Liu Pengfei and Gu Yongchun: 21st-Century Foreign Leftist Scholars' Critique of Biocapitalism
Since the onset of the 21st century, alongside the widespread application of biotechnology at the levels of production and daily life, the life sciences have permeated every stratum of capitalist society with unprecedented scale and speed. Against this backdrop, several insightful and forward-looking Western left-wing scholars have sought to examine the development of contemporary life sciences and biotechnology within the horizon of the critique of capitalism, attempting to theorize and systematize these developments. In 2006, the renowned American scholar Kaushik Sunder Rajan published his representative work, Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life. Grounded in a frontier perspective on the development of life sciences and biotechnology, this book organically integrates the theoretical core of Marxist political economy into the organizational framework of Foucault’s biopolitics. It endeavors to clarify the interaction between biotechnology and contemporary capitalism, thereby constructing a brand-new theoretical category for studying contemporary biotech and its systems of exchange and circulation: "biocapital." So-called "biocapitalism" is a new form of capitalist existence in which biocapital, leveraging life sciences and biotechnology within the contemporary world capitalist system, continuously extracts profit and achieves capital valorization. Subsequently, the issue of biocapitalism has attracted wide attention from Western scholars, with several left-wing scholars conducting research and evaluation of biocapitalism from the perspective of the critique of political economy, opening a new horizon for the critique of contemporary capitalism.
I. The Latest Mode of Capitalist Dominance in the Age of Life Sciences
Rajan argues that the emergence of biocapital does not mean capitalism has entered a distinctly epochal stage that leaves the capitalism we know behind or fundamentally destroys it. On the contrary, biocapitalism is a continuation, an evolution, a subset, and a form of capitalism distinct from what preceded it. Biocapitalism arises during the process of capitalism’s modernizing transformation and represents the latest mode of capitalist dominance in the era of life sciences. As a new contemporary form of capitalism, it conforms to the law of development characterized by the unity of universality and particularity.
(1) Biocapitalism remains a political-economic system dominated by the will of the bourgeoisie. It acquires ownership over biological information and bio-products by appropriating "genetic codes," subsequently utilizing economic superiority to place living organisms within an inescapable "biological shadow of existence," ultimately seizing global economic and political dominance.
From the perspective of its logic of generation, biocapitalism is the result of capital seeking rent from biotechnology. Its ultimate goal remains the maintenance of capital valorization and the reproduction of capitalist relations of production. Over the past 30 years of biocapitalism's vigorous development, the life sciences have become increasingly dependent on the capitalist mode of production, becoming—in an increasingly naked fashion—a tool for maintaining capital valorization and capitalist relations of production while carrying out a new round of expansion, penetration, and profit-seeking. Nikolas Rose has pointed out that contemporary molecular biomedicine requires years of large-scale financial investment before yielding results: purchasing expensive equipment, maintaining fully staffed laboratories, conducting multiple clinical trials, and covering the costs of overcoming regulatory hurdles. Similar to previous forms of capitalism, most of this funding comes from venture capital provided by private firms and fundraising through the stock market. Consequently, these investments naturally possess the power to demand that the investee comply with all the urgent needs of capital, such as guaranteeing a certain profit output and satisfying shareholder requirements for returns on value. In this context, life science and capitalism exist in a symbiotic relationship: on one hand, life science relies on capital support to grow and flourish; on the other hand, capital needs to establish monopoly positions within the field of life sciences to obtain surplus profits. Under the continuous rent-seeking of capital, biotechnology is easily controlled and co-opted by capital, eventually losing its scientific neutrality and degenerating into a tool for capital's pursuit of profit.
