Yu Genxiong: The Property Rights Logic of Technological Colonialism and Its Critique

In today’s shifting global landscape, Western capitalist countries attempt to maintain their dominant positions in the political, economic, and cultural spheres through their proprietary advantages in technology. Consequently, a "Tech Cold War" situation has emerged, centered on the core interests of intellectual property, invention patents, and scientific copyrights. Certain Western capitalist countries utilize the advanced technologies in their possession to conduct political interference, economic sanctions, and cultural erosion against late-developing nations, thereby further achieving the objective of capital expansion. This is, in fact, an act of technological colonialism. To reveal the essence of this technological colonialism, one must delve deep into the logic of property rights upon which it relies. A profound analysis and critique of the property rights logic of technological colonialism is conducive to curbing the hegemonic attempts of Western capitalist countries to collapse other nations through a "Tech Cold War"; it also assists in developing international technological property rights cooperation based on equality, democracy, and win-win outcomes.

I. The Origins and Characteristics of Technological Colonialism

Colonialism originates from the global expansion of capitalism. Marx and Engels pointed out: "The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known." Colonialism is the control exerted by powerful capitalist nations over backward countries for the purpose of capital expansion; in traditional "old colonialism," this control was often realized through military aggression. Looking at the entire history of capitalist development, traditional old colonialism appeared from the very birth of capitalism and continued until the end of the Second World War. With the perfection of the nation-state system and the establishment of a new world order, traditional old colonialism subsequently exited the stage of history. However, colonialism did not disappear; it merely changed its colonial methods. The main characteristic of neo-colonialism is that "on the surface, it recognizes the right to independence of the people of former colonies and dependencies, but in reality, it adopts various deceptive means to exercise control and penetration over countries that have already gained political independence from political, economic, and military aspects, serving their struggle for world hegemony and spheres of influence." Although political colonization via military intervention is no longer the primary manifestation of neo-colonialism, economic, cultural, and even ecological colonization have become important channels for developed capitalist countries to control and exploit developing nations. Certain developed countries utilize their first-mover advantage and the urgent development needs of backward countries to create a relationship of one-sided, strong dependency for these developing nations. However, after more than half a century, neo-colonialism did not bring the expected results to capitalism; on the contrary, it fostered a new situation—the consciousness of independence and autonomy among colonized regions and ethnic groups became even stronger. Therefore, for developed capitalist countries, it became necessary to find a new colonial method to maintain their position in the world order. It is against this backdrop that technological colonialism officially made its debut as an independent identity.

The reason it is said that technological colonialism only "officially debuted as an independent identity" at this time is that technological colonialism has, in fact, always existed throughout the historical process of neo-colonialism and even traditional old colonialism. When capitalism was opening the world market, Marx and Engels observed: "All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations." Within neo-colonialism, the economic colonial activities of developed capitalist countries included the monopoly and control of knowledge and technology. For example, the World Bank, led by the United States, "can not only mobilize and transfer vast material resources, but also possesses immense research power and rich academic resources." The World Bank itself is a massive economic and technological apparatus. In this sense, while capitalist countries completed their political, economic, and cultural colonization, they actually also completed the capitalist "primitive accumulation" of technology. However, this "primitive accumulation" was not presented directly in the form of physical objects like the means of production; rather, it was implicit within various colonial stages, running through them in conceptual or intangible ways. In the current stage, technological colonization is increasingly presented in an independent and direct posture. In the process of capital expansion, colonial methods have shifted from the control of economy and culture to the control of technology. This control is predicated on an absolute dependence on technology. In other words, the social development of late-developing countries has reached a stage where they must break through the bottlenecks of old technology to create a new scientific and technological civilization in order to transform the entire social situation. At this moment, developed capitalist countries have established a technological colonial system centered on strong technological interconnectedness. Consequently, technological colonization manifests as a relationship of technological subordination between countries and regions. As Marx and Engels pointed out, capitalist relations of production "have made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West." The technological colonization of capitalism makes technologically backward countries subordinate to technologically advanced countries.

The subordinate relationship brought about by technological colonization possesses the following characteristics: First, deep concealment. Developed capitalist countries maintain technological subordination with developing countries by signing a series of technical cooperation agreements, thereby occupying advantageous positions in legal theory and cloaking technological colonialism in the mantle of "legitimacy." Moreover, these colonial activities are carried out under the banner of "voluntary cooperation," weakening their coercive color. Political independence conceals technological subordination. Under the guise of political freedom, developed capitalist countries actually master the technological discourse power. A series of rules for technological R&D and application—such as universal technical standards, development prospects for future technology, and principles for the distribution of technological property—are all dominated by developed capitalist countries and based on their value standards. Additionally, the global penetration of consumerist culture has strengthened the concealment of technological discursive hegemony. Specifically, the circulation and promotion of technological products have led people across the world to gradually experience the convenience and efficiency that science and technology bring to production and daily life. Technological fetishism is an extreme manifestation of contemporary consumerist trends, and its essence is the socialized modality of technological colonialism. Second, strong power of control. Against the backdrop of an industrial revolution characterized by informatization and digitalization, people's production and lives are increasingly inseparable from high-end, key core technologies. Whoever masters these high-end, key core technologies not only leads the direction of this industrial revolution at the macro level but also dominates people’s actual lives at the micro level. Therefore, technological colonialism is a systemic colonization. It has broken the previous colonial patterns where developed capitalist countries colonized developing nations in single fields like economy, culture, or ecology; instead, it has formed a colonization of another country’s entire social system using technological control as a means. One can imagine that its power of control far exceeds that of previous forms of one-sided colonization. More importantly, this control is intensifying with the formation of Western "technological alliances." Third, extreme oligopolization. The capitalist "primitive accumulation" of technology has led to a high degree of technological concentration; combined with the processes of economic and cultural colonization, this has further widened the worldwide technological "wealth gap." The production of technology has gradually become the patent and strength of developed capitalist countries. One pole is manifested as developed capitalist countries maintaining and consolidating technological unilateralism and the "West-first" principle through hard measures like political coercion, economic sanctions, and even military intervention to master and control technological resources and the advantageous conditions for their production. The other pole is the technological impoverishment of colonized countries, meaning that more and more countries and regions are reduced to technological colonies. On one hand, the popularization of technology directly promotes the interconnection of the human community, with everyone being drawn into the process of the industrial revolution; on the other hand, technological competition within developed capitalist countries will change the original configuration of the world order, and some slower-developing capitalist countries will be reduced to colonized nations. These three characteristics of technological colonialism distinguish it from both traditional old colonialism and neo-colonialism dominated by economic and cultural colonization. Technological colonialism is the contemporary form of Western colonialism and a new link in the capitalist colonial system.

