Huang Dan: Techno-Feudalism and the Question of "General Intellect" in the Era of Digital Economy
At the dawn of the Internet, many envisioned it as a transformative force, believing it would drive the democratization of information and empower individuals, thereby ushering in a more open and democratic society. In his 1995 book Being Digital, Nicholas Negroponte optimistically predicted that the empowering nature of digital existence would bring new hope and dignity. However, as time progressed, the Internet was gradually seized by a small number of digital oligarchs. The unprecedented architecture of distributed information collection and control dominated by these oligarchs became an omnipresent, invisible "Big Other" embedded in daily life. Domains once regarded as the new frontier of openness and democratization have now gradually become sites for the concentration of power and wealth. This economic form, dominated by digital oligarchs, has recently been conceptualized by some foreign scholars as "Techno-Feudalism," sparking widespread discussion.
This article attempts to use the concept of techno-feudalism as an entry point to dissect the exploitative logic and power structures of the digital economy. First, it will discuss the core characteristics of techno-feudalism, analyzing how it constructs a new economic form centered on "rent extraction" through the monopoly of platform resources and user data. Subsequently, the article subjects this concept to a critical examination, pointing out its theoretical limitations regarding historical analogy and its simplified understanding of monopolistic digital platforms. On this basis, the article further reveals the essential issue involved in the concept of techno-feudalism: namely, the privatization of "general intellect" [1] and its inherent tensions in the era of the digital economy. Finally, the article attempts to unearth the emancipatory potential of collective intelligence and social cooperation within the contradictions of techno-feudalism as a new developmental form of capitalism, providing new theoretical insights for the transformation of value-creation mechanisms and social structures in the digital economy.
I. The Proffering of Techno-Feudalism and Its Core Characteristics
The concept of techno-feudalism has garnered attention in recent years, primarily thanks to the discussions of scholars such as Yanis Varoufakis and Cédric Durand. In their view, under the monopoly of Internet giants over platforms and data, the digital economy is gradually moving toward an exploitative model centered on rent extraction, thereby forming a techno-feudalist mode that replaces capitalism.
Durand’s book Techno-Feudalism is the first systematic work in international academia to expound on the problem of techno-feudalism. In this book, Durand conducts an in-depth analysis of rent-seeking behavior in the digital economy, pointing out how digital platforms extract rent by monopolizing key infrastructure without directly participating in production. For example, through control over digital infrastructure (such as search engines, marketplaces, and cloud services), platforms act as "gatekeepers" and charge access fees to businesses and users. He distinguishes four types of rent: intellectual property rent, natural monopoly rent, differential land rent of intangible assets, and dynamic innovation rent. In addition to identifying the key mechanisms of rent-seeking behavior, Durand emphasizes the role of user-generated content. He points out that user-generated data collected and monetized by platforms constitutes a core part of their rent-seeking behavior. Meanwhile, network effects and platform dominance further reinforce this model. As a platform expands in scale, its value increases, and users and businesses are "locked in," which further consolidates its market power. Evidently, this system has created a new digital rentier class that extracts wealth through control of digital infrastructure rather than through productive activity, leading to intensified inequality and further market centralization. Consequently, Durand directly points out: "The prosperity of the digital economy is fueling a massive rentier economy, not because information is a new source of value, but because the control of information and knowledge—knowledge monopoly—has become the most lucrative means of capturing value."
Following Durand, Varoufakis published Techno-Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism in 2024, focusing on how the traditional capitalist mode is transforming into a new economic order he calls techno-feudalism. In this new order, rent extraction has replaced profit as the core driving force. This shift is driven by the rise of "Cloud Capital," in which big tech companies accumulate wealth by controlling platforms and extracting rent from users and small capitalists, rather than by creating new goods or services. By controlling access to digital platforms, tech giants like Apple, Google, and Amazon extract rent from consumers and producers, which Varoufakis calls "Cloud Rent." This rent-based system resembles feudal structures, where lords extracted rent from peasants by providing access to land. Ultimately, a new class structure is formed: Cloud Lords sit at the top, vassal capitalists serve them, and consumers and workers are reduced to "Cloud Serfs" in the digital economy.
