Ma Shenxiao and Zhang Yuanxuezhan: Research Progress of Foreign Left-wing Scholars on the Digital Economy
The high innovation, strong permeability, and broad coverage of the digital economy's development are driving structural economic adjustments and transforming modes of social production and lifestyle. Discussions regarding the digital economy can be traced back to the work of left-wing scholars in the 1970s, whose research constitutes an important foundation for our analysis of the digital economy today. For instance, the concept of the "audience commodity" proposed by Dallas Smythe, the founding father of the political economy of communication, became the starting point for researching the category of "digital labor"; the concept of "immaterial labor" proposed by Maurizio Lazzarato theorized for the first time the labor involved in producing Baloch informational and cultural content; Tiziana Terranova formally proposed the concept of "digital labor"; and Dan Schiller’s Digital Capitalism became a pioneer in the critique of capitalism in the digital age. Along with the intelligent development of digital platforms, foreign left-wing scholars have upheld these research traditions, paying close attention to issues such as labor control under technological change, the condition of workers, the evolution of platform monopoly trends, and the future development of digital capitalism. This article systematically sorts through relevant research and the latest achievements of foreign left-wing scholars in recent years, aiming to accurately describe the progress and trajectory of research in foreign academia and provide clues for advancing the theoretical study of the digital economy.
I. The Upgrade of Labor Control and the "Manufacturing of Consent" Under the Empowerment of Algorithms
The development of algorithmic technology has provided new possibilities for labor control. More personalized and flexible algorithmic surveillance has constructed a "panopticon" for the digital age. A new type of "making-out game" empowered by algorithms has shaped workers' identification with labor rules, yet workers are also exploring means of resisting algorithmic management.
(1) Algorithmic Control: The "Panopticon" of the Digital Age
From the perspective of technological change, digital platforms can be regarded as the machine systems of the 21st century—the essence of this system being a complex technical network driven by algorithms. As the core of digital platforms, algorithms connect users with service providers, manage and control the labor process, and thereby facilitate transformations in the organizational forms of labor.
By means of algorithmic management and surveillance systems, platforms are able to implement more complex and flexible labor control mechanisms. Scholars such as Katherine C. Kellogg have pointed out that, compared to traditional means of control, algorithmic control is more comprehensive, instantaneous, interactive, and opaque. Platforms can direct employees through algorithmic recommendations and restrictions; evaluate employee performance through algorithmic recording and rating; and achieve the rewarding and punishing of employees through algorithmic substitution and incentives. Aided by algorithms, platforms can adopt diverse wage pricing strategies, including dynamic wage pricing based on labor demand and the adjustment of wage pricing based on algorithmic wage experiments. Zephyr Teachout summarizes these mechanisms as "algorithmic personalized wages." Given that algorithmic control further implements the core ideas of traditional control methods—such as the separation of management from execution and the decomposition of the labor process—left-wing scholars have used vivid terms like the "Taylorization of white-collar work," "assembly lines in the head," "electronic sweatshops," "Taylorist information control," and "digital cages" to describe algorithmic control.
Digital surveillance, as a new type of control under algorithmic technology, poignantly reflects the upgrade of algorithmic control compared to traditional means and further exacerbates the power asymmetry between capital and labor. Compared to previous automated facilities, computers continuously generate information during operation, thereby rendering the process of activity transparent; computer learning behavior based on real-time information has already become an important component of daily business activities. In response, Shoshana Zuboff uses "surveillance capitalism" to summarize the stage of informational capitalism in which we reside, arguing that surveillance capitalism relies on big data as the foundation of its logic of accumulation, using data to predict and influence people's behavior to generate revenue, control markets, and realize capital accumulation. Digital platforms can obtain data through real-time tracking, recording conversations, biometric identification, and customer feedback [1]. This creates a situation of information asymmetry between labor and capital. Combined with the opacity of algorithmic decision-making processes, employees are often placed inside a "digital black box," lacking a grasp of the overall work process and frequently falling into uncertainty and anxiety. Regarding this situation, Rabih Jamil follows Jeremy Bentham and Michel Foucault’s concept of the "panopticon" to call the digital surveillance system an "algopticon." For example, Uber's surveillance system is a typical algopticon, wherein Uber's algorithmic system resembles the watchtower of the panopticon, geofencing technology divides the city into multiple zones for demand forecasting and price adjustments, and the drivers’ mobile phones are used for data collection, thereby achieving all-hours surveillance of the drivers. The algopticon represents a prominent trend in the development of modern labor control: namely, the use of digital technology to enhance the monitoring and regulation of the labor process while reducing reliance on traditional labor laws.