From the perspective of its logic of operation, biocapitalism is the product of a "collusion" between the logic of capital and the logic of power it drives. Since the birth of biocapitalism, its development has always been jointly influenced by these two logics, a key manifestation of which is the application for and use of patents related to the life sciences. In her investigation of the history of patents in the life sciences, Ashleigh Breske found that global demand for pharmaceuticals has led to a continuous increase in "biopiracy" [1] in the Global South. Once biotech companies discover a drug they deem profitable, they immediately apply for relevant patents so that no other company can profit from it. Because the "tool" of life science inherently requires high levels of sustained capital investment and comprehensive political support, those capable of utilizing this tool for a new round of profit-seeking are often capital oligarchs with vast financial reserves and strong political lobbying capabilities. In fact, under the protection of national laws worldwide, patents can be viewed as a form of "legal monopoly power." Due to patent barriers, any economic entity intending to participate in world trade cannot infringe upon patents belonging to others; otherwise, they face severe sanctions and denial of entry into the capitalist world trade system. This results in biotech companies in most developing countries generally lacking the capacity to compete directly with the numerous multinational corporations of developed nations that possess ample capital reserves and state policy support. This divergence significantly drives up the price of patented drugs, allowing multinationals and developed nations to obtain immense economic benefits and political hegemony while simultaneously leading to even more severe global inequality. Taken as a whole, biocapitalism has developed progressively alongside the birth of neoliberalism. It is a "community of capital and power" composed of the scientific practices of capital and life science technologies, backed by the full support of the state apparatus. It seeks to make biological life part of economic growth, thereby "capturing the potential value within life processes." This community of capital and power has not changed the nature of capitalism—which has always pursued surplus value by any means necessary—but rather uses life sciences to utilize various life forms (such as genes, cells, reproductive organs, and plant compounds) to further construct a "powerful production system" [2] for capitalism. In this way, the logic of capital and the logic of power continue to "collude" in the era of biocapitalism. Far from undergoing any change, the fundamental nature of the private ownership of the means of production in biocapitalism has instead shown an increasing trend toward concentration in industries related to the life sciences.
Within the architecture of biocapitalism, the relations of production—wherein a minority bourgeoisie exploits the majority proletariat—remain unchanged. The equal exploitation of labor-power is the primary human right of capital, and the stage of biocapitalism is no exception. Johanna Oksala points out that while the life science industry and markets have enjoyed rapid development, they have also brought about a pressing issue: they have created demand for new types of biological services and products (e.g., surrogacy, the sale of body tissue, and participation in clinical trials). However, the providers of these services and materials are often unemployed or underemployed individuals from the Global "South." This means that within the biocapitalist mode of production, if capitalists are to obtain profit, they still rely on extracting surplus value from a vast sea of "bio-laborers," which is essentially no different from the era of industrial capitalism. Generally speaking, bio-laborers comprise two parts: high-tech practitioners with biological knowledge, and "volunteers" who use their own physical bodies to participate, directly or indirectly, in biological experiments for various biotech enterprises and institutions. Both groups primarily provide their physical or mental labor to receive remuneration from capitalists; the latter often endures greater exploitation than the former while receiving the least benefit. Clearly, this has not changed the class relations between people under the capitalist system. During the distribution of profit, large capitalists still pocket the vast majority of income, while bio-laborers receive only a few meager scraps. Specifically, fields related to biotechnology are often funded by large capital combines, and thus they also acquire the monopoly character inherent to capital: once a biotech enterprise achieves factual monopoly status in a certain aspect of the industry, it simultaneously gains the power to set prices for related products, such as new drugs. New drugs and therapies also imply massive costs, such as R&D investment. Relying on their monopoly status, the pricing of many biotech companies' products is beyond what the general public can afford. Similarly, the distribution of profit is entirely controlled by monopoly capital. Compared to the capitalists who sit back and "clip coupons" [3], the bio-laborers participating in biotech R&D receive only a pittance inconsistent with their amount of labor.
(2) Although biocapitalism has not changed the essence of the capitalist mode of production, it shifts the avenue of surplus value exploitation from "man as labor-power" to "man as a biological organism." This shift not only causes a revolutionary change in biocapitalism's mode of capital valorization but also drastically increases the degree and scope of progressive capital accumulation. Therefore, biocapitalism, born of the new era of life sciences, possesses certain new shifts and exhibits the specificity of the age.
In the stage of biocapitalism, the mode of capital valorization has undergone a revolutionary change. Generally speaking, the form of value acquisition in biocapitalism has become more virtualized. It is not satisfied with merely exploiting the current value of human beings; rather, it is based on creating "future concepts" and producing "future products," with the aim of similarly exploiting the future value of human beings. Clayton Pierce points out that the more common driving force for the development of biocapitalism stems from investment in biotech products such as virtual drugs, gene therapy drugs, and plant compounds. To a certain extent, these biotech products are viewed as potential exchange value contained within the "imaginary zones of production" under a horizon of expectation unique to biocapitalist society. Pierce refers to this investment in "potential future" and "virtual" biological products and their exchange value as the "expectational value framework" of biocapitalist production. One of the most important characteristics of this framework is its ability to "manufacture" commodities that have not yet taken shape but possess value. Regarding the method of value realization, the final realization of the "future value" invested in by biocapitalism is similar to the final realization of value under traditional capitalist relations of production—that is, both require the exchange process to complete social reproduction. The potential consumers of these biotech-infused "future products" are often the laborers mentioned above. According to Rajan’s research, based on the development of pharmacogenomics or "personalized medicine," the medical "risks" faced by current or future patients are entangled with the hopes for new treatments developed through life science innovation. Because of the differences in their genomic profiles and risks, every individual is a potential target for therapeutic intervention: "In the precise calculations of biocapitalism, everyone is a patient-in-waiting, and simultaneously a consumer-in-waiting." Therefore, when the discourse of "high-risk" patients and consumers is entangled with investment in life science R&D, relevant enterprises no longer need to manufacture concrete products to make money. On the contrary, patented knowledge is sufficient to increase their stock price in the market to benefit shareholders; the virtualized characteristics of biocapitalism’s capital valorization stem from this.
