Chen Wenxu: Stage Characteristics and Trend Analysis of Capitalist Digitalization
Digitization was originally a question rooted in the natural sciences, but in recent years it has increasingly become a research hotspot in the social sciences. Within this field, researchers of Marxist theory often proceed from the dual paths of political economy and philosophy to conduct profound analyses of the developmental trends of digitization. At the same time, as the birthplace of digital technology, developed capitalist societies have naturally become a primary focus of relevant research. Judging by the existing scholarly output, the issue of digitization is mostly discussed within the framework of a critique of digital capitalism. In a sense, digital capitalism can be regarded as the latest developmental stage of capitalism, and digitization is both the prerequisite for capitalism entering this new stage and the core characteristic describing the changes within it. Studying the stage-specific characteristics and future trends of capitalist digitization possesses significant theoretical and practical importance.
I. The Socio-Historical Positioning of Capitalist Digitization
In a narrow sense, digitization mainly refers to the conversion from analog signal technology to digital network technology. "The most obvious advantage of this conversion is that it improves precision and controllability, while also making it possible for digital computers to integrate image and sound systems." [1] In a broad sense, digitization includes the increasing ubiquity of electronic systems and microprocessors, the widespread application of customized software, and the comprehensive acceleration of information dissemination. Given that digitization is marked by electronic computers and information network technology, the starting point of capitalist digitization should be traced back to the Third Technological Revolution of the 1940s and 1950s. At that time, the rapid development of information technology, new energy technology, space technology, and biotechnology greatly altered the social profile of capitalism, thereby triggering the "question of the epoch" in Western academia regarding whether a new social formation had emerged.
(1) The Emergence of Post-Industrial Society
After the end of World War II, capitalism ushered in a "Golden Age" of high-speed development. Aided by science and technology, industrial infrastructure was comprehensively upgraded, production efficiency increased significantly, and the entire face of society was refreshed. Against this backdrop, the liberal sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf proposed that a technology-driven industrial society had already transcended the capitalist social formation as defined by Marx. Conversely, the Frankfurt School thinker Theodor W. Adorno critiqued this view; proceeding from the laws of motion [2] of the productive forces and relations of production, he reached the judgment that "industrial society is still a capitalist society." Although the view of replacing "capitalist society" with "industrial society" was a theoretical proposition attempting to mask the logic of capital [3], the debate over how to characterize industrial society reflected the increasingly prominent new changes in capitalist society shaped by the technological revolution. Objectively, technology (including the intensification of scientific theoretical knowledge) increasingly transformed economic systems and class hierarchies; original social relations, power structures, and cultural values were rapidly eroding. Having experienced the Third Technological Revolution, capitalist industrial society entered a new stage of development. The American sociologist Daniel Bell used the term "post-industrial society" to describe this stage. In the vision of post-industrial society, the economic share of manufacturing is continuously occupied by the service economy; the professional technical class gradually expands and gains an important social status; education achieves breakthroughs and becomes the foundation for social mobility; new forms of capital, represented by human capital and social capital, become intrinsic characteristics of economic growth; intelligent technology gradually replaces mechanical technology on the social stage; electronic communications engineering becomes the infrastructure of social production; and knowledge, as a source of invention and innovation, further becomes the source of value for social development. It is evident that "post-industrial society" is a definition of a new society focusing on the power of technological innovation. Bell once stated bluntly that the most critical fact about new technology is that it is not limited to an isolated field (as the label "high-tech" implies), but is a series of transformations spread across all areas of society, restructuring all old relations. In other words, the Third Technological Revolution's transformation of capitalist society was all-encompassing, endowing industrial society with new technical forms—including informatization, networking, and even digitization—all of which can be summarized as the formal characteristics of post-industrial society. Overall, the emergence of the concept of post-industrial society to some extent drove a trend in Western academia toward exploring the characteristics of capitalism's new stage, and thinkers from various fields began to focus collectively on the new social vision outlined by computer network technology.