Algorithmic control further exacerbates the labor alienation and group fragmentation of workers. Within the mechanical systems of digital platforms, the labor process is organized according to the logic of machines and algorithms, and employees become "living appendages" of the machine. Simon Schaupp proposed the concept of "cybernetic proletarianization" to describe the process by which workers transform their own productive knowledge into data through programming, which is then integrated into digital control systems. This productive knowledge, transformed into data form, becomes the corporate property of the company independent of the worker, thereby achieving the goal of substituting data for human labor. Consequently, "part of the digital proletarian labor process is making oneself redundant." Besides leading to a decline in job skills, algorithmic control brings problems such as irregular working hours, overwork, sleep deprivation, social isolation, and maladjustment to employees. These negative impacts may spread from gig work to formal employment environments, thereby exacerbating economic and racial inequality and damaging labor solidarity.
(2) The Upgrade of "Manufacturing Consent" and Workers' Resistance Strategies
As early as the late 1970s, Michael Burawoy pointed out that the smooth progression of the labor process could no longer be explained solely from the perspective of coercion. Workers are not entirely passive participants in the "making-out game" [2]. One must understand the interaction between capital and wage labor in the production field by combining coercion with consent; a spontaneous consent to the rules of the "game" explains the active cooperative behavior of "mutual willingness" in production. Around the turn of the century, some scholars developed Burawoy's "making-out game" theory, proposing concepts such as "gender games," "the transparency game," and "the game of musical chairs" to characterize the shaping of consent in different contexts within the workplace.
Upon entering the digital age, the intervention of algorithms has expanded the field of work and enriched the forms of games, creating new types of making-out games and causing the "manufacturing of consent" to further upgrade. Valeria Pulignano and others proposed the concept of "digital tournaments" to describe the fierce competition freelancers face on platforms. This competition is, in fact, an upgraded version of the making-out game; once they have consented to the rules of the game, these so-called freelancers are in fact digital workers whose overtime and unpaid labor are rationalized. Compared to traditional factories, algorithms play a central role in the shaping of consent on digital platforms like Uber and YouTube. In traditional labor environments, worker consent may be generated through direct supervision and pressure from management, whereas platform workers usually face the indirect control of algorithmic management, and direct supervision is absent. The flexibility of indirect supervision grants workers more autonomy, but the continuous adjustment of algorithms also requires workers to engage in lifelong learning; this process of adaptation is also a process of the continuous generation of worker consent. Uber often gamifies the steps of directing labor—for example, by setting challenges and rewards to motivate drivers to reach specific goals. Drivers' choice to participate in the game reflects their consent to the rules. Creative labor outcomes on YouTube can be converted into income through ad revenue sharing and brand sponsorships. The reach of video works thus becomes a resource to be vied for. Even if creators can improve video quality by using high-end peripherals and professional software, and attract audience attention by optimizing tags and descriptions, obtaining income through video production remains risky. The updating of platform algorithms and the turnover of popular content are both characterized by uncertainty. This reflects the complexity and mutability of the rules of the game under the empowerment of algorithms.
However, workers do not merely consent to rules and adapt to algorithms. While algorithms "manufacture consent," they also manufacture new resistance strategies for digital workers. Looking for platform loopholes to bypass regulation is one typical strategy. Freelancers on platforms like Upwork are able to find ways to bypass platform reputation metrics, manipulating performance evaluation systems by forming online alliances with clients. Meanwhile, social media has become an important medium for workers to communicate, assemble, and organize resistance movements. The UK-based union "Game Workers Unite" utilizes social media such as Discord and WhatsApp to share algorithmic information, expand industry influence, and organize online petitions and offline protests. The American Walmart union campaign "OUR Walmart" uses online platforms to connect employees across different stores, thereby building a sense of class solidarity and organizing and mobilizing protests such as strikes. Workers in the Honduran garment industry use digital tools like email, Skype, and WhatsApp to establish broad collective links and action networks. Furthermore, workers can use legal means to fight for rights in the workplace. The "Foster Care Workers" association in the UK secured basic rights such as the minimum wage, paid leave, and whistleblower protections through legal mobilization. Finally, workers in the same field can use digital means to form industrial networks and optimize work strategies.