In the stage of biocapitalism, the degree of expanded capital reproduction and the scope of its expansionary penetration continue to grow. The breadth of biocapitalism’s exploitation of surplus value has expanded further. It is not satisfied with merely appropriating human labor time; it attempts to appropriate the entirety of human life time, viewing life itself as the source of value. According to the formulations of classical Marxist authors, under the capitalist system, after a worker sells their labor-power to a capitalist, the composition of their labor time is generally divided into two parts: necessary labor time and surplus labor time. Generally speaking, workers reproduce the value of their own labor-power during necessary labor time and produce surplus value for the capitalist for free during surplus labor time. Time outside of work should be the worker’s own time for rest and development. Nadzeya Ilyushenka...
In studying the issue of human "well-being" in the era of biocapitalism, Marazzi [4] discovered that in the traditional capitalist mode, workers did indeed have a clearly demarcated division between working time and leisure time. However, in the era of biocapitalism, this situation has changed: as the production of immaterial labor gradually assumes a dominant position, the importance of so-called "Fordist labor" has significantly diminished; key value originates not only from labor at the workplace but also from human life itself. Consequently, labor has begun to continuously extend into and "capture" all spheres of life. A new characteristic of the biocapitalist era is the blurring of the boundary between working time and leisure time. This blurring of boundaries is an expression of the change in the source of value under biocapitalism. Trigo Abril similarly points out that biocapitalism, through the form of commodities, renders both the objective and subjective spheres of human social life into sources for the extraction of surplus value. Human life is no longer merely the source of value but has become value itself. Biocapitalism not only extracts value from the body as a "material tool of work," but also extracts value from the body as defined by the entire dimension of life. It is not satisfied with merely utilizing human working time but seeks to increase its appropriation of the free time that people use to define their social identities. This characteristic of biocapitalism is equivalent to a new "Great Transformation" of the capitalist system; it is a critical revolution from within the capitalist system, marking the arrival of a New Era.
II. The Instrumentality and Redemptiveness of Biocapitalism within the Perspectives of the Logic of Capital and the Logic of Power
Fritsch Kelly notes that biocapitalism "depends on deregulation, privatization, the shaping of individualized risk, and wealth creation activities re-aggregated around immaterial financial transactions." Without changing the essence of capitalism, biocapitalism remains an exploitative entity created through the collusion of the logic of capital and the logic of power for the purpose of acquiring surplus value. The implementation of its economic strategies must be guaranteed by powerful political power, and the operation of political power is in turn nourished by the surplus value it exploits. In the continuous interaction between the logic of capital and the logic of power, biocapitalism exhibits instrumentality because it is used for exploitative profit-making, yet it acquires redemptiveness due to the innate characteristics of the life sciences. Within the deep collusion of the logic of capital and the logic of power, biocapitalism continues to develop by virtue of its instrumentality and redemptiveness.
(1) Under the collusion of the logic of capital and the logic of power, capital and power holders continuously increase investment in biocapitalism—represented by the life sciences—and use these investments to control and utilize biocapitalism for exploitative profit, thereby endowing it with instrumentality.