(2) The Arrival of the Information Society
Among the many works exploring the post-industrial capitalist society, Manuel Castells's three-volume The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture is the "most ambitious move to redraw the social map." Castells advocated shifting the focus of analysis from post-industrialism to informationalism—that is, examining the emerging post-industrial informational society. Scholarly judgment of the informational society possesses a triple logic: first, the human world has begun to enter the information age, a consensus reached by scholars of various schools including Bell and the British sociologist Anthony Giddens; second, in this stage, the production, processing, and transmission of information have become the fundamental sources of productive forces and power, which in turn converge into an informational form of social organization; third, and more specifically, the key feature of this organizational form is the construction of the basic social structure through a networking logic. The informational society is a concept of a new social structure that emphasizes connectivity and focuses on the social value of knowledge. "Presence or absence in the network and the dynamic relationship of each network vis-à-vis others are critical sources of dominance and change in our society." That is to say, information relations profoundly influence the dynamic evolution of social relations, and social activities in economic, political, cultural, and other aspects have extended their organizational forms under the paradigm of information technology. Innovation activities led by information technology give birth to the material foundation of this social structure; such an informational society is an open system capable of infinite expansion and high vitality. The "New Economy" organized around information networks, network media politics, digital audiovisual culture, and even the transformation of the spatio-temporal order are all basic characteristics of this social structure. Furthermore, "the evolution of management and production toward network forms does not mean the demise of capitalism." Castells borrowed mathematical models from the French sociologist Alain Touraine and Bell to elaborate on the relationship between capitalism and informatization. In their view, capitalism and informatization represent the mode of production and the mode of development [4], respectively; they cooperate with each other to shape an informational capitalist society.
(3) The Rise of Digital Society
Since the 1970s, "countless political and business affairs and news events have continuously reminded the broad audience to prepare for the great changes that will occur in all aspects of life, because the information age is coming." In academia, works systematically explaining the informational society and those reflecting on and critiquing informational capitalism have emerged in an endless stream. Generally speaking, the informatization of capitalist society was identified as a fait accompli. By the late 1990s, with the emergence of the seeds of the Fourth Technological Revolution, digitization began to replace informatization in some contexts as the core concept describing the characteristics of capitalism's new stage. The American futurist Nicholas Negroponte pointed out that for a long time, everyone has been so keen to discuss the transition from the industrial age to the post-industrial or information age that they have failed to notice we have already entered the post-information age. In the post-information age, people are situated in a digital society, initiating an entirely new mode of "digital existence." First, digital society is expected to achieve "true personalization"—this personalized trend refers not only to the enrichment of individual choices but also to the appropriate coordination between humans and various environments. That is to say, the degree to which machines understand humans will be on par with the tacit understanding between humans, and the technical support within digital society will be a systematic artificial intelligence. Second, virtualization is another major feature of digital society; virtual cyberspace will become an important venue for social life, virtual digital symbols will serve as important media for transmitting information, and both existing subjects and objects will further move from the "real" toward the "virtual." "The result of digitization is the loss of original meaning and vision, the loss of the archetypal goal that serves as the basis for original scientificity." However, digital existence detached from the original framework means that the possibilities for invention and creation are expected to burst forth more fully; digital society marks a creative future. In Negroponte's view, "we cannot deny the existence of the digital age, nor can we stop its progress." However, some scholars advocate viewing the social impact of digitization with a critical eye. Dan Schiller proposed the concept of "digital capitalism" precisely to emphasize that the inherent oppressive order of capitalism is still projected onto the digital age; digitization has not alleviated the basic contradictions of capitalism and has even derived some new problems. The British sociologist Frank Webster also pointed out that the "information explosion" brought by digitization is merely an "important means of understanding the history of capitalist expansion." Thinkers including Herbert Irving Schiller, Jürgen Habermas, and Giddens all insist on viewing the digitization trend of capitalism from the perspective of continuity. These thinkers do not deny the new social changes brought by digital technology, nor do they despise its important status in contemporary society; rather, they advocate conducting a critique of digital capitalism from the perspective of the continuation of existing relations. For capitalism, digitization is both an evolving general characteristic and a means of social reform; its inherent information forms and network functions are all subordinate to the logic of capital. "No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society." [5] Therefore, when examining the new changes in capitalism created by digital technology, one must not overlook the historical logic of the development of this social formation.