Varoufakis argues that cloud rent is the fee that vassal capitalists (small producers) must pay to cloud lords (owners of big tech platforms) to obtain access to their platforms or "Cloud Fiefs." This creates a new form of economic exploitation: under capitalism, workers are exploited by capitalists; under techno-feudalism, even capitalists become vassals of cloud lords, forced to pay rent to obtain market access rights controlled by tech giants. Furthermore, content and data generated by the unpaid labor of cloud serfs (platform users) also facilitate the accumulation of cloud capital, making exploitation omnipresent. In Varoufakis's view, the fundamental shift here is the victory and replacement of capitalist profit by feudal rent. He believes that while profit is susceptible to market competition, rent stems from privileged access to limited resources or platforms, allowing cloud lords to continuously extract wealth without creating anything new. This shift from profit-driven capitalism to rent-based techno-feudalism is redefining the global economy.
It is evident that the core issue of techno-feudalism lies in its restructuring of the logic of value creation and distribution in the digital economy through rent extraction. Under this mode, Internet giants—through means such as platform monopoly, the commodification of user data, algorithmic manipulation, and intellectual property control—continuously strengthen their control over digital infrastructure and resource access rights, thereby achieving continuous accumulation of value without directly participating in production. This not only leads to a high concentration of wealth and power, forming a divide between cloud lords and cloud serfs in the digital economy, but also further intensifies market monopolies and social inequality, even eroding the space for innovation and the well-being of society as a whole.
However, does the concept of techno-feudalism fully capture the complexity of the digital economy? Does its prominent emphasis on rent extraction, to some extent, overlook other dynamic mechanisms brought weight by technological development? Such as the productive transformations brought by technological innovation, or the economic growth brought by network effects. Furthermore, is this conceptual framework overly emphasized on the "feudalism" analogy while ignoring the continued functioning of capitalist logic in the contemporary digital economy? In response to these questions, we will launch a critical discussion of the concept of techno-feudalism, analyzing its theoretical blind spots and potential limitations in capturing the reality of the digital economy.
II. The Double Fallacy of the Techno-Feudalism Concept
As mentioned above, rent extraction is indeed a widespread problem in the current digital economy. However, whether techno-feudalism is an appropriate conceptualization of this phenomenon remains to be assessed. The concept of techno-feudalism has limitations in two respects: first, it misreads the nature of feudalism and its land rent; second, it simplifies the rent extraction methods of digital platforms and overlooks the productivity of the platforms.
(1) Historical Misreading of Feudalism
According to the definition by F.L. Ganshof in his classic work Qu'est-ce que la féodalité? (What is Feudalism?), feudalism historically refers to a political system built upon private land ownership. In this system, a vassal rendered loyalty and service (primarily military service) to a lord, while the lord granted the vassal real rights over a piece of land in return for political loyalty. Thus, the vassal and the fief became the two elements of the feudal system, with the former being the cause of the latter. Marc Bloch, in Feudal Society, proposed a broad understanding of feudalism. He argued that feudalism "could be fundamentally understood as a network of dependency relations," existing not only between lord and vassal but also "pervading all ranks of society," including nobility, clergy, and peasants. Yet regardless of how much their views varied, they both understood feudalism as a form of extra-economic coercion; that is, feudalism cannot be reduced to a form of ownership, but should be understood from the level of the political-legal superstructure.
According to the above definitions, the claim of techno-feudalism undoubtedly misinterprets feudalism because it simply understands feudalism as an economic exploitation built on rent extraction, failing to notice that the dominant feature of the feudal system was the political relationship between different classes. As Perry Anderson pointed out, all societies prior to capitalism used extra-economic coercion (i.e., custom, religion, politics, and law) to seize production surpluses; only capitalism created a purely economic form of exploitation. The claim of techno-feudalism fails to recognize that the essence of feudalism lies not in the presence or absence of land rent, but in the class and political relationships behind rent extraction.
In reality, although rent extraction is an ancient phenomenon, it has accompanied the development of capitalism throughout its history. In Marx's analysis of the capitalist economic system, land, labor, and capital have always been the three core factors, with rent, wages, and profit constituting the income of the owners of these three factors, respectively. Among these, both rent and profit are transformed forms of surplus value created by laborers. However, while land rent has existed from antiquity to the present, its form has continuously evolved with history. Marx explicitly distinguished the difference between feudal and capitalist forms of land rent: the former was seized through direct political dependence, while the latter is extracted through market exchange. In this sense, the existence of rent has never been the mark distinguishing different social formations; only the form of rent is. Rent extraction based on purely economic relations is a brand-new phenomenon of modern capitalism, and the rent in techno-feudalism takes precisely the form of commercial land rent in capitalist society. It reflects a capacity to appropriate surplus value during the production process, rather than being based on extra-economic coercion such as custom, religion, and politics, which are the core characteristics of feudalism.