II. Changes in the Condition of Workers Under the Conditions of the Digital Economy
The rise of the gig economy has brought a dual impact on workers. Higher economic inclusivity provides some workers with more flexible employment opportunities, but this flexibility also becomes a source of instability. Left-wing scholars emphasize that the gig worker group possesses complexity, and the heterogeneity within this group should be fully considered in research. Furthermore, the popularization of digital media has caused digital labor and prosumers to rapidly rise as a core topic of the digital economy; this set of concepts has also become a powerful tool for left-wing scholars to expose the platform's exploitation of free labor.
(1) The Gig Economy and Precarious Work
Since the 2008 global financial crisis, social development has trended toward chronic underemployment coupled with the rapid expansion of internet penetration. These two trends have converged to promote the rise of the gig economy. The dual impact of the gig economy on workers is a focal point of discussion among left-wing scholars. Some argue that the gig economy possesses higher economic inclusivity and may increase employment opportunities for certain groups (such as those who find it difficult to secure work in local labor markets). Steven Vallas and Juliet B. Schor refute the mainstream view that treats the gig economy solely as an "accelerant of precarity." They argue that some workers use platform work as a source of supplemental income to full-time jobs, thereby reducing debt or accumulating savings, which actually mitigates worker instability. The lower the degree of a worker’s dependence on the platform, the more likely the gig economy is to function as a stabilizer against precarity.
However, more scholars continue to emphasize the precarity and disempowerment the gig economy brings to workers. Some critique the official discourse that frames the gig economy as an employment model for enhancing individual freedom—promoting the idea that it provides more independence and flexibility, allowing workers to "be their own boss." The freedom promoted by such discourse masks the subordinate position of workers and the systemic risks they face. Compared to formal employees, gig workers lack institutionalized resources to resist the various forms of coercive power they encounter. Therefore, the discourse regarding the gig economy increasing freedom is largely a fiction, as it conceals the problems of labor market instability, deteriorating labor conditions, and the lack of social protections brought about by the gig economy; informalization and precaritization are becoming two sides of the same phenomenon. The concept of "super-circulation" proposed by Gil Felix describes the expansion of the quantity and the spatial extension of labor circulation, as well as the acceleration of buying and selling in the labor market. This accelerated circulation means that the hiring and firing of labor becomes more frequent, and the transition of workers between different jobs, industries, and regions becomes more rapid. In the context of super-circulation, workers are required to possess more skills and greater adaptability to integrate quickly into a constantly changing work environment.
Compared to earlier research, gig economy studies in recent years have focused more on the heterogeneity of labor groups. Gig workers are not a homogeneous group; different workers may have different social and cultural backgrounds, skills and qualifications, motivations and needs, as well as distinct working hours and patterns. This heterogeneity is crucial for understanding worker behavior. For instance, workers highly dependent on platforms are more likely to face income instability and unclear career prospects than those who use platform work as a part-time job. These workers are more inclined to participate in union activities and collective action to strive for better working conditions and rights protection, whereas workers with lower dependence on platforms often adopt a more passive or indifferent attitude toward collective action. Some scholars have provided an analytical framework for understanding worker heterogeneity, categorizing workers into platform-dependent workers, platform-based workers, "bogus self-employed" [3] workers, and independent self-employed workers based on two dimensions: dependence on the platform and work status. This framework helps in understanding the differences in power and decision-making styles among various types of gig workers within platforms.
