Meng Chen and Jiang Lan: Data, Labor, and Platform Capital
We are currently in an era of comprehensive digitalization, where human behavior, interaction, life, and work are all mediated and reconstructed by digitalization. However, the process of social digitalization is not a new phenomenon. Michael Betancourt, an American critical theorist, once conducted an ethnographic-style investigation into sampling technology. He discovered that in the 16th century, there existed a terrifying musical instrument called the "cat organ" (katzenklavier [1]). The instrument consisted of a row of cats fixed in place, their tails stretched out beneath a keyboard; if a key was pressed, the corresponding tail would be violently pulled, eliciting a pathetic feline cry. These cries, when combined, formed active samples of abstract musical tones. Through specific reorganization and manipulation, these fragmented tones could reproduce harmonious musical products. Beyond a humanitarian critique of the "cat organ," Betancourt more perceptively points out that the metaphor of the "cat organ" is exactly like today's digital technology and celluloid film: behind the rich illusoriness, the internal physical reality is increasingly forgotten. From unmanned automated factories to transportation services delivered the next day with a simple click of a mouse, the spatial and temporal boundaries of production, consumption, and circulation seem increasingly less important. The illusion of consumption-less production seems to have truly brought about what Bill Gates called "friction-free capitalism." It appears that "digitalization has opened a magical realm beyond physical limitations, where the binary problem of production/consumption will be resolved in a process allowing for unlimited growth—the continuous expansion of wealth, transcending the limits of production, matter, and labor." Yet the reality is not so simple. In fact, behind the virtual digital economy remains the foundation of material production emphasized by Marx’s historical materialism. Within the seemingly intangible production process, labor still performs a living productive role. Just like the imprisoned cats in the "cat organ," behind the nimble and graceful waltz of digital capital are countless invisible laborers and those labor processes occurring in secret.
Therefore, Christian Fuchs's assertion of the "return of Marx" is no empty talk; Marx's theory has not lost its proper critical efficacy today in revealing labor exploitation and conducting class struggle. Since Dan Schiller first sounded the clarion call of the "era of digital capitalism" in 1999, whether by "integrating the new via the old" or "breaking the old to establish the new," Chinese and foreign scholars have constantly attempted to survey the hidden links behind digital capitalism from both theoretical and practical dimensions in the face of emerging social realities. To be sure, it is difficult for us to provide an authoritative account that ends all critical debates on the developing digital capitalism. However, clarifying the entangled logical threads and locating its functional effects within the structural system of contemporary capitalism remain the primary prerequisites for conducting research on digital capitalism. In this regard, this article attempts to respond to the following specific questions: What is data in the era of digital capitalism? With the rise of intelligent algorithms and digital platforms, how does data become a commodity? How should we define the category of labor in the digital age? Does digital labor constitute productive labor? Does the application of digital technology in capitalist society constitute a completely new mode of production? How should we view the historical evolution of this mode of production?
I. Data, Algorithms, and Platforms: How Does Data Become a Commodity?
As the digitalization of daily life and "quantified self" [2] movements become increasingly popular, the possession and collection of as much continuous data as possible has increasingly become a key link for enterprises or government agencies in decision-making and strategic deployment. Regarding this, Jathan Sadowski states bluntly: "Data—and the accumulation of data—is becoming a core component of 21st-century political economy." Nick Srnicek also points out in his book Platform Capitalism: "We should think of data as a raw material that must be extracted, and user activities are the natural source of this raw material. Just like oil, data is a substance that is extracted, refined, and used in various ways." From Srnicek's passage, we can obtain three understandings of data: (1) data is a product of user activity; (2) data is a raw material waiting to be extracted; (3) the use of data depends on a series of technical processes such as extraction, refinement, and analysis. In my view, Srnicek's metaphor of data as oil is highly misleading, as if the existence of data were like a ubiquitous, free-to-take natural resource. This is certainly not the case. The generation and utilization of data always follow a market-oriented logic of accumulation. If it is said that the era Marx inhabited faced a "vast accumulation of commodities," then what we face today is a "vast accumulation of data." For capital, data is first and foremost an underdeveloped form of commodity. Under these circumstances, how does data become a commodity?