Because capital and power holders share the same fundamental interests in the era of biocapitalism, the development of biotechnology has received dual funding from both capital and power. As capitalism evolves into the new form of biocapitalism, the renewed growth of profits in the field of biotechnology urgently requires policy preferences from power institutions—represented by capitalist state governments—and continuous capital injections from major capitalists. Having experienced the deregulation of finance in the 1970s and 1980s and the development of neoliberal policies characterized by privatization and individualization, the economies of Western countries generally operate under "guidance, support, and protection from laws and policies, alongside the dissemination and protection of social norms that promote competition, free trade, and rational economic behavior." Market values and market rationality have become deeply rooted in the minds of the people. Taking the United States as an example, Melinda Cooper argues that the deregulation of banking and finance in the 1970s, combined with highly liquid stock markets and the increasing tendency toward the securitization of pensions, led to a massive increase in funds available for investment in emerging and high-risk biotechnology firms. To ensure high-speed economic development in the post-industrial era, the U.S. government invested vast sums in the life sciences, with a federal budget for scientific research larger than that of any other member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In 2003, when prospects in the biotechnology sector fell to a historic low, the U.S. government intervened with a massive plan to provide funding for "biodefense" research over the following decade. While this plan provided generous subsidies for drug development, it ensured through biodefense legislation that any "national health emergency" would become an excellent opportunity to launch drugs that had not undergone clinical trials. This is merely a microcosm of how Western nations utilize the forces of capital and power to invest heavily in the life sciences.
By virtue of their massive investments in the life sciences, capital and power holders turn the high-tech outputs brought about by the continuous development of the life sciences into tools for capitalist exploitation and profit. In investigating the U.S. Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, Kaushik Sunder Rajan discovered that a highly complex relationship often exists between the private and public sectors of capitalist states. One manifestation of this relationship is the ability of the private sector to derive enormous profits from projects funded by the public sector. Iceland serves as an example; it possesses excellent national medical records dating back to the early 20th century and rich, accurate genealogical information. Consequently, by virtue of its so-called genetic homogeneity, it became an ideal location for population genomics experiments. Rajan’s investigation found that the Icelandic Parliament granted a genomics research company named "deCODE genetics" an exclusive right. This allowed the company to establish a genomic database of the Icelandic population by collecting DNA samples, elucidating gene sequences, and further integrating genotypic information with the population health records maintained by the state. This project, known as the "Health Sector Database," claimed to have the consent of the Icelandic people, but in reality, the company did not obtain the informed consent of every potential participant in the database; rather, it merely allowed individuals to "opt out." Unless an Icelander actively chose to opt out of the database, their medical information would become part of it, and the company would ultimately profit from this data. Therefore, the genomic database became both a product of the intersection and fusion of the logic of capital and the logic of power in pursuit of common interests, and a concrete manifestation of the instrumentality of biocapitalism.
(2) Under the collusion of the logic of capital and the logic of power, the inherent "salvific" nature of the life sciences has deepened and evolved into the redemptiveness of biocapitalism, seeking a rationale for the exploitation of surplus value.
The fusion of the logic of capital and the logic of power has effectively amplified the "salvific" characteristics inherent in the life sciences, allowing them to further develop into the redemptiveness of biocapitalism. Pearce [5] argues that in the era of biocapitalism, an increasingly strong conviction is forming within capitalist states: both capital and power holders increasingly believe that the continuous development of biocapitalism will ultimately enable their nation to achieve the status of a global economic powerhouse. Consequently, they constantly utilize market rules and the public power of the government to develop biocapitalism in hopes of occupying a dominant position in the highly competitive global economy. After prolonged practical observation, Rajan found that these biotechnology companies, which rely on futures investment and capital operations, increasingly tend to maintain a "pseudo-religious ideology" that links the success of life science research with the salvation of the nation. Specifically, this "pseudo-religious ideology" is constructed at the intersection of life science research and national security guarantees, casting a blurred political veil over science. Under this veil, biocapitalism bases itself on a discourse system of technological messianism and nationalism, rooting its exploitation of biological resources in the redemptive "salvation stories" peculiar to the life sciences. This "pseudo-religious ideology" also attempts to make biotechnology practitioners and ordinary citizens alike believe that with the development of biocapitalism, not only will national economic development gain a powerful new engine, but it will also "bring about products imbued with a strong sense of nationalist discourse, such as security, territorial hegemony, and citizenship," which together support the redemptiveness of biocapitalism.