(2) Prosumers in Digital Platforms
The concept of the "prosumer" was first proposed by Alvin Toffler to describe the blurring of producer and consumer roles in post-industrial society. Toffler argued that people's consumption behavior increasingly serves the creation and production stages of products. George Ritzer and Nathan Jurgenson further developed this concept, noting that capitalist society has completed the shift from a production society to a consumption society and is currently undergoing a shift from a consumption society to a "prosumer society." Notably, Web 2.0 was not the original setting for the birth of prosumptive activity, and Toffler’s concept of the "prosumer" was not specifically targeted at Web 2.0 scenarios. However, given the rapid development and ubiquity of internet and digital technologies, Web 2.0 can currently be seen as the most active site for prosumptive activities. In short, the core phenomenon captured by the "prosumer" concept is the increasingly blurred boundary between production and consumption in modern society.
Left-wing scholars focus their discussion of prosumers on the rise of new business models centered on data extraction and the issue of platforms appropriating free labor under such models. Orçun Kasap and Altug Yalcintas proposed the concept of "Commodification 2.0" to summarize the business model where large internet companies extract value through user data. The Commodification 2.0 model blurs the lines between producers, consumers, and copyright holders, as well as the boundaries between work and leisure time, and rent and profit. This is not only a challenge to traditional business models and intellectual property protection modes but also a challenge to the entire conception of firm and labor organization from the era of industrial capitalism. Christian Fuchs categorized four forms of labor within society—wage labor, slave labor, reproductive labor (housework), and unpaid digital labor by users—and subsequently proposed the concept of the "organic composition of labor." [4] Used to measure the ratio of unpaid labor time to paid labor time within an economy, the "organic composition of labor" reflects the degree of the capitalist economy's dependence on unpaid labor. Unpaid labor has always been an inherent part of the capitalist system; digital platform work serves to legitimize an increasing amount of unpaid labor. Although prosumers create value for social media platforms, they are not remunerated for it, a phenomenon that remains a core issue in the digital labor debate.
While the "prosumer" concept is widely popular, it is also highly controversial. Some scholars have raised doubts from the standpoint of the classical labor theory of value. Nick Srnicek opposes calling the prosumptive activities of social media users "labor" because these activities do not endure the pressures brought by capitalist standards and requirements, such as streamlining production processes, reducing costs, and increasing productivity. Bartosz Mika argues that only when labor power is purchased as a commodity can the labor of wage earners in the production of commodities be regarded as value-creating abstract labor. According to this logic, while the footprints of users on social media create data and potential commercial value for platforms, these activities themselves do not directly produce commodities or services that can be exchanged on the market; therefore, these actions should not be regarded as productive labor. Mika suggests that the complex socio-economic relations in digital scenarios should not be oversimplified and that the role of the prosumer should be reconsidered and redefined within the broader context of the social division of labor and distribution relations.
III. The Multiple Faces of Platform Organizations and Their Tendency Toward Monopoly
As the core organizational form of the digital economy, digital platforms have received extensive attention from left-wing scholars. Foreign left-wing scholars have described the multiple faces of platform organization from various dimensions, with discussions focusing on exposing the monopolistic trends of digital platforms and analyzing their monopolistic mechanisms.
(1) The Multiple Faces of Digital Platforms
Left-wing scholars have analyzed platform organizational methods from multiple perspectives. Steven Vallas and Juliet B. Schor summarized the depictions of digital platforms in existing literature using five metaphors: "incubators of entrepreneurialism," "the digital cage," "accelerants of precarity," "institutional chameleons," and "permissive potentates."
The "incubators of entrepreneurialism" metaphor describes the state of monopolistic competition among platform organizations. Digital technology reduces transaction costs and facilitates the participation of people with idle resources in the market to realize the capitalization of resources [5], thereby weakening the dominance of traditional corporate models and making it possible to build social networks based on micro-entrepreneurs. Scholars such as Prishnee Armoogum have proposed the concept of "mutual forbearance" to describe a new form of collusion between large platforms. To avoid competition within each other’s core areas, large platforms choose not to enter or to enter each other's markets cautiously. This self-restraint can reduce competitive pressure on the platforms, thereby maintaining high profits without formal collusion. Some scholars believe that the state of monopolistic competition is insufficient to describe the current status of the platform economy, as it has already formed a hierarchy of power structures: large platforms and finance capital sit at the top, controlling key resources and funding, where unequal exchange may be an important factor in consolidating the monopoly status of large platforms; small platforms are in the middle, relying on large platforms and finance capital to maintain operations; and other market participants and users are at the bottom, their behavior strongly influenced by platform rules and algorithms.