A commodity is a product of labor intended for exchange. Abstract "labor in general," as a certain social measure, provides a quantitative economic regulation of the commodity's utility. As a product of human activity, data follows a similar logical regulation, except that compared to simple commodity production, the labor links involved in data production appear more complex. Whether it is a specific production process with data as its object or a pure process of data transmission, the value they generate or that is acquired is, without exception, the result of human labor built upon a brand-new digital production chain. But how is data useful? If it is said that "the utility of a thing for human life makes it a use-value," then the use-value of data depends on a whole set of institutionalized procedures constructed with algorithms as operational rules, platforms as interface carriers, and various terminal devices as reading interfaces. Once separated from this set of institutionalized procedures, the utility of data immediately vanishes. Therefore, data can be seen as a cognitive product of our understanding of the world today, except it is a product constructed according to established rules—"it is discrete bits of information recorded digitally, processable by machines, easily aggregated, and highly mobile." In this process, as the computer rules that must be followed during operation, algorithms explain the internal reasons why data possesses intelligibility, and to some extent, they become the cause itself. Platforms then act as digital sites for data production, decoding, and exchange; their function lies in being "engines that set the conditions for participation according to fixed protocols (e.g., technical, discursive, formal protocols)," allowing data to enter the field of (platform) market exchange as standardized commodities (or services). The efficient operation of intelligent algorithms is inseparable from the uploading and downloading of massive amounts of data, while the output of massive amounts of data continuously nurtures and gives rise to large-scale platforms. This fluid feedback loop actually corresponds to the migratory trajectory of power and profit. Therefore, the dual nature of data as a commodity lies in the fact that its value depends on the richness of use-value established by various types of digital labor and their technical mediation, while this use-value in turn further facilitates the valorization of data value. Herein lies the secret of all data commodities.
However, how does the data commodity differ from the general commodities analyzed by Marx in Capital? After all, if data were just one category of commodity, it would not sufficiently demonstrate the rationality of the concept "data commodity," even though Marx himself did not directly use concepts such as the "timber commodity," "steel commodity," or "linen commodity." Clearly, we cannot define the specificity of the data commodity to the contemporary capitalist mode of production solely from the external form of the commodity. Therefore, the analysis of the data commodity must not only use the theory of the dual nature of the commodity to demonstrate its generality but must also demonstrate its specificity. That is to say, it must explain both the commonality between data commodities and commodities in general, and clarify the digital technical characteristics presented by this commodity. On the one hand, from the perspective of the specific production process, the specificity of the data commodity lies in the fact that the production and addition of its use-value and value depend not only on the direct production process but also on an indirect, external production process. This externality is primarily manifested in the fact that the generation and connection of data are closely related to the number of users and user stickiness of the network or platform. Flowing data traffic requires stable and continuous external logins as a foundation, and the fundamental way to test the value of data relies on the connectivity between data and the external environment. Consequently, various digital platforms are dedicated to constructing a whole set of technological ecosystems based on data extraction, storage, analysis, and optimization. As American scholar Amrit Tiwana has said, "the fate and existence of a platform critically depend on the diversity and vitality of its downstream ecosystem." On the other hand, from the perspective of the total process of data production, the data commodity is both a means of production that can be used for productive consumption and can also act as a means of circulation to accelerate the circulation of general commodities. In the sphere of production, the value of data lies in its ability to drive the iterative upgrading of intelligent production machinery (fixed capital) through scale effects. In the sphere of circulation, the value of data is manifested in the precise delivery of targeted advertisements. Digital platforms such as Alphabet or Meta are actually advertising platforms; the extraction and analysis of data are more often used to predict, guide, and manipulate the consumption desires and tendencies of users (or potential consumers).