II. New Characteristics of the New Stage of Capitalist Development
Digitization has not changed the institutional essence of capitalist society, nor has it catalyzed a higher social formation; this is a principle that must be clarified when exploring the issue of capitalist digitization. However, it is undeniable that digital technology has indeed catalyzed new forms of labor, new forms of capital, and new modes of exploitation, elements which together map out a series of new characteristics of capitalist development.
(1) The New Kinetic Energy of Society: Digital Technology
In the long river of human history, science and technology have always been significant markers outlining the characteristics of an era. "The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist." From the Age of Steam to the Age of Electricity, and then to the Information Age, science and technology have consistently driven human society forward. The digital development stage of capitalist society is precisely driven by digital technologies centered on computer hardware, software, and networks. The computer can be regarded as a processor of numbers and symbols; its circuitry can recognize and process a language system composed of 0s and 1s, while also handling other statements such as "yes" and "no" or "right" and "wrong." Generally speaking, computers can complete all symbol-related work, from mathematics to logic to language. The integrated circuit is the fundamental hardware of the computer—a single chip composed mainly of silicon that integrates a wide variety of electronic components. Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, predicted in 1965 that "the complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year." Moore's Law vividly depicts the astonishing speed of computer development and reflects the ability of digital technology to break through the laws of the physical world. Under such conditions, "time is everything, man is nothing; he is, at most, time's carcase."
If high speed is conferred by digital hardware, then intelligence is primarily realized through software. In the Information Age, when people wanted to learn about new things and transmit news, they might have needed to rely on specific websites; today, these needs can be met through applications (Apps) on smartphones. The two most widely used operating systems—Apple’s iOS and Android—now host over 500,000 types of applications, providing a range of digital software services that cover almost all aspects of daily social life. The synergy of computer hardware and intelligent software constructs entirely new forms of social production and lifestyles. Beyond this, the landmark achievement of digital technology lies in enabling the majority of people globally to interconnect through a shared digital network. Since the birth of ARPANET in 1969, human society has moved through the Web 1.0 era dominated by portal companies and the Web 2.0 era characterized by network interaction; it is currently in the Web 3.0 era pursuing customization and looking toward a Web 4.0 era that can achieve deep interactive experiences. It can be said that the Internet, as a global bridge, has become one of the most important infrastructures of the digital age. "The entire framework of digital technology has been completed, and it will have a major and profound impact on the economy and society just as the steam engine did." Digital technologies full of innovative vitality—such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing—will continue to play a role in future capitalist changes.
(2) A New Form of Labor: Digital Labor
Digital labor primarily refers to the online activities of users that produce data, including but not limited to browsing webpages, socializing on platforms, and online shopping. In essence, digital labor does not transcend Marx’s definition of labor. Marx pointed out: "Conscious life activity distinguishes man immediately from animal life activity." Digital labor remains a life activity that consumes physical and mental energy. At the same time, digital labor is a value-creating activity packaged in culture and technology; it does not serve an illusory cyber-world, but rather promotes the better functioning of the material world and real society. As Marx said: "The labour process... is an appropriation of what exists in nature for the requirements of man. It is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction between man and nature." Non-material forms of digital labor are no exception; both their origin and destination are inseparable from material production activities. On one hand, network data can satisfy people's needs for information; this is the use value created by digital labor as concrete labor. On the other hand, it also serves as abstract labor creating the undifferentiated exchange value congealed in data products. Clearly, Marx's labor theory of value remains an important theoretical tool for the in-depth analysis of this new form of labor.