The metaphors of "permissive potentates," "the digital cage," and "accelerants of precarity" describe the labor-capital relations and class conflicts within platform organizations. Digital platforms establish infrastructure to manage economic transactions and adopt more open employment methods, relinquishing direct control over work methods and working hours to give workers greater autonomy. However, they simultaneously retain core functions such as task allocation, data collection, and service pricing. Their governance mechanisms present new characteristics of centralized power but decentralized control. Algorithms provide enterprises with stronger control, exacerbate information asymmetry, and reduce the ability of workers to resist, evade, or challenge the company. Meanwhile, digital platforms can evade traditional responsibilities toward employees through flexible hiring; correspondingly, workers lose protections such as the minimum wage, pensions, and health insurance, falling into increasingly fragile living conditions.
The "institutional chameleons" metaphor describes the different characteristics of platform organizations across various national, social, and institutional environments. Differences in institutional backgrounds and cultures may cause the behavior patterns and resulting socio-economic impacts of platform enterprises to differ greatly across regions. Therefore, the analysis of digital platforms must avoid simplistic, one-sided technocratic interpretations. We are currently in the early stages of a regulatory transition in the platform economy, where regulatory expansion is gradually replacing the neoliberalism that has been mired in crisis for at least a decade. In this process, filling the vacuum in platform governance and legitimation has become a key task. Fabian Ferrari emphasizes the important role of the state in regulating platform organizations, arguing that the state should find a balance between encouraging innovation and preventing the abuse of dominant market positions in platform governance. The state acts not only as a "regulator" but also simultaneously plays the roles of "facilitator," "buyer," and "producer."
(2) Analysis of the Monopolistic Mechanisms of Digital Platforms
Among the various dimensions of digital platforms analyzed, the monopolistic mechanisms of leading platforms are the topic of greatest interest to left-wing scholars. Unlike the 1990s, when the world's largest companies were concentrated in the energy and automotive industries, most large companies today are platform companies—such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. Regarding these digital platforms, scholars point out that industry characteristics such as economies of scale, network effects, and data accumulation may lead to natural monopolies. Meanwhile, platform behaviors under different governance modes—such as intellectual property control, data appropriation, and strategic acquisitions—bring about artificial monopolies. Natural and artificial monopolies are often intertwined. Left-wing scholars analyze the monopolistic mechanisms of digital platform enterprises from different angles, which can be broadly summarized as platform natural monopoly and platform governance models.
In terms of natural monopoly on platforms, the scale and network effects of the digital industry provide an innate advantage for platforms to occupy vast market shares. While acquiring market share, platform companies also accumulate massive amounts of user data, which can be used to further optimize products and services. For example, digital advertising, as a powerful tool for platforms to accumulate user data, helps platforms attract consumers and collect real-time data while providing revenue to cross-subsidize free services. The more consumer data Amazon collects, the more accurately it can predict a consumer's next need; the more user data Google and Facebook possess, the more targeted the advertisements they provide. The inherent characteristics of Big Data determine a high degree of market concentration. Furthermore, some platforms adopt strategies of ecological bundling and "infrastructuralization," controlling key digital infrastructure and bundling more and more services within applications to strengthen the dependence of users and other platforms upon themselves. Regarding natural monopolies on platforms, Gerald Berk and AnnaLee Saxenian argue that antitrust law should encourage platforms to shift from centralized models to decentralized ecosystems, promoting innovation by making cooperation more attractive than mergers.