(2) The Oversight of Platform Productivity
In the digital economy, not only is the form of rent extraction different from feudalism, but the method of extraction is also entirely different. The core view of techno-feudalism is that platform companies primarily seize rent by monopolizing the right to use digital infrastructure, just as feudal lords owned the land. But this comparison oversimplifies the nature of these digital giants. Feudal lords relied heavily on the static extraction of rent from land without engaging in productive activities. In contrast, digital platform companies engage in the production of platform architectures, data, and services. For example, companies like Amazon are not only intermediaries extracting rent from sellers using their marketplace, but are also highly productive enterprises in cross-industry innovation, with interests ranging from cloud computing to logistics to artificial intelligence. Therefore, platforms should not be understood merely as a factor of production like land, but should also be seen as commodities; the income digital giants obtain from platforms should not be understood merely as rent, but also as profit. Consequently, the rent-extraction behavior of the digital economy has not moved beyond the scope of capitalism.
Nick Srnicek formally proposed the concept of "platform capitalism" in his 2017 book Platform Capitalism to understand the operational models of digital platforms such as Amazon, Google, and Uber. Platform capitalism refers to a new mode of accumulation in which digital platforms act as intermediaries to extract, process, and monetize data while facilitating interactions between different users, such as consumers, advertisers, and workers. These platforms create markets through the commodification of data, labor, and services, leveraging network effects to capture profits. Evident here is that platforms are not rent-seeking entities akin to feudal landlords—as technofeudalism theory suggests—but are rather productive capitalist enterprises. They invest in technology and infrastructure, innovate continuously, and maximize profit by extracting surplus value through digital business models. As Srnicek argues, these platforms are deeply rooted in the traditional capitalist logic of expansion and accumulation.
It is in this sense that Jeremy Gilbert maintains that conceptualizing the problem of rent extraction in the digital economy as platform capitalism is more appropriate than technofeudalism. In his view, the digital platform economy is not a break from capitalism, but its latest development. Evgeny Morozov similarly argues that although these companies rely on rent extraction, they still operate within a capitalist framework. Unlike unproductive feudal lords, these companies invest heavily in technology and infrastructure, pursuing profit through competition and innovation. While platforms do enjoy monopoly power, they must constantly innovate and reinvest to maintain their dominant positions. Failure to do so leads to market disruption by competitors, as evidenced by the rise of new platforms like ByteDance, which are challenging established platforms such as Meta [2]. This competitive pressure drives digital giants into a race to invest massive capital in technology and infrastructure, innovating incessantly to maintain and expand their technical capabilities and market reach. To Gilbert, these characteristics align more closely with the expansive and competitive nature of capitalism than with the static, unproductive rentier model associated with feudalism. Consequently, profit and rent coexist within the revenue of platform companies. Despite the similarities between modern digital platforms and feudal structures regarding rent-seeking, their business models combine rent extraction with the pursuit of profit, making them far more complex than feudalism.
The above analysis demonstrates that the method of rent extraction in the digital economy does not possess the same homogeneity as the extra-economic coercion of the feudal era; on the contrary, these platforms continue to operate within the logic of capitalist competition and expansion. It is precisely this dimension of productiveness and market competition that prevents them from being viewed simply as feudal-style "rent-owners." Therefore, concepts such as platform capitalism or cognitive capitalism [3] may provide a more accurate description of the complex forms of exploitation in the digital era.
(3) The Prerequisite of Rent-Seeking in the Digital Economy: Appropriation of Scarcity
Although the concept of technofeudalism fails to precisely encapsulate the issues of the digital economy era, a process of rent-seeking has indeed emerged within it. Therefore, merely critiquing the concept of technofeudalism and asserting that the platform economy remains productive does not fully address the core concern raised by the theory: how does the digital economy generate rent-seeking behavior?