In addition, the political economy of communication can also serve as an important theoretical pillar for digital labor. The Canadian scholar Dallas W. Smythe was the founder of the Marxist critique of the political economy of communication; his concept of "audience labor" is considered the precursor to digital labor. According to Smythe's theory, radio and television as information media possess corresponding audiences; these audiences—or rather, their time—are sold by the stations to advertisers (media sponsors). Advertisers purchase the audience commodity because these potential consumers help expand their profits, while these audience members are simultaneously implicit producers: their act of watching programs is the completion of labor. In Smythe's view, "the reality of society under monopoly capitalism is that most people's non-sleeping time becomes work time." This characteristic is even more pronounced in the digital age: while users seemingly use network platforms freely, they are in substance producing data for platform owners without compensation, helping platforms enlist more free laborers to serve data reproduction. As digital technology continuously reaches and penetrates every field of capitalist society, the scope of digital labor is also shifting and expanding. The British scholar Christian Fuchs has noted: "The specific labor conditions of particular types of digital labor are historical and dynamic; they are not fixed but change with the development of capitalism and capitalist crises." Regarding digital labor, whether viewed from the subjects, tools, or objects of labor, it is in a state of dynamic evolution, which requires timely follow-up in subsequent research.
(3) A New Form of Capital: Digital Capital
Capital, which appeared before capitalist society and has persisted to this day, is not a fixed material thing. It is "a definite social production relation, belonging to a definite historical formation of society, which is manifested in a thing and lends this thing a specific social character." Objectively speaking, new changes in capitalism can always breed entirely new forms of capital; capital can simultaneously manifest as industrial products, human resources, financial bonds, and so on. Compared to the industrial and financial capital of the past, emerging digital capital has a unique material manifestation: data. Data here primarily refers to various types of information derived from people performing digital labor. Since the inception of the Third Technological Revolution, informationized data has increasingly become the basic nutrient for people's production and lives. With the continuous upgrading of network technology, data collection capabilities and processing efficiency have both increased significantly, and an "era of Big Data" characterized by an information explosion kicked off in the 21st century. An advisory report released by McKinsey & Company in 2011 provided a detailed explanation of the characteristics and influence of Big Data, arguing that "Big Data refers to datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze." The Austrian scientist Viktor Mayer-Schönberger similarly perceived the important status of data resources in today's society, writing: "[It is] the ability of society to harness information in novel ways to produce useful insights or goods and services of significant value." As an emerging resource excavated from electronic networks, data possesses characteristics of being renewable, existing in large volumes, having weak spatial-temporal constraints, being fast to transport, having multiple collection sources, and having wide utility. These characteristics converge to give data use value. Its use value is not intended to satisfy the needs of network users, but rather to serve the commercial activities of platform owners. Once data is produced by users, the platform uses algorithmic programs to analyze and activate its maximum utility. Through this processing, data is no longer merely electronic symbols but becomes value symbols capable of bringing surplus value to platform owners—that is, digital capital. As Marx said, "Capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value." When data becomes digital capital, it begins to circulate repeatedly, driving capitalist value production with profit-seeking as its sole aim.