From this, it can be seen that data as a commodity both conforms to the basic definition of a general commodity and reveals the characteristics of a special commodity that integrates production, consumption, and circulation. The commodification of data actually expresses the internal coupling of the logic of datafication and the logic of commodification under the background of digital technology. In the process of pursuing valorization, data-driven capitalism provides new avenues for contemporary capital seeking accumulation and creates new social conditions for the monopolistic upgrading of capital. Perhaps the condition for a direct transition from general data to capital profit may never arrive, yet the process of sensing data and performing data extraction will not stop because of this. Precisely for this reason, the birth of the platform economy is actually the final result of the development of capitalism driven by data.
II. Immaterial Labor and Digital Labor: Is Digital Labor Productive Labor?
Today, while one group of scholars ponders whether intelligent and automated machine systems will replace humans as a new kind of labor subject, another group is dedicated to thinking about the contemporary transformation of labor forms. As expressed by the term "Artificial Intelligence" itself, there is as much "artifice" (human labor) as there is "intelligence." The replacement and transformation of human labor are different results of the same process. The difference between the two is that intelligent machines only take over that part of human labor capacity used to solve complex affairs, while in newly emerging forms of labor, the abilities to interact, participate, cooperate, and express emotion are the indispensable core links. Regarding this, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri noted with no small amount of excitement: "This radical transformation of labor power and the act of integrating science, communication, and language into the productive forces have already redefined the entire phenomenology of labor and the global landscape of production." This transformation was also redefined by the two of them as the productive characteristic of immaterial labor. Unlike Hardt and Negri’s emphasis on the immateriality of labor, Fuchs provides a more materialist conceptual framework for describing the transformation of labor forms. In his view, the definition of digital labor should simultaneously cover various forms of labor related to information and communication technology (ICT), "because they are components of the total labor necessary for the existence, use, and application of digital media." He believes that the impact of digital technology on labor forms is reflected not only in the labor process of immaterial production but also in the international division of labor; it is this division of labor that links originally unconnected labor powers, and those not traditionally defined as such, into a totalizing category of digital production. However, whether it be immaterial labor or digital labor, the question more worthy of attention is: do labor forms not accommodated by traditional definitions belong to productive labor, or are they at best merely a somewhat radical expression in the minds of thinkers?
In Marx’s discourse on productive labor, production is a category of production defined by labor in relation to capital. “Since the immediate purpose and the genuine product of capitalist production is surplus value, only such labor is productive as directly produces surplus value, and only that possessor of labor-power is a productive worker who directly produces surplus value; that is, only such labor is productive as is consumed directly in the production process for the purpose of augmenting the value of capital.” However, the description of labor's economic determinacy does not depart from its essential requirement as productive labor in general—that is, labor is first and foremost a purposeful activity to create use-value. This activity only rises to the level of [productive] labor under a very specific mode of production, namely, on the basis of capitalist production. From this, the definition of productive labor can be summarized as having requirements on three levels of determinacy: (1) labor is first an activity that produces use-value; (2) this process of producing use-value is directly internal to the capitalist mode of production; (3) the direct aim and genuine product of the labor is the production and reproduction of surplus value.
If we examine immaterial labor or digital labor through this logical framework, the primary issue is not to emphasize the "immateriality" of the labor or the external form of informatization, but rather to interrogate the specific labor process and its corresponding labor results. First, regarding the production of use-value, the emergence of new forms of labor caters to the needs of people in the digital age for participatory social interaction and the production of information-based knowledge products. Second, as mentioned above, the production of data is not a direct appropriation of nature but a product of human activity. It participates in the contemporary movement of capitalist value not only in the form of raw materials but also as commodities. This further forms a digital mode of production with data-traffic at its core and platforms-algorithms as its technical carriers. In this sense, the generation of new forms of labor is not external to the capitalist mode of production, but is precisely a product of this mode of production. Finally, the aim of the digital mode of production itself does not lead toward the perfection and upgrading of social interaction, but remains centered on the production and reproduction of surplus value. Whether it be platforms or algorithms, behind their institutional design still lies profit surplus based on human labor and oriented toward the augmentation of value.