All rent-seeking is predicated on the appropriation of scarce resources, and the same holds true for the platform economy. Scarce resources such as land are naturally occurring; their scarcity stems from the inherent finitude of natural resources. However, in contrast, scarce resources such as platform infrastructure, platform big data, technical patents, and user bases are artificially produced. Their scarcity is manufactured through the monopoly appropriation, algorithmic control, or intellectual property control of platform companies. In other words, the scarce resources leased out by platform companies are not scarce in a true sense; rather, they are endowed with scarcity only through the process of the companies privatizing public resources.
Take the formation of big data as an example. Big data is composed of massive aggregates of information including personal details, user behavior, and content, which are continuously created during the process of individual interaction with digital platforms. In the digital economy, personal data has become the most valuable commodity, widely applicable in various commercial scenarios such as targeted advertising, machine learning, and predictive analysis. From browsing the internet and posting social media content to online shopping, every user interaction continuously generates data. However, the commercial value generated by this publicly produced data is entirely appropriated by platform companies, and the proceeds accrue to them. As Tiziana Terranova points out, labor exploitation in the modern digital economy is manifested in the platform's unpaid appropriation of user-generated content and data.
Digital platforms collect and store vast amounts of personal data without obtaining the informed consent of users, while simultaneously claiming ownership of this data, thereby transforming it into private commodities for sale or lease. Shoshana Zuboff conceptualized this phenomenon as "surveillance capitalism" to describe a new economic model that uses human experience as free raw material for commercial exploitation. Digital platforms possess immense control over data and intellectual labor, causing wealth to become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few monopoly giants. As Morozov critiques, by controlling digital infrastructure and user data, platforms have monopolized social intellectual labor and knowledge production. Clearly, although these companies do not directly generate data, they successfully shape it into a scarce resource through exclusive control over data collection and analysis. Thus, big data has become a typical example—a resource produced by the public but privatized and monopolized. The problem of the privatization of public resources is not limited to the field of big data but runs through every link of the digital economy. For example, open-source software libraries maintained collectively by the public have become a core component of platform infrastructure construction; many key technical patents are actually research results funded by public finance or the crystallization of collective wisdom. However, most of these public resources produced by the public are monetized, privatized, and controlled by a few monopoly giants.
III. The Privatization of "General Intellect" and Its Consequences
The concept of technofeudalism both misreads the nature of feudal land rent and simplifies the methods of rent extraction by digital platforms. However, the concept reveals a new phenomenon: the widespread presence of rent-seeking behavior in the digital economy based on "knowledge enclosures." The root of this rent-seeking behavior lies in the privatization of public resources, reflecting the conflict between the public nature of the general intellect and its privatization.
(1) The Contradiction Between the Public Nature and Privatization of General Intellect
Marx first proposed the concept of "general intellect" in the "Fragment on Machines" in the Grundrisse (Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858) to analyze the central position of technology and knowledge in the capitalist production system. He wrote: "The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it." This discourse clearly reveals the productive characteristics of the general intellect as social knowledge—that is, it not only drives technological progress but also reshapes social conditions and modes of production. In Marx’s view, the general intellect does not originate from the isolated creation of individual genius but is a public knowledge system gradually formed by society in the process of scientific discovery and technological progress. It possesses a high degree of commonality; however, once it is objectified in machines and technical systems, it significantly reduces dependence on direct human labor. In this sense, the technological development driven by the general intellect turns back into a force for exploiting workers, directly or indirectly strengthening capital’s control over the production process. This contradiction highlights the dual attributes of the general intellect in capitalist production: it is both the crystallization of the collective creativity of society as a whole and an important tool for capital’s pursuit of surplus value.
The root of this contradiction lies in the capitalist production system’s appropriation of collective knowledge created jointly by society. The bourgeoisie, through their ownership of the means of production, privatize "technology embodying the general intellect" to obtain surplus value and maintain a dominant position over the production process. This forms a fundamental conflict: although the general intellect, as the crystallization of collective labor, naturally possesses public attributes, it is enclosed as private property within the capitalist architecture. This further highlights the profound tension between the public nature and privatization of knowledge and technological progress.
(2) Knowledge Enclosure in the Digital Economy Era
In the context of the digital economy, information, data, platforms, and algorithms have become important means of production. Consequently, capital's "enclosure movement" has shifted from the appropriation of physical equipment to the monopoly of patents, copyrights, data, and platforms, enclosing and commodifying knowledge resources that originally possessed public attributes.
