now manipulated by algorithms and platforms. Internet platforms quietly implement ways of collecting potential data from the masses, selling it to merchants, and accurately targeting advertisements and product data to consumers according to their needs, thereby achieving the goals of dominating the market and controlling people. Labor under digital forms has undergone a "mutation," which not only updates the modes of capitalist production and accumulation but also causes changes in labor boundaries and the labor environment due to the breaking of traditional work patterns. "This further leads to the disintegration of industrial relations of production, thereby shifting toward digital relations of production that are more fluid and unstable," making the exploitation of labor by capital more hidden. Professor Edward Comor from Western University in Canada pays close attention to capitalist production in the context of globalization. He believes: "The systematic pursuit of surplus value involving the 'degradation' of workers has produced another form of alienation—process alienation." This means that the effect of alienation is continuously expanding and eroding the behavior of the social organism, moving from reification in the productive sphere to digitalization in the non-material sphere, turning the productive alienated labor Marx criticized into contemporary digital alienated labor. Digital capital extends its scope of exploitation into non-material realms, such that "play," "leisure," "free time," "social relations," and "affective activities" all fall within the scope of digital labor. Various modes of digital labor are creating value, forming new characteristics of "prosumption" [9] and "playbor." Although some Western scholars have questioned this theme, asking whether the freedom and humanization manifested by the unification of digital labor mean that "alienation" has ended, the reality of "prosumption" reveals the characteristic of "total-member labor" inherent in digital labor. In the process of self-commodification, laborers not only close the cycle between production and consumption, willingly becoming "machines" for creating value; "prosumption" also invisibly strengthens the integration of capital and technology, boosting the colonization of people's daily life-worlds by capital, "rendering the order of capitalist rule invisible within the entire planetary factory." The rapid expansion of the scope of digital labor essentially intensifies the degree of labor alienation. The increase rather than decrease of labor alienation caused by digital capital exploitation proves that the idea that "alienation" has ended in today's digital capitalist society can only be an illusion.
Alienation is both the premise and the result of exploitation. In the eyes of the contemporary Western Left, the phenomenon Marx described—"The externalization of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him; it means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien"—has been infinitely enlarged. David Harvey maintains that alienation is a core issue critical to the capitalist economy, existing throughout the entire process of labor in capitalist society. The current problem of digital labor alienation has not escaped the analytical framework of the four basic determinations of alienation in Marx's Manuscripts. We need to take theory deep into reality and conduct a profound analysis of contemporary forms of alienation. Furthermore, in Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, Harvey exposes the contradiction between "pure capital production" and "reproduction," pointing out the reality that the current path to capital profit has shifted toward "rentierism." Fictitious capital will trigger an implosion of the capitalist world system, and the aggressive force released by alienation will cause the entire society to be filled with violence and aggression. Consequently, Harvey reaches the prediction that the core contradiction of capitalism—alienation—will ultimately lead capitalism to its demise.
III. The Expansion of Algorithmic Power and its Resistance Pathways
Today we are witnessing the birth of a new type of power—algorithmic power. Unlike coercive discipline, this power is mainly reflected in the all-around shaping of the order of things and the order of data by algorithmic rules. This means that in the era of big data, algorithms—as a highly lethal "weapon"—are sweeping across human society and exerting a profound influence, causing every person living within it to be trapped in the "Adyton" [10] formed by algorithms, forced to accept the exploitation and control brought about by the infinite expansion of algorithmic power.