Therefore, digital labor belongs to productive labor, but the definition of the extension of the category of "digital labor" should be strictly confined within the digital capitalist mode of production. A contemporary definition of labor is only effective if one begins from the abstract relationship between labor and capital. This means that, on the one hand, as capital gradually expands into fields that were previously non-marketized—such as affect, interaction, and even daily leisure—we should expand the definition of modern labor and the scope of productive labor. As Axel Honneth pointed out when reviewing the brief history of labor as a modern concept, “socially necessary labor must now include those activities that appear to have decisive value for society, whether these activities are related more to objects, to symbols, or are carried out within a framework of communication.” On the other hand, while expanding abstract conceptual categories in accordance with their essential determinations, we must also pay attention to the external boundaries of the categories themselves, rather than blindly subsuming concrete reality under abstract concepts. As Marx pointed out in his critique of classical political economy, the definition of productive labor should avoid falling into the logical monstrosity of tautology, as if “all labor which produces, which results in a product or some kind of use-value, in short, which results in any kind of result, is productive labor.” Thus, the enlightenment provided by Marx’s theory of labor for digital labor studies lies precisely in this: whether “digital” serves as a prefix to “labor” or “labor” serves as the subject of “digitalization,” in the dynamic derivation of essence and extension, the description of specific labor states should never ignore the conceptual boundaries that constitute the essence of labor.
How, then, under the theoretical framework of productive justification, is digital labor distinguished from knowledge labor, affective labor, and immaterial labor? Strictly speaking, the definition of immaterial labor can encompass both knowledge labor and affective labor. As Maurizio Lazzarato, the scholar who proposed this concept, stated, so-called immaterial labor is nothing more than “labor that produces the informational and cultural content of the commodity,” because in the new technical and social context, production increasingly points toward a subjective production of knowledge. However, the rise of knowledge labor and affective labor actually corresponds to the birth of "cognitive capitalism." This series of category combinations merely emphasizes the key role of "general intellect" [3] or "multitude intellect" in the current capitalist mode of production, highlighting the prominent role of subjective content—such as knowledge, communication, and emotional output—in the production process (or labor process). Therefore, whether it is knowledge labor, immaterial labor, or affective labor, these new labor forms all attempt to describe the subjective conditions of the contemporary transformation of labor from the dimensions of specific activity results and subjective labor capacity. In the view of immaterialists such as Paolo Virno, Lazzarato, and Negri, it is precisely these subjective conditions that herald a double characteristic of the future of capitalism: on the one hand, immaterial labor means the capture of labor subjectivity by capital; on the other hand, the expansion of labor subjectivity will ultimately lead to the arrival of a "free utopia" for workers. In this regard, immaterialists have indeed revealed the dialectical movement of subjective production to some extent, but this dialectical nature points only to the external form of production, not the internal essence of production. Because of this, immaterialists both overestimate the utopian vision of “free labor” and miss the capitalist foundation of material production and value augmentation; furthermore, they cannot explain how to view the problem of the intellectually privileged class, or the "cognitariat," within increasingly complex class relations.
In contrast, digital labor emphasizes locating the objective structure of digitalized labor generation from the dimensions of the current digital mode of production, the international division of labor, and the ways labor is organized. Whether under material or immaterial conditions, the relationship between labor and capital has never broken away from the capitalist structure that advocates for exploitation, control, and the extraction of surplus value. Although there remains a suspicion of theoretical ambiguity and vagueness in existing digital labor studies, the rise of the concept of digital labor at least indicates that capital is still extracting surplus value from human labor. That is to say, the relationship between labor and capital is still subject to unequal relations of dominance. In this sense, the so-called disappearance of "drudgery" or the birth of "free labor" is nothing more than a reinforced version of capitalist ideology in the contemporary social sphere.