"Capital" and "power" utilize the redemptiveness of biocapitalism and label it with "national interest" and patriotism to seek a universal rationale for the exploitation and expansion of biocapitalism. Along with the continuous development of biocapitalism, capitalist states have gradually incorporated the goal of achieving progress in the life sciences into their national security strategies. This shift has not only greatly enhanced the subjective initiative of biotechnology research but has also, while obtaining a rationale for development at the state level, given rise to a "messianic" thought. Typical expressions of this are found in the production bases of biocapitalism, such as biomedical research laboratories. In analyzing biotechnology laboratories in India, Rajan found that these laboratories generally combine "highly individualized stories of personal motivation, national calling, and human interest with the structural messianism inherent in the market, science, or the state." This combination "integrates the responsibility of saving lives into corporate interests, and in the case of India, allows a 'Third World' country to leap forward and become a 'global player'." The logic of power implicit in biocapitalism has, to a considerable extent, stamped the labels of "national interest" and "national glory" onto biotechnology research and the continuous development of the market for life science products. It has reshaped the values of citizens through the logic of capital—namely, neoliberal ideology and the belief system of developed-capitalist-state supremacism. By means of reshaping values similar to those in India, capitalist states can further increase political investment in the development of biotechnology to avoid being at a disadvantage in intense international competition, ensuring the continuous development of biocapitalism through the interaction of the logic of capital and the logic of power.
III. The Biological Deduction of Neoliberalism and New Imperialism
Biocapitalism must undertake the dual task of capitalist power expansion and capital growth. Pearce points out that the birth of biocapitalism is related to "eliminating restrictive barriers in markets and labor through government, military, and corporate intervention," and that it "originates from a series of complex relationships between scientific and technological research and the neoliberal practices of economic development." It can be seen that biocapitalism emerged during the process of capitalist states shifting toward neoliberal policies and flourished accordingly. While finding new space for the survival of capitalism, it has also caused greater exploitativeness and developmental imbalance due to the impact of neoliberal policies. On the other hand, because the monopolistic nature of biotechnology is continuously strengthening and its integration with power departments is becoming increasingly close, new forms of imperialism such as bio-imperialism and biocolonialism have already emerged.
(1) The development of biocapitalism follows the inherent logic of capital; under the influence of neoliberal policies, capital has extended its reach into the realms of human and natural life in order to extract more surplus value, resulting in new global exploitation and unbalanced development.
With the continuous development of biotechnology and the increasing attention humans pay to their own longevity and health, fields related to biotechnology have become the next investment hotspot most anticipated by various forms of capital. Because the biotechnology field possesses a unique "innate monopoly" characterized by high investment and high entry barriers, capital investment in this area often achieves a "kill two birds with one stone" effect: it not only allows the bioeconomy to develop rapidly, thereby achieving massive returns on investment, but also further grooms the relevant enterprises to become capital providers for biocapitalism, enabling them to continuously expand their biotechnological advantages and thus further strengthen the monopoly of bio-capital. For example, before the arrival of the biocapitalist era, major chemical and biopharmaceutical companies in Western society were able to occupy a certain dominant position in their respective fields. But with the massive influx of capital into the biotechnology sector in the early 1980s, there are now only a few multinational corporations left globally that "effectively control every link in the world's food and pharmaceutical production." As the degree of monopoly continuously increases, biocapitalism—this community of capital and power—has, like various previous forms of monopoly capitalism, increased the exploitation of people and intensified the imbalance of social development. Joseph Dumit ...
Joseph Dumit traced the formation of the "risk concept" among pharmaceutical companies when exploring the relationship between individual health and risk. He found that these companies no longer define themselves as traditional pharmaceutical firms as they once did, but instead choose to define themselves as "financial companies." Dumit argues that this shift is partly because the companies' understanding of "health" has been influenced by neoliberalized concepts of individual "risk": the human body is consistently defined as an inherently pathological entity in constant need of reinforcement or improvement, rather than an inherently healthy one, thereby instilling a sense in individuals that they are perpetually "at risk." Similar to the "capitalized" shift in pharmaceutical company concepts, as biotechnology increasingly comes under the discursive control of capital, this technology will increasingly reveal its exploitative and unjust side. Kaushik Sunder Rajan, while investigating a research hospital in Mumbai, India, found that this private company was conducting pharmacogenomics research for Western pharmaceutical firms, yet the vast majority of research subjects were impoverished or unemployed individuals. They went as far as using their own bodies as experimental fields for biotechnological research in exchange for meager compensation; ironically, most of these subjects will not benefit from any newly developed therapies because they cannot afford the exorbitant treatment costs. If biocapitalism is allowed to continue its savage development under the influence of neoliberal policies, exploitation and injustice will inevitably intensify.
(2) Competition in the stage of biocapitalism has moved beyond technological competition at the corporate or sectoral level, becoming bio-hegemonic competition for confrontation between nation-states, forming a "bio-imperialism" that colonizes and plunders the spheres of human and natural life.