In the age of big data, "algorithmic optimization" seems to have become the universally recognized rule pursued by competing capital. Whoever masters sufficient general data and the optimal algorithms possesses what amounts to absolute power to control society. Byung-Chul Han [11] uses the "transparent society" to describe the existential condition of people in modern society: the advancement of information technology and the ubiquity of electronic devices allow every individual to serve as an information base station, continuously transmitting signals outward. The collection by internet platforms and the quantification and calculation of algorithms not only enable the precise delivery of products and services to every person but also, by virtue of the "optimal solution" attribute of digital technology, become a sharp weapon for controlling workers during the labor process. Regarding unpaid digital labor on internet platforms, the rationalization of intelligent algorithms has accelerated the pace of monopolizing communication resources and data collection. This ensures that within the illusory vacuum of the platform, "the digital economy has become an important experimental field for value as well as unpaid cultural and affective labor," where users become free laborers who produce data content without remuneration. Notably, in the process of the digital turn, although the algorithmic order has expanded the infinite possibilities of production, it has weakened the subject’s narrative of meaning regarding physical existence, becoming "helpless ghosts suspended under the '24/7' capitalist system." As the rules for data usage, algorithms are committed to transforming all things into quantifiable symbols or virtual coded entities, using these as intermediaries to communicate with the outside world in a simulated digital space, thereby gaining absolute power to control and dominate the real physical body. In this way, the virtual entity, after being penetrated by coding, is peeled away from concrete social relations, actively establishing new connections between virtuality and virtuality, and between virtuality and the world, bringing all things into the algorithm’s sphere of action. At the same time, powerful algorithmic analysis technology is accompanied by "side effects" such as the "echo chamber effect" and "filter bubbles." It imprisons the subject in "isolated islands" screened and filtered by algorithmic programs. Once the "acoustic partition" of information and ideas is constructed, the inherent value layers within the subconscious space of the self become increasingly solidified, easily "causing obstacles to mutual understanding and communication, leading to the loss of publicness and even disorder." As Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argued: "Humans have aggregated more and more data and invented better and better algorithms, personally creating the era of data and intelligence. However, our creations themselves, and our indiscriminate over-use of these creations—such as the clamorous dataism and algorithmism—may also bring very dangerous consequences to humanity."
At this temporal juncture of digital technology development and the rapid advancement of immaterial labor, the collusion between technical rationality and digital capital in the age of big data allows algorithmic power to strengthen labor control and constrain behavioral choices. Simultaneously, by virtue of its influence in the ideological sphere, it can subtly manipulate the thoughts and lives of laborers. "Capital requires not a transcendent power, but a control mechanism built on the level of internalization." Digital labor methods such as various applications, software engineering, and hardware assembly are inevitably laced with a certain "political charisma"—a distinct marker of a specific stage in the developmental process of capitalism. Contemporary Western Leftists believe that relations of production under the capitalist system are built upon a so-called "self-evident" and mutually tacit social contract. While cloaked in the legitimate garb of "digital freedom" and "digital democracy," the essence consists of more concealed modes and means of exploitation by capital, subjecting labor and even culture unconditionally to the logic of capital. Capital power shifts and expands into the political and cultural spheres, driving the world toward a coercive era of "psychopolitics." In the view of Bernard Stiegler: "Digital networks are a technology of an absolute, radical, collective, and new process of psychic individuation, a process capable of absorbing all other technologies of individuation... making everything absorbed and reconfigured." It goes without saying that in the age of big data, network subjects use digital ordering to increase the "negative entropy of life," yet simultaneously produce a degree of "entropy increase," as seen in behaviors like "linking posts on Moments" [12] or "reposting and commenting on Weibo." Although network subjects gain deeper self-perception, the blurring of boundaries between the network mirror-image created by digital technology and actual reality makes it very easy for people to fall into a false ideological trap and lose themselves. When labor is highly controlled by capital and algorithms and plays a dominant role in the political and ideological spheres—that is, when capital power and algorithmic power overflow from the economic realm into the ideological realm, resulting in the politicization of power—the inevitable result is an even greater and more serious destructive force of capital upon society and humanity.