(4) A New Manifestation of Oppression: Digital Exploitation
Digital labor is the source of digital capital; the extraction of surplus value from digital labor is the prerequisite for digital capital accumulation. "Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks." In a certain sense, capitalist network platforms continuously transform gratuitously appropriated digital labor value into their own revenue, reflecting a relationship of exploitation and being exploited between platform owners and digital laborers. The Italian scholar Tiziana Terranova once summarized the characteristics of digital labor as being "voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoyed and exploited." In her view, the emerging form of labor once embellished by capitalism has exposed its exploitative essence; people are gradually feeling that they are becoming the "cyber-slaves" of digital capitalism. However, some scholars deny the existence of digital exploitation, arguing that the right of use and corresponding services provided by platforms to users can be regarded as the equivalent wage for digital labor. Clearly, this view defending digital exploitation departs from Marx's definition of wages and the value of labor, namely that "the worker’s wage appears as the price of labour, as a certain quantity of money paid for a certain quantity of labour," whereas platform services cannot replace money in purchasing the necessary means of subsistence for users. Furthermore, if the rate of surplus value is used to measure the degree of digital exploitation, then digital labor—which lacks a boundary between necessary labor and surplus labor—can be said to achieve the maximization of exploitation. Taking online shopping as an example, from the moment users enter a platform, they are releasing information about their consumption preferences; platform owners utilize this data to complete the precision delivery of consumption services, thereby extracting revenue with maximum efficiency. Other scholars argue that because digital labor does not produce commodities that can be directly exchanged, it can only be counted as part of the circulation sphere and should therefore be excluded from the category of exploitation. This line of reasoning is a misreading of Marxist political economy, because Marx pointed out that "capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value." Regarding digital labor, once the data it produces realizes value expansion (valorization), it has already been drawn into the capitalist mode of production and has become an object of exploitation by platform owners. Even if digital labor is categorized within the circulation sphere, the relationship between users and platforms is dominated by commercial capital; "in these transitional forms, the exploitation of labour is at its maximum." Nowadays, the exploitation of digital labor and the accumulation of digital capital have become important means for the further digitalization of capitalism; analyzing and criticizing them helps to decode the new evolutionary trends of contemporary capitalism.
III. Judgment of the Trends in the Digitalization of Capitalism
Since the 1970s, capitalist society has introduced and applied digital technology across various fields, gradually forming a development stage defined by digitalization. Digitalization can represent both the currently manifest stage characteristics of capitalist society and reflect the future evolutionary trends of capitalist society. In a sense, analyzing the trends of capitalist digitalization helps clarify the laws of development of capitalist social formations.
(1) The Monopolistic Trend of the Digital Economy
The digital economy refers to a series of economic activities that take data resources as key productive factors and information networks as important carriers; it utilizes the effective use of digital technology as a major driver for enhancing efficiency and optimizing economic structures. "Over the past 15 years, the growth rate of the digital economy has reached 2.5 times that of global GDP growth, and compared to 2000, the total scale of the digital economy has nearly doubled." The development momentum of digital industries is robust, and the COVID-19 global pandemic has, in certain respects, provided an opportunity for the accelerated growth of the digital economy. The rapidly expanding online market is viewed by capitalism as a panacea for thoroughly emerging from the shadow of the financial crisis, and the far-reaching flow of data has become a new hope for economic recovery. However, the majority of the benefits of the digital economy have been carved up by a few internet companies with first-mover advantages: "Top internet companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook account for nearly 67% of the global digital economy’s output value; meanwhile, more than half of the world’s top 100 internet companies are distributed across developed regions in Europe and America." The concentration of production and capital to a certain degree inevitably leads to monopoly. The network effects of internet aggregation, technical advantages in extracting data, and early-stage digital capital accumulation have collectively fostered the monopolistic status of these top internet companies.