As biocapitalism enters the imperialist stage, the ideological implantation of biotechnology as something that can "save the nation" and bring about "national glory" has become more deep-seated. To defend so-called national interests, bio-empires vigorously develop domestic biotechnology while actively expanding their global biological resource industrial chains, increasing the plunder of biological resources on a global scale and wantonly harvesting the surplus value produced by bio-laborers worldwide. For example, the Human Genome Project has been called a form of bio-colonialism by some scholars: in the case of the Guaymi indigenous people of Panama, cells were taken from the cheek of a 26-year-old Guaymi woman by the genetic sampling procedures of the Human Genome Project. Subsequent testing revealed that these cells carried a virus capable of stimulating antibody production, which held potential commercial profit for treating leukemia and AIDS. Subsequently, a large biotech enterprise, out of self-interest, privatized and patented the woman's somatic cells; however, the resulting profits did not return to those who provided the raw resources but flowed instead into the company’s own pockets. If the above case is insufficient to illustrate the cruelty of bio-imperialist exploitation of human life, the following example, known as "biopiracy," provides full and bloody proof. In this transnationally operated exchange chain, Israeli entrepreneurs and South African doctors are linked with donors from Brazil, Turkey, or the Philippines. At one end of the chain are these organ donors, who surrender their kidneys in exchange for payments ranging from $1,000 to $10,000; at the other end are North American patients waiting for kidney transplants, who will pay as much as $200,000 for that kidney. Various forms of organized crime—such as human and organ trafficking, prostitution, migrant smuggling, and slave labor—link finance capital with high-end biotechnology, global poverty, and the commodification of biology within the global market. Bio-imperialism realizes all the above forms of crime through globalized money-laundering networks and reaps billions of dollars in profit, yet creates millions of people living under this "bio-slavery," of whom over 70% are women and girls. Through this cruel and bloody exploitation of life, bio-imperialism continuously develops and enhances its monopolistic attributes, relying on this monopoly status to continue squeezing the surplus value of bio-laborers globally. This cycle constitutes the operational logic of bio-imperialism.
IV. Concluding Remarks
Viewed from the perspective of theoretical logic, the critical research on biocapitalism by foreign leftist scholars allows us to achieve a three-dimensional depiction of biocapitalism and gain insight into its hidden forms of exploitation and cruel essence of plunder. Taken as a whole, the origin of biocapitalism is not simply the application of biotechnology in social production, but rather the result of capital's continuous rent-seeking toward biotechnology. The combination of the two has produced a transformative effect on social practice and social relations; it is both an advanced form within the capitalist economic mode and a high-level stage of capitalist development. The fundamental crux of the many modern contradictions and problems brought about by biocapitalism lies in the fact that the logic of capital and the logic of power it manipulates have coerced and controlled biotechnology, causing it to serve the appreciation of capital and the reproduction of capitalist relations of production, thereby becoming a means of profit-making for a few bourgeois interest groups. However, looking at existing research results, most foreign leftist scholars are confined by their positions and theoretical limitations; their critique of biocapitalism remains at the level of phenomena and does not interrogate the deep-seated social structural issues hidden behind these phenomena. Correspondingly, their solutions inevitably fall into the shackles of "reformism" and "Utopian" illusions. In fact, following the critical path opened by foreign leftist scholars, it is not difficult to see that the entire process of the generation and development of biocapitalism does not exceed the theoretical horizon of Marxism. Therefore, deep-level research on biocapitalism should possess a theoretical consciousness that Marxism is "present" [6]. Only by truly utilizing the sharp "scalpel" of the Marxist critique of political economy can we reach the internal core of biocapitalism and, on this basis, form scientific solutions and response strategies.
From the perspective of practical logic, due to the influence and shaping of biocapitalism, the world has entered an era where biological threats are increasingly complex and diversified, and the field of biotechnology has become an important arena for major-power competition. Our country is currently at a critical moment of embarking on a new journey to comprehensively build a modern socialist country and marching toward the Second Centenary Goal [7]. The importance and urgency of comprehensively and accurately grasping the processes, manifestations, and essence of biotechnology development in early-modernized countries, promoting our country's biotechnology development, and ensuring national biosafety have become prominent. Looking to the future, as an important force affecting the development of global biotechnology and bio-governance systems, what kind of impact will biocapitalism have on global biosafety? Will it develop in new directions as the wave of anti-globalization continues? Can it eventually transition toward bio-socialism? The answers to these practical questions still depend on the continuous attention and deep reflection of experts and scholars at home and abroad on issues related to biocapitalism.