In the eyes of the contemporary Western Left, a crucial link in escaping algorithmic control and reclaiming the fruits of labor is to find a transformative revolutionary subject in reality. The "precariat" [13] within the cracks of algorithmic control—that is, the unstable proletariat—possesses the revolutionary potential to break free from the "algorithmic shackles"; they are the "new dangerous class." Standing argues that the mission of the "precariat" lies in fighting for the redistribution of key resources, including "economic security, control over time, quality space, true educational liberation, financial literacy, and financial and other capital"; they are a potential force emerging in Western Leftist politics. Departing from Standing's understanding of the revolutionary subject, Hardt and Negri argue that under the oppression of the new economic model, the social anomie caused by the infinite expansion of alienation will inevitably invite resistance and struggle led by the "multitude" as the subject. They thus propose the abstract concept of "labor commonality," focusing on the possibility of creating "common wealth" and realizing "multitude democracy," attempting to suppress the disorderly expansion of algorithmic power by gathering and awakening the power of the "multitude." In fact, many viewpoints in Hardt and Negri’s exploration of paths to break institutional shackles remain at the level of abstract reflection and fail to mention effective methods for overcoming and solving the problems, still bearing a strong utopian color. Commenting on the book Empire, Žižek argues that the mode of political struggle described by Hardt and Negri "does not fundamentally analyze how (if at all) current global socio-economic processes will create the necessary space for these radical measures." To break the deadlock, the most important issue today is to find a radical revolutionary subject—that is, to reconstruct a "new proletariat" more thorough than the "working class" described by Marx, and to stimulate their revolutionary potential. In view of this, Žižek regards slum dwellers, refugees, and other social "outsiders" who have "nothing to lose but their chains" as the new revolutionary class. He believes that only "the Excluded" outside the capitalist order are the "new gravediggers" who will subvert the capitalist system. This line of thought actually emulates Marx's definition of the proletariat, but this reconstruction, which simply equates the proletariat with slum dwellers and refugees, is destined to struggle to find the true power to resist the expansion of algorithmic power. Furthermore, Žižek advocates for a return to Lenin, "utilizing Lenin’s pure political stance and his resolute attitude against economic fragmentation" to fight.
Nick Dyer-Witheford provides us with a new line of thinking for curbing internet platform monopolies and the further expansion of algorithmic power. In his view, 21st-century communism is an informational sharing based on the foundation of shared wealth: "The struggle potential of planetary labor under digital conditions has become very obvious." Therefore, Dyer-Witheford argues that while the internet is a field of capital exploitation, it is also a field for the formation of class resistance. If we do not want to become tools of algorithmic hegemony, we must unite in various forms of innovative and cooperative labor, utilizing the network as a revolutionary front to the greatest extent possible to constrain the arbitrarily expanding power of algorithms.
Perhaps there is another path to resisting the hegemonic rule brought by the infinite expansion of algorithmic power: in the future intelligent world, "resist big data algorithmic governance through edge algorithms, and resist the centralized Brave New World with more diffused micro-intelligence"—that is, "using algorithms to resist algorithms, using intelligence to resist intelligence." Of course, this is currently only a preliminary concept, and the contemporary Western Left has not proposed an effective solution. According to Marx’s exploration of the stages of social development, it is believed that only upon reaching the stage of communism can we thoroughly break free from "digital shackles," transforming capital-driven labor—which "steals the labor time of others" and distorts human essence—into what Marx called the free and autonomous activity of human beings, allowing labor to truly complete its return to humanity itself.
IV. Theoretical Reflections on the Western Left’s Three-Dimensional Critique of Digital Labor
Currently, the development of digital technology is quietly and profoundly changing human modes of production and life. With the rise of digital capitalism, the capitalist labor process has become increasingly complex. The resulting new changes in the manifestations of labor subjects and social contradictions are realistic problems that contemporary Marxist researchers must face. Understanding the socio-historical effects produced by digital labor—this new form of labor—within the framework of "capital-technology-power" is both an indispensable link in conducting a critique of capital and an important path for re-examining contemporary capitalist development through the lens of historical materialism. In recent years, facing the emergence of digital technology and temporal interrogations regarding the comprehensive alienation of capitalist modes of production and life, the contemporary Western Left, represented by Europe and the United States, has responded actively to the new circumstances and problems appearing in capitalism. They have shown particularly high concern for new changes in labor forms, valorization, and discourse systems brought about by technological innovation. They realize that the complexity of realistic problems—such as the shift in production modes brought by digital technological change, the dual commodification of labor power and emotion, the concealment and intensification of digital exploitation and labor alienation, algorithmic governmentality under the data stack, and the labor control and surplus acceleration embedded in internet platforms—has far exceeded the explanatory scope of classical Marxist theory, urgently requiring new theoretical follow-up and supplementation. They have striven to clarify the "intertwined" and complex relationship among "valorization–labor alienation–algorithmic power" in the age of big data as presented behind digital labor, revealing the essence of exploitation and inequality in digital capitalism. Meanwhile, the contemporary Western Left utilizes a social-pathological research method to perform a "pathological analysis" of digital capitalist society, providing us with instructive inspirations and reflections for deeply conducting research on digital capitalism today and comprehensively deepening theoretical issues related to digital labor in the age of big data.