III. Digital Technology and Capitalism: Does Digital Capitalism Constitute a Brand New Mode of Production?
Since the 1980s, with the advent and popularization of personal computers and the World Wide Web, the "calculative rationality" that re-evaluates all private life, daily life, and economic life has gradually become an important dimension in defining the current social structure. This has been continuously verified and strengthened in conceptual claims such as "information society," "post-industrial society," and the "digital age." Consequently, amidst this wave of emerging new things, the assertion that society is undergoing a fundamental transformation has greatly impacted our understanding of the developmental trends of capitalism today: is current society a capitalist society or a digital society? Undoubtedly, in terms of the state of the productive forces, contemporary society is indeed a fully digitalized society; however, the people of the Western world still live in a society dominated by capitalist class relations. In capitalist societies, certain changes currently taking place, while promoting a massive increase in productive forces, also strongly solidify a class structure based on the inequality between wealth and poverty. The emergence of the term "digital capitalism" is precisely a theoretical response to this dialectical movement occurring between the productive forces and the relations of production. Therefore, contemporary society structured by digital technology should be seen as a higher requirement put forward at the level of productive forces by capital accumulation and the reproduction of class relations. Its purpose is to strengthen the exploitation of labor by capital through technological growth, thereby achieving the goal of accumulating more capital. The result is manifested in increasingly complex capitalist economic forms and class structures. Does this, then, further indicate that digital capitalism constitutes a brand new mode of production?
In the descriptions of digital capitalism by scholars such as [Yann Moulier-]Boutang, Timo Daum, Philipp Staab, Timo Seidl, Ken Mori, and Hiroyuki Nitto, digital capitalism points toward new production models, new business models, new accumulation models, and new economic systems respectively. These assertions of transformation, prefixed with "brand new," focus on the birth of automated production and new technical production systems driven by big data and artificial intelligence. In their view, the era of large-scale industrial machine production is about to become a thing of the past, replaced by more extraordinary intelligent production. In fact, the cheers of theorists regarding socio-technical change are beyond reproach, for the transformative effects occurring in the current social sphere truly shake the very foundations we once relied upon at the levels of culture, technology, and concepts. However, theoretical optimism does not mean that new production technologies can truly create a brand new "value space" such that all production stages no longer have a connection to labor. In the second volume of Capital, Marx made the following judgment when summarizing the theory of the production process: whether it be the production of absolute surplus value or relative surplus value, they determine “(1) the duration of the daily labor process; (2) the entire social and technical configuration of the capitalist production process.” Regarding the first point, the birth of digital technology is not only about the digital and intelligent transformation of production; it also gives rise to "Digital Taylorism" concerning the management of labor, the purpose of which is to achieve maximum production efficiency with minimum cost expenditure. Thus, labor does not disappear from the sphere of production but is integrated into the management models of digital technology in a more sophisticated and rigorous manner. Regarding the second point, in the relationship between capital’s production of surplus value and technological change, it is the former that determines the latter, not the latter that determines the former. It is precisely within the competitive trend of capital's pursuit of profit that the development of the social technological system gains its necessary impetus. Therefore, when viewing digital capitalism through technological change, we should discard isolated and pure technological categories. In reality, technology is not neutral, nor can it exist independently of the existing capital system. What arises in correspondence with technological transformation is the adaptive transformation of labor forms and capital forms. Only by standing on this ground can one accurately grasp the core characteristics of digital capitalism from the theoretical heights of historical materialism.