In terms of platform governance models, the objective of market capitalization maximization and the support of financializing forces have strengthened the monopoly status of platforms. Under an investment model centered on corporate market value, valuation often takes precedence over revenue streams, and expansion and monopoly often take precedence over profitability. Financial capital—such as venture capital, private equity, and sovereign wealth funds—often assists or coerces platform companies into achieving scale expansion and market monopoly through acquisitions based on their assessment of monopoly rent levels, thereby achieving the goal of maximizing market capitalization. Leading platform enterprises also frequently invest a large portion of their monopoly rents into financial assets; in 2019 balance sheets, financial assets such as marketable securities accounted for more than 40% of the total assets of Google and Facebook. These enterprises consolidate their monopoly positions through strategic acquisitions, forming a self-reinforcing cycle of financial monopoly capital. Cecilia Rikap argues that intellectual property rents and financialization complement each other, jointly strengthening the monopoly position of platform companies. On one hand, the rents obtained through intellectual property can enhance a company's market value and increase its attractiveness in financial markets. On the other hand, capital provided by financial markets enables companies to increase investment in R&D, further augmenting their market power. Additionally, some platform companies transfer intellectual property to low-tax jurisdictions to reduce their tax burden, which is also part of their financialization strategy.
IV. Where is Digital Capitalism Going?
Since Schiller proposed the concept of "digital capitalism," left-wing scholars have extensively utilized this concept to conduct holistic research on the social structures of capitalist society under digital technology. Below, we will focus on the pathological analysis of the internal contradictions of digital capitalism by foreign left-wing scholars, while introducing the digital capitalism governance strategies and digital socialist prospects they have proposed.
(1) A Critique of Digital Capitalism
Left-wing scholars typically use "digital capitalism" to describe how the capitalist economic system carries out social reproduction through digital means. Key features of digital capitalism include: platform companies becoming firm-market hybrids, Big Data becoming the primary raw material, the central position of the appropriation of intangible fixed capital, algorithmic control and surveillance, the blurring of the boundary between rent and profit, the blurring of the boundary between work time and leisure time, and free labor becoming a source of profit.
Left-wing scholars often proceed from the mode of production to analyze the accumulation logic, class conditions, and social contradictions of digital capitalism. Aitor Jiménez González extended the concept of "code as law" proposed by Lawrence Lessig, arguing that algorithms are the private law of the digital era; although they lack the support of state authority, they can become a tool for entrepreneurs to regulate workers. Correspondingly, the groups subjected to the legalized exploitation of platform capitalism become the "digital proletariat." Whether they are Deliveroo riders, Uber drivers, online university professors, or Amazon fulfillment center operators, they all—due to not owning the digital era's means of production—become an exploited class trapped within algorithmic systems. Using Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello’s concept of the "New Spirit of Capitalism," Gary Yeritsian points out that this system of managerial discourse and practice emphasizing labor participation has extended from the formal workplace to the internet, and from employees to users. The New Spirit of Capitalism changes workers' perceptions and attitudes toward work by emphasizing autonomy, making them more willing to accept flexible and precarious forms of work. Bartosz Mika points out that although digital capitalism has accelerated the digitalization of the production process, the fragmentation of employment, and the precaritization of work, the essence of capitalism has not changed. Digital capitalism is still governed by the logic of capitalist accumulation, relying on continuous technological innovation and user participation while exacerbating precarious labor conditions and social inequality—two aspects that together constitute the internal contradictions of the digital capitalist accumulation model. Christopher Wimmer offers a similar view, arguing that although digitalization has improved people's living conditions in many scenarios, digital capitalism remains closely linked to the logic of capitalist competition and exploitation. The problem lies not in the technology itself, but in the fact that the development and application of technology are dominated by capitalist logic.
(2) Governance of Digital Capitalism and Prospects for a Future Society
The practical programs of left-wing scholars regarding digital capitalism generally unfold from two aspects: governing digital capitalism and envisioning digital socialism. "Platform cooperativism" is a digital version of traditional cooperativism proposed by Trebor Scholz and other scholars, which utilizes the algorithms of platform capitalism to serve cooperative platform operation models, aiming to promote decentralization, democratic co-ownership, and fair distribution of value. Under platform cooperativism, algorithms would be used to better coordinate the interests of all parties and improve cooperative efficiency, rather than merely realizing the goal of profit maximization under platform capitalism. Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Kostakis have criticized the limitations of platform cooperativism operating within closed copyright systems, advocating for its integration into a broader model of open cooperativism. Evangelos Papadimitropoulos further points out that, building on the open cooperativism model, in order to achieve true transformation, it is necessary to embed ethical and political culture into institutional design to promote the realization of both individual and collective common interests.