Due to the high mobility of digital capital and the absence of an international data governance system, monopolistic internet enterprises are able to extend their reach into every corner reached by the network, utilizing various means to complete the acquisition of emerging forces. After converting platform advantages into monetary returns, these monopolistic firms begin to invest in every link of the global data value chain: from innovating data collection programs to upgrading data transmission carriers, and further to improving data storage, analysis, and processing solutions. The all-encompassing business scope of monopolistic internet enterprises causes small, medium, and micro-internet firms with single service offerings to face extreme survival difficulties, gradually degenerating into dependent companies within the cruel competition of monopolies. As the process of digitization continues to accelerate, monopolistic internet firms push the circulation, turnover, and reproduction of capital to the extreme, congregating into powerful technical, market, and financial forces. From October 2019 to January 2021, the stock price increases of top internet companies ranged from 55% (Facebook) to 144% (Apple), far exceeding composite indices. It is evident that the trend of imbalance in the digital economy increased rather than decreased during the pandemic, with predatory competition proliferating and market instability rampant; a profound crisis may arrive abruptly. Marx long ago elucidated: "One capitalist always strikes down many others. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few... with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation... the monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it... The knell of capitalist private property sounds." As capitalist countries like the United States increasingly and consciously integrate and utilize the industrial resources of internet companies, international disputes over the digital economy are becoming more intense. Some backward countries, lacking sophisticated network technology, can only play the role of raw material suppliers in the data value chain, resulting in meager gains during the production process. Occupying a subordinate position in the data value chain means that the more digital labor the internet users of these countries provide, the more smoothly capital accumulation proceeds for developed nations and their internet companies. Beyond this, top internet companies have aggressively waded into the political sphere in recent years: "The investment in policy lobbying by US internet companies, including Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, has skyrocketed from $16 million in 2010 to $63 million in 2020." They attempt to control the power of public discourse through various channels and influence domestic and foreign policy, thereby becoming financial oligarchs who manipulate the capitalist state machine in the digital era.
(2) The Application Prospects of Digital Currency
Since the commodity economy became the universal economic form, the means by which humans maintain their existence have mostly revolved around money. "The specific social function of this commodity, and consequently its social monopoly, is to play the part of universal equivalent within the world of commodities." Whether acting as an irreplaceable medium of exchange in daily life or prevailing over other relations within the logic of capital, the social status of money has not encountered substantive challenges; however, its applied form has undergone obvious changes while maintaining its traditional functional core. From financial markets to cyberspace, the trend toward the de-materialization of money has become increasingly prominent, and a collection of electronic currencies—managed, stored, and exchanged primarily within computer systems—has begun to enter economic society. This collection is collectively known as digital currency, which includes general cryptocurrencies, stablecoins (stable cryptocurrencies), and the recently emerged Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC).
General cryptocurrencies, represented by Bitcoin, rely on a distributed ledger verification technology commonly known as blockchain; their prices fluctuate with changes in supply and demand, carrying the potential for sharp rises and falls. In contrast, "Tether" (USDT) and the "Libra" coin once planned by Facebook convey the concept of being pegged to fiat currency. They operate on distributed ledgers or centralized systems maintained by the issuer and can be converted at any time into fiat currencies like the US dollar at a fixed price; hence, they are called stablecoins. However, compared to the active performance of Bitcoin in trading markets, most experiments with stablecoins have ended in failure. The reason lies in the fact that while stablecoins theoretically possess fixed store of value and units of account, their inequality with fiat currency still leads to their transactions being unsustainable in practice. If securities are used as temporary collateral for stablecoins, it brings financial risk to the holders, which likewise destroys its use-value. In terms of risk, general cryptocurrencies with functions similar to investment products are also unsuitable for widespread implementation. "Taking Bitcoin as an example, its value is by no means firm... this volatility makes it difficult to use as a monetary unit for pricing commodities or setting wages." Unlike the first two types of cryptocurrency, Central Bank Digital Currencies issued by official institutions possess better financial security and inclusivity; such legal digital tender is considered the only currently feasible substitute for base money. According to relevant reports from the European Central Bank, more than 80 central banks worldwide are currently exploring the issuance of digital currencies. First, issuing digital currency can strengthen the central bank's control over online transactions. In recent years, the development of mobile payments has led more people to complete transfers through third-party applications without going through the banking system, dealing a heavy blow to banking operations. For central banks, promoting digital currency to broaden online business and enter the mobile payment market is clearly a more efficient management solution than forcibly requiring application platforms to share transaction flow information. Second, CBDCs can contribute to optimizing social security services. If everyone opens a digital wallet operated by the central bank, the government can more conveniently distribute social security subsidies. Furthermore, if electronic financial services such as micro-loans can be completed on a CBDC platform, credit security will be guaranteed to a greater extent. Although capitalism took the lead in conducting digital currency experiments, its subsequent development momentum has been insufficient, failing to achieve a breakthrough in restructuring monetary resources; in the future, it may still have to deal with the risk challenges brought by cryptocurrencies.