The rise of digital networks has greatly promoted the dissemination and creation of knowledge, and the emergence of the free software movement and P2P networks has demonstrated the potential of collaborative production models. However, to obtain maximum profit, capital strives to absorb and transform this "free" or shared "positive externality" into private gain. As Yann Moulier-Boutang critiques: "The absorption of positive externalities becomes the number one problem of value." Large digital platforms' collection and enclosed use of user data constitute a renewed "enclosure" of public resources.
As the digital economy deepens, intellectual property law has become an important legal tool for the enclosure and commodification of knowledge. Tech giants typically possess extensive patent portfolios and defend their market positions through strategic litigation, a behavior known as "the second enclosure." By accumulating a large number of patents, tech giants create "patent thickets"—overlapping networks of intellectual property rights that make it difficult for others to innovate without infringing. In this new form, we see more clearly that when the immateriality and reproducibility of knowledge collide with capital’s demand for intellectual property rights, the contradiction becomes more acute: on the one hand, knowledge inherently possesses characteristics of shareability and diffusibility; on the other hand, with the help of patent law, copyright law, and platform rules, capital extracts surplus value through exclusive control, thereby forming new monopoly mechanisms.
(3) The Crises and Potential of the Digital Economy
In the digital economic environment, intellectual property rights, platform monopolies, and surveillance capitalism practices all manifest the encroachment upon the public nature of the "general intellect." Elements such as big data, social media content, and user behavior data are essentially created collectively by the social public, yet they are treated as private assets by platform enterprises for sale or lease. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri had early insights into this; they argued in works like Empire that while globalization and the development of information technology make collective intellectual labor the core of productive forces, they also intensify capital's control over public resources. Slavoj Žižek further stated bluntly: "When wealth becomes increasingly disproportionate to the direct labor time spent producing it, the result... is that the profit obtained from exploiting the working class is gradually transformed into rent, which is the product of the privatization of the 'general intellect' and other public resources."
Cognitive capitalism theory also offers profound insights into this. In the context of the digital era, Boutang further explained the status of the general intellect in contemporary capitalism, emphasizing that value production has shifted from traditional material labor to intellectual labor characterized by immateriality, collectivity, and publicity. Boutang pointed out that the core of contemporary capitalism lies in its dependence on collective knowledge and innovation. He wrote: "This characteristic inserts knowledge as a public or 'free' product—in other words, open access—into the heart of market relations." In Boutang’s view, the essence of knowledge lies in being shared and usable by everyone, while traditional forms of appropriation and commodification find it difficult to exercise complete control over it, which also triggers a more profound struggle between capital and the public nature of the general intellect.
Carlo Vercellone, who also attends to this contradiction, places his focus on the structural tension between general intellect and contemporary capitalism. He emphasizes that traditional value and ownership models struggle to adapt to cognitive labor that is immaterial, decentralized, and difficult to enclose. Vercellone writes, "principal fixed capital is now transformed into ‘man himself,’ in whose mind the social accumulation of knowledge is contained." This emphasis on "man himself" as the carrier of knowledge implies that while capital appropriates knowledge resources, it also requires a deeper level of control over the laboring subject. Consequently, capital must rely on various mechanisms of training, incentives, and management to "extract" and "lock in" the intellectual output of laborers. In doing so, management costs and uncertainty rise significantly. Furthermore, the appropriation of man himself leaves a potential space for production modes that transcend capitalism: if knowledge and creativity can be shared and diffused in a freer manner, it may shake the existing structures of exploitation.
Moreover, the over-extension of intellectual property rights in the era of the digital economy restricts the circulation and innovation of knowledge. As Vercellone points out, "by artificially creating resource scarcity, the new ownership relations of knowledge hinder the progress of knowledge." This scarcity strategy not only undermines the deep potential of knowledge as a public resource but also further strengthens capital’s dominance over the process of value production. Traditional labor theory of value is based on measurable labor time, whereas in the digital economy, cognitive cooperation and immaterial labor increasingly occupy the center. Therefore, they cannot be simply quantified or commodified like industrial labor, leading capital to face a more profound crisis in measuring and controlling new forms of production processes.