Programs for governing digital capitalism mostly start from legislation and regulation. K. Sabeel Rahman and Kathleen Thelen have proposed strategies to address the instability brought by digital capitalism, such as redefining employment relationships, improving labor organization, expanding the scope of labor law application, promoting industry-wide collective bargaining, strengthening antitrust enforcement, regulating venture capital and private equity, and increasing consumer awareness of data privacy. Marcus Gilroy-Ware suggests that the Left should better learn production technologies and seize the technical initiative to change the situation where social media is dominated by commercial interests. Martin J. Conyon believes that the government should play a certain interventionist role in protecting personal data privacy; for example, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can serve as a legislative model for data privacy protection. Furthermore, companies should attach full importance to transparency and user consent in data privacy protection; before obtaining data, they must explain the data’s use in a clear and understandable manner and process user data only upon obtaining user consent.
The rapid development of Big Data and the internet has enriched discussions and research surrounding digital socialism. Some 20th-century debates regarding the economic feasibility of socialism seem resolvable through technical means in the digital era. Evgeny Morozov points out that digital technology may enable economic coordination to no longer rely on the price mechanism but to be achieved through direct data exchange and algorithmic processing; this shift could provide a new organizing principle for a socialist economy. Kees van der Pijl argues that information and knowledge are inherently social, and the market should not be the sole regulator of the modern economy. By utilizing Big Data and information technology, a flexible central planning system can be created; when combined with individual preferences, this system could achieve more effective resource allocation while maintaining individual freedom and creativity. Nevertheless, many scholars also point out that technology itself is not a panacea; it needs to be designed and implemented in conjunction with socialist values and goals. Silvia Rief argues that data analysis and algorithms do not automatically solve economic planning and governance problems; only by combining them with a reorganization of economic institutions and a critical analysis of the objectification and commodification of technoscience is it possible to realize socialism through data and algorithms.
V. Conclusion
Algorithmic control and the escalation of "manufacturing consent," changes in the living conditions of digital workers, the multiple faces and monopoly trends of platform organizations, and the critique of digital capitalism along with prospects for a future society constitute the latest threads in our tracking of research progress in the digital economy.
First, the development of control technologies and the escalation of "manufacturing consent" [6] demonstrate the evolution of the zones of struggle and spaces for cooperation in the production process. The support of algorithmic technology allows platforms to implement control measures that are more comprehensive, immediate, interactive, and opaque. Digital surveillance, as a typical form of algorithmic control, constructs an "algorithmic panopticon" for the digital era. Workers, on one hand, accept and adapt to algorithmic rules to pursue higher income, while on the other hand resisting algorithmic oppression to defend their reasonable rights and interests.
Second, the development of new forms of labor means that the protection of workers' rights and interests under digital economy conditions faces new challenges. The gig economy has brought about problems such as worker instability, deteriorating labor conditions, and a lack of social security. Factors such as different skills and qualifications, and different work motivations and needs, are key to understanding the differentiated impacts of the gig economy on different labor groups. Simultaneously, the blurring of the boundary between production and consumption for workers in the digital economy has sparked disputes surrounding digital labor and value creation.
Third, left-wing scholars have described the multiple faces of platform organization, with the monopoly mechanism of digital platforms being a focus of discussion. The state of monopolistic competition and power structures between platform organizations, the labor-capital relations and class conflicts within platform organizations, and the different characteristics of platform organizations in different institutional environments reveal the rich dimensions for describing the image of platform organizations. Factors such as the characteristics of platform organizations and the development of platform financialization have brought about a trend of platform enterprise monopoly. Left-wing scholars have analyzed the monopoly mechanisms of giant tech companies from the perspectives of platform natural monopolies and corporate governance models.
Finally, through a critical analysis of digital capitalism, left-wing scholars point out that by means of digitalization, the capitalist economic system has expanded production and accumulation, but has also created a digital proletariat and more complex social contradictions. Legislation, regulation, data privacy protection, and labor law reform can be seen as governance solutions for digital capitalism, while the development of digital technology has also triggered more exploration into transcending capitalism and realizing digital socialism.