(3) The Expansionary Trend of Digital Hegemony
In recent years, digital hegemony—taking cyberspace as the battlefield and network technology as the weapon—has started to become a new manifestation of hegemonism. As the most typical hegemonic state, the trend of the United States using digital technology to expand the scope of its hegemonic radiation has become increasingly evident. Engels once pointed out: "The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine; it is the state of the capitalists, the ideal total capitalist." From using network media to export ideology and induce international public opinion to secretly deploying network communication surveillance systems in the name of "national security," the acts of capitalist digital hegemony have already become the primary obstacle to global interconnectivity. "The international internet developed as a project of American power, based on the requirements of the US military departments and growing corporate needs." To a certain extent, the charm of the "borderless web" has diluted the ideology imbued in digital technology, but the United States—keen on intervention and dominance—seems never to have forgotten for a moment to construct a hegemonic order in public cyberspace.
In April 2020, then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that all 5G networks from "untrusted" IT vendors would be banned; Huawei and ZTE, the Chinese enterprises that were among the earliest to participate in the research and development of 5G technology, were both included in the sanctions list. In June of the same year, the United States formally launched the "Clean Network" [11] program, suppressing the superior industries of other countries even at the expense of its own consumers' interests. "The 'Clean Network' program is essentially an embodiment of US digital hegemony; using ideology as a pretext, it implements country-based market access restrictions in the network field, establishing non-tariff trade barriers for digital technology." Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, once stated that the web was invented for everyone in the world. Treating all online traffic equally was both the original intent of creating the network and the key to the flourishing of the network enterprise. If digital hegemony only accepts innovations that it can control and obstructs the inclusive sharing of technical resources, it will place itself in opposition to global digital development. Moreover, the United States has developed large-scale cyber-attack weapons to serve its digital hegemony; the quantum attack systems it developed are capable of indiscriminately hijacking network data from any region in the world. In September 2022, the release of the investigation report on the "Cyber attack on Northwestern Polytechnical University by the US National Security Agency (NSA)" directly confirmed that the United States is making full preparations to launch digital warfare regardless of the cost. Digital hegemony not only brings endless hidden anxieties to global network security but may also pose a huge threat to national security. "Starlink," built with the support of the US Department of Defense, has already revealed its military utility in the Ukraine crisis. Once this type of digital technology is fully placed in the service of hegemonic war in the future, it will greatly undermine regional peace and stability.
(4) The Potential Power of the Cyber-Proletariat
Marx once pointed out: "The technical basis of modern industry is revolutionary." First, technological progress promotes the development of productive forces, which in turn catalyzes changes in the relations of production. Ultimately, the occurrence of social revolution will also be inevitable. Digital technology, as a modern high-end technology, likewise contains the revolutionary power to cause the demise of capitalism, and this potential power may be triggered by a new revolutionary subject. On the one hand, digitalized production organization and forms of division of labor are more conducive to capital's control and exploitation of labor than before; these conditions have created a more universal "proletarianization." Under the mode of production of digital capitalism, capital has crossed spatial boundaries and leapt over temporal divides, continuously constructing a globalized, 24/7 order of oppression. As David Harvey said: "Capital attempts to control not only actual labor efficiency but also the self-discipline of the employed laborers, the qualities of the laborers supplied in the market, and the cultural habits and mindsets of the workers." Whether they are miners in the Congo gathering cassiterite or technicians in Silicon Valley developing software, all are enduring the enslavement of capital on the same value chain; even leisure activities outside of work may degenerate into a warehouse of raw materials for digital capital accumulation. All-around control of labor helps to increase the rate of surplus value, but the universalization of the objects of exploitation also means the continuous expansion of the revolutionary subject. Lenin once pointed out: "The system of bourgeois capitalism also nurtures its own grave-diggers—the proletariat—within itself." In the current era, the digitization of capitalism is gestating a massive "cyber-proletariat" and creating the objective conditions for their universal association.