In addition, it should be recognized that the fact that digital labor has brought comprehensive changes to capitalist relations of production and the social sphere proves that Marx’s comprehensive critique of capitalism still shines with the light of truth: "Marx’s classical problem of 'alienated labor and private property' has once again surfaced in the digital age." Whether it is the analysis of valorization, labor alienation, or the expansion of algorithmic power and its paths of resistance, all confirm Marx's correct predictions about future society. "As time passes, old capital will one day be renewed from head to toe; it will shed its skin and be reborn in a technologically more perfect form." [14] This requires that when studying the issue of digital labor, we must, on one hand, acknowledge that the contemporary Western Left’s critique of modern capitalism hits the mark. This is evident whether they are focusing on the rapid rise of the importance of immaterial labor—where "synchronous with the emergence of this new hegemony of immaterial labor is the increased importance of immaterial forms of property closely related to it"—or noting that the emergence of digital labor has subverted traditional perceptions of labor, "constituting a global exploitative ecosystem" while intensifying capital accumulation and expansion, or even envisioning the landscape and paths for the sublation of digital labor alienation. All these demonstrate the contemporary Western Left's sharp theoretical dissection and capacity for realistic analysis. At the same time, we must also see that in the process of diagnosing contemporary ills, the contemporary Western Left has exposed defects such as being dominated by the logic of capital, deviating from historical materialism, and compromising with liberalism. These are destined to be unable to transform into effective revolutionary practice, and can, at best, only become a narrow "micropolitics."
In short, we must consistently maintain a dialectical attitude toward digital labor as a new form of labor. We must both confront the negative effects of the new mechanisms of exploitation brought about by the total invasion of digital technology into human production and daily life, and affirm the positive role it plays in releasing immense economic potential, adjusting labor relations, and accelerating the digital transformation of enterprises. By the same token, when we engage in a "critique of the critique" regarding contemporary Western Leftist theories of capitalist digital labor, we must look beyond the limitations of their critical frameworks and recognize that, as influential critiques of contemporary capitalism, they offer instructive insights for the present.
First, through the critique provided by the contemporary Western Left, we can recognize that contemporary capitalism has entered a developmental period of "digital capitalism." It is an undeniable fact that data resources, as a brand-new productive force, have become the vital engine driving the development of the digital economy; we must respond proactively with a clear understanding of this reality. Second, we must recognize that beneath the "harmonious and prosperous" facade of contemporary capitalism, the Western Left remains soberly aware of the fact that capital power constructs entirely new logics and power structures in increasingly hidden and harsh ways. Their critique of capitalist digital labor provides an excellent entry point for us to further clarify the essence of the expansion of the logic of digital capital. Third, it must be made clear that merely issuing a "pathological diagnosis" of capitalist digital labor without offering a specific program for transformation—as the contemporary Western Left does—is a dead end.
At present, by situating the Western Left's critique of contemporary capitalist digital labor within the dual coordinates of the Marxist critique of capital and the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era [15], we can not only form correct judgments and sober perceptions of Western Leftist viewpoints, but also more effectively demonstrate that socialism with Chinese characteristics possesses the inherent institutional advantages to activate the vitality of digital labor while curbing its potential negative effects. This provides important enlightenment for better utilizing digital labor as a new quality productive force and promoting the healthy and orderly development of the digital economy.
(Affiliations: School of Marxism, Guangxi Normal University; School of Marxism, South China Normal University) Web Editor: Zhang Jian Source: Journal of Southwest University (Social Sciences Edition), Issue 2, 2024.