Viewed from this perspective, Christian Fuchs's definition of digital capitalism provides us with a comprehensive perspective that combines the theoretical tools of historical materialism with the economic realities of digital capitalism. Fuchs does not describe digital capitalism as a brand-new totality, or rather, a brand-new social formation. In his view, digital capitalism is merely a new feature and a new dimension of the capitalist social configuration, and this new feature is closely related to the shift in the socio-technical paradigm and the expansion process of global informational capitalism. First, new digital technologies and information and communication technologies are constructing global network structures to achieve the ultimate goal of integrating the world market. This provides the foundational technical conditions for the spatial expansion of capital. Second, closely linked to the global expansion of capital is the trend toward the accelerated commodification of labor. Whether it is decentralized labor under the crowdsourcing model, associated labor under the platform model, or participatory online user labor, these precarious forms of labor organization "are precisely the necessary result of the mutual penetration of digital capitalism and labor market flexibility mechanisms." Behind the prosperity of the digital economy lies both the micro-exploitation of labor by capital and the macro-exploitation of the underdeveloped by the developed within the structure of the international division of labor. Finally, the expansion of capital and the generalization of labor eventually give rise to more unequal power relations and hierarchical power structures mediated by digital technology; platform monopoly and capital accumulation constitute the ultimate aim of this expansion process. On the one hand, platforms are able to form comprehensive digital service integrations by virtue of their powerful network effects and algorithmic capture, thereby attracting more users and their dynamic traffic. On the other hand, the foundation of platform operation lies in the digital proprietary markets they construct. Whether it is raw data as a raw material or processed digital products and services, the transformation of commodity-form and value-form can be realized on the platform. Therefore, the birth of the platform takes market monopoly as its basic developmental trend, aiming to facilitate the ultimate form of platform capital. Behind various emerging platform landscapes, the platform is striving to become an ubiquitous "mega-rentier," "striving to implant itself into spaces, things, and interactions—especially those not previously governed by rentier relations—in order to continuously control access channels and extract value."
Thus, from the extraction and appropriation of data to the restructuring and transformation of labor, and finally to the formation of the platform ecosystem, the production of surplus value and the accumulation of capital in digital capitalism depend simultaneously on a symbolic, immaterial, and informational commodity system, as well as on a cognitive, communicative, and collaborative labor system. Here, labor, commodities, capital, and surplus value still constitute a stubborn centripetal force as the basic aspects of digital capitalism; while giving rise to ever-changing productive potential, they also strive to suppress this potential within a scope that can be digested by the capitalist system. Therefore, the aforementioned digital mode of production—centered on data-traffic and using platforms-algorithms as technical carriers—does not describe a brand-new mode of production, nor does it completely replace previous industrial and financial models. Rather, it indicates that under the influence of current digital technological productive forces, the digitized mode of production functions as a comprehensive form of capital alongside industrial and financial models. That is to say, on the one hand, "the so-called 'digitalization' is merely a metaphorical expression; it does not mean that capitalism has truly rid itself of its socio-material carrier, but rather implies that it has shed its earlier crude forms and acquired a new, more pure and sophisticated form"; on the other hand, the digital mode of production does not exist as a totalizing category. It possesses profound realistic significance only when describing the extent to which the capitalist mode of production utilizes digital productive forces to accumulate capital within class relations. Therefore, the emergence of digital capitalism is "a transformative sublimation, but not a radical one." Just as Marx pointed out, "the development of the capitalist mode of production and the productive power of labor—at once the cause and the effect of accumulation"—this digital productive force itself is a historical result of capitalist development.
IV. Conclusion
The horizon of historical materialism provides an effective analytical basis for us to dispel the metaphors of the so-called "digital myth" today. Much like the metaphor of the "cat organ" [4] mentioned earlier, today it seems that every technical entity related to social change can become a sublime, sacred object overnight, bringing with it a utopian vision of a path to another reality. However, research on digital capitalism based on historical materialism shows that behind the myth of digitalization-worship, the capitalist structure still plays the primary driving role, and the exertion of this driving role must still be based on commodities, labor, and value. To this end, we should dialectically consider the transformation and upgrading of the socio-technical paradigm occurring in the current social field. On the one hand, digitalization indeed provides new potential for creating a good, democratic socialist society; but on the other hand, under existing class structures and social relations, the digital transition has reinforced, rather than subverted, the economic antagonism of exploitation and the social antagonism of dominance between classes. While the digital mode of production makes the end of drudgery a possibility, it also contains the dual possibility of deepening class contradictions. Therefore, digital capitalism is first and foremost a digitized class society. In this dimension, digital capitalism still shares the general commonality of the capitalist economy, emphasizing capital's exploitation and domination of labor. This also means that if we are to realize the transition from digital capitalism to digital socialism, we must both firmly grasp the epochal opportunities of current technological changes to promote the further development of modern civilization and continuously transform the relations of production and social relations to suit modern social productive forces. Only in this way can the civilizational vision of technology be opened toward the well-rounded development of the individual and the healthy functioning of society.