With the worldwide popularization and application of information networks, the power of universal social intercourse [12] has been stimulated to an unprecedented degree. As Marx stated: "local individuals are replaced by world-historical, empirically universal individuals." The level of productive forces, developing at high speed in the digital era, is infinitely approaching the material requirements of a new world history. Digitalized capitalism has converged into a powerful oppressive force; as the majority, the cyber-proletariat should consciously utilize the conditions of the times to unite and resist this alien force [13]. Contemporary foreign Marxist scholars Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri once pointed out that the revolutionary subject of postmodern capitalism is precisely the "multitude" [14] that exists within Empire while simultaneously resisting it—namely, the global proletariat that labors under the rule of capital but possesses the potential to resist the logic of capital. Whether it is capitalism differentiating itself stage-by-stage from within, where quantitative change triggers qualitative change, or socialism accelerating the replacement of the capitalist social formation from without, the joint promotion of the cyber-proletariat on a global scale is required. Objectively speaking, the contradiction between the socialization of production and the capitalist private appropriation of the means of production is deepening by the day. Even if digital technology has released new space for the development of productive forces within capitalist society, it ultimately only represents the modernization of the basic contradictions of capitalism. Marx and Engels's thesis on the inevitable demise of capitalism remains the grand trend of socio-historical development; constructing a social formation in which the achievements of technological innovation are shared by all people is more in line with the future direction of human civilization.
IV. Conclusion
Digitalization is both a transformative characteristic of contemporary capitalism and a general process of historical development. When researching the historical trajectory, characteristics, and trends of the digitalization of capitalism, it is necessary to adhere to the standpoint of historical materialism. One must begin with the laws of development of human society, strip away the external appearances of its stage-based changes to grasp the deep logic of its dynamic evolution, and clearly recognize the class interests to which contemporary capitalism stubbornly clings. At the same time, it is necessary to follow the methodological principle of the critique of political economy—rising from the abstract to the concrete—focusing the object of investigation on the various realms of capitalist economy, politics, and culture to deeply analyze the internal mechanisms of digital capitalist expansion.
Conducting a critique of digitalization by no means implies rejecting or evading the transformation brought by digital technology. As early as the era of mechanization, Marx pointed out with piercing clarity: "The contradictions and antagonisms inseparable from the capitalist employment of machinery, do not exist because they arise out of machinery, as such, but because they arise out of its capitalist employment!" The problems and contradictions of technological development are not inherent or inevitable; they can be resolved through the transformation of the mode of production. Overall, we must continue forward along the path forged by Marx, exploring the construction of a digital development model for a new form of human civilization. This requires the people of the world to work together to compose a "resplendent movement" of the new digital era.
General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "China is willing to work with countries around the world to join hands in striking a path for global digital development characterized by the joint construction and sharing of digital resources, a vibrant digital economy, precise and efficient digital governance, a flourishing digital culture, strong digital security guarantees, and mutually beneficial digital cooperation, so as to accelerate the building of a community with a shared future in cyberspace and contribute wisdom and strength to world peace, development, and the progress of human civilization." Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC [15], China has actively cultivated the innovative momentum of digital technology, making the digital economy stronger, better, and larger, while accelerating the construction of a "Digital China." It has mapped out a new prospect for the digitalization of human civilization and contributed Chinese wisdom regarding digitalization in the New Era to the entire world. Objectively speaking, seizing the strategic opportunity of the digital technological revolution is of great significance for human society to successfully navigate the world's great changes unseen in a century [16]. Facing such historical conditions, current and future digital transformations cannot stubbornly follow the old path of capitalist digitalization; instead, based on an insight into the malaises of digital capitalism, they must strive to achieve new breakthroughs for the digital civilization of human society.