It is evident that in the digital economy, the logic of capital centers on the privatization and enclosure of knowledge; in contrast, the logic of cognitive labor is based on the free flow of knowledge, collective cooperation, and the open sharing of knowledge resources. These two logics are essentially contradictory: cognitive labor flourishes in an environment where knowledge is public and accessible, whereas capital attempts to maximize profit through enclosure mechanisms. This opposition not only constitutes the source of instability and contradiction in cognitive capitalism but also makes the traditional dialectic of labor and capital difficult to reconstruct within the new production environment. For this very reason, contemporary capitalism on one hand exacerbates the tension between capital and labor, while on the other hand, within the potential of general intellect and social cooperation, it nurtures the possibility of breaking through the logic of capitalist production.
In summary, the privatization and enclosure of the "general intellect" in the digital economy reflects a new form of exploitation formed by capital through "enclosure" [8] and the monopoly of knowledge. This process is based on the appropriation of public resources, transforming social collective knowledge and creativity into the private property of a few firms, thereby reshaping the structure of economic power and the order of distribution. This form of exploitation manifests the core substance of techno-feudalism—namely, the control of social creativity through exclusive monopoly—profoundly revealing the internal contradiction between the logics of labor and capital in the digital economy. However, within this contradiction also lies the possibility of liberation: the public and open nature of social collective wisdom fundamentally resists capital’s enclosure and control, providing a potential path for exploring cooperative and decentralized production modes that transcend techno-feudalism. This contradiction not only reveals the inherent limitations of techno-feudalism but also provides important insights for rethinking value creation, data governance, and the future direction of social cooperation in the digital economy.
Conclusion
The romantic vision of "internet empowerment" once held by techno-optimists has become increasingly fragile under the surging waves of big data and algorithmic monopolies. The reality of the digital economy shows that capital’s "enclosure" of public resources has not disappeared; on the contrary, it has strengthened its privatized appropriation of the general intellect through intellectual property, data enclosure, and platform monopolies. In recent years, with the widespread application of generative artificial intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs) in social life, this logic of exploitation has shifted into a higher gear. The training foundation of LLMs is precisely the convergence of massive public data and social knowledge; this is another grand appearance of the general intellect in the era of AI. Relying on their monopoly over algorithms, computing power, and data access, capital giants have co-opted knowledge content—widely existing in the public domain and created daily by countless individuals and groups—into training corpora, further consolidating a new form of commercial hegemony in the digital economy era.
In this process, the public attributes of the general intellect are further eroded, and the logic of privatization intensifies accordingly. This is an upgrade of the logic of exploitation, but also an opportunity for the reconstruction of the "public" [N]. It is precisely within this deepening contradiction that a new possibility emerges. As scholars such as Boutang and Vercellone have noted, the collaborative, networked, and not fully quantifiable nature of cognitive labor creates the potential opportunity to break through the shackles of traditional capitalism. In this sense, the "general intellect" contains the genes of collaboration and sharing, and simultaneously nurtures an imaginative space for breaking through the logic of capital.
It can be seen that the public nature of the general intellect, rather than fading during the developmental process of techno-feudalism, has become further highlighted in the craze for LLMs: it is both the fundamental resource of generative AI and the source of power for creating new social relations and modes of production. The key lies in whether we can rediscover the public essence of the general intellect at the institutional and technical levels, preventing it from continuing to be absorbed by capital into monopolistic profit-making machines. To better tap into the public essence of the general intellect at the institutional and technical levels, some existing explorations are gradually unfolding. For example, the preliminary attempts at platform cooperativism are important practices centered on the "re-publicization" of the digital economy. Although these practices have not yet reached a scale sufficient to subvert the existing capitalist order, they open up an imaginative space for transcending capitalism: through more democratic technical platforms, the redistribution and sharing of public data resources, and the redefinition of the rights and interests of collaborative laborers, it is possible for new social forms to gestate in the era of the digital economy.
Only by recognizing and protecting the open qualities inherent in this collective creativity, and through the synergy of multiple subjects and the critique of and resistance to the logic of exploitation, is it possible to continuously nurture new transformative dynamics within the digital economy. Perhaps only in this way can we rediscover that deeply hidden spark of the "public" amidst an internet ideal continuously worn down by technical monopolies, and move toward a future that transcends capitalism.
(Author's affiliation: School of Philosophy and Social Development, South China Normal University) Web Editor: Zhang Jian Source: World Socialism Studies, 2025, No. 3