II. Technological Property Rights and Capital Power: The Logical Structure of Technological Colonialism

As a new link in the capitalist colonial system, technological colonialism is better adapted to the changes in the contemporary world landscape and shifts in people's real lives dominated by the logic of capital. It is a new means of capital expansion suited to today’s global changes. Because of the unique status of technology in social development, more and more countries and regions—consciously or unconsciously, as victims or beneficiaries—are drawn into this new colonial system. This is primarily because technological colonialism possesses a unique and seemingly self-evident basis: technological property rights. In general legal theory, the designation of property rights is very clear; it usually refers to property rights or real rights—that is, the right of ownership and disposal over property or things. This includes the right to decide to whom a certain property or thing belongs, by whom it is used, and by whom it is controlled. In terms of content, it reflects the relationship between people and things. By the same token, technological property rights are the ownership and disposal rights over technology. However, in addition to reflecting the relationship between people and things, it also reflects the relationship between humans and themselves. Because technology is the objectification of human capacity, when we say "we possess a certain technology," this not only means we possess a certain object but, more importantly, it means we have mastered the ability to create that object. In this sense, technological property rights refer to a type of ownership and disposal right with subjective characteristics. This subjective attribute unfolds as a process of the objectification of the subject and the subjectivization of the object. The "objectification of the subject" refers to realizing human conceptualized ability (knowledge) as a certain object, while the "subjectivization of the object" refers to imbuing an object with a conceptual form and stamping it with a "personal imprint."

As with the emergence of all law, the relationship of rights and its concepts also derive from a specific social existence. When viewing technological property rights, we must similarly follow the principle proposed by Marx: "In the study of economic categories, as in the case of every historical or social science, it must be borne in mind that as in reality so in the mind, the subject, in this case modern bourgeois society, is given; and that the categories are therefore but forms of being, manifestations of existence, and often only one-sided aspects of this specific society, this subject." The emergence and use of the category of technological property rights are inseparable from the specific context of the actual conditions of technological development. Therefore, the concept of technological property rights followed by technological colonialism is expressed as the ideological theoretical basis developed throughout the colonial system. Its substantive content has not broken away from the capitalist view of rights. This view of rights is predicated on the abstract natural person: the abstract view of rights treats the natural characteristics of humans as innate, eternal, and as a human nature that must be unconditionally guaranteed. Since the Western Enlightenment, political philosophers represented by Rousseau and Hobbes have viewed property rights as a right unique to humanity. Although property or things are necessary conditions for human survival, they are "likewise the product of historical conditions and possess full validity only for and within these conditions." The key lies in the social basis of this abstract property right; it is based on the following fact: "The corresponding abstract categories, in the law-governed nature of their logical structure, reflect those social relations that are hidden behind the individual and lie beyond individual consciousness." The study of technological property rights is also inseparable from such a principle of analysis.

Technological property rights manifest as a social relationship between the individual and the self. However, when the capitalist concept of technological property rights abstracts the human being into a trans-historical "natural man," thereby abstracting human rights into trans-social "natural rights," the subjectivity of the individual expresses itself as an independent, atomized personality. To be sure, this individual-centered consciousness of subjectivity once played a very important revolutionary role in history; it was the ideological premise for the rise of modernity. In Marx’s view, it is also the fundamental starting point of capitalist ideology. The capitalist concept of technological property rights is similarly rooted in this deep soil. It is only that, in the process of this concept’s objectification, it sublate ^[9] the originally simple physical form. This "simple physical form" refers to all the physical factors of capitalist production, such as capital, means of production, and commodities. On one hand, these things represent the accumulation of the worker's labor; on the other, they represent private property. The former is the objectification of the laborer’s independent personality, while the latter is the objectification of the capitalist’s independent personality. In other words, in terms of the social relationship between the individual and the self, the laborer confirms the existence of their subjectivity within the object, just as the capitalist confirms the subjective mode of capital within the object. As a general form of property, technological property naturally possesses the aforementioned physical characteristics. Yet, within the capitalist concept of technological property rights, the substance of technological property—or the essence of this "thing"—is a system of ideas, which we usually call knowledge. Consequently, technological property rights are equated with intellectual property rights, and the production of technology thus becomes the production of knowledge. This universal perception has become a consensus in contemporary technological civilization.

However, reality is not so simple. Setting aside the differences between technology and knowledge for a moment, regarding the production of technology itself, when we view it as the objectification of an independent personality, we have already fallen into the trap of what Marx called "alienated labor"—that is, "the object which labor produces—labor’s product—confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer." This opposition is actually highlighted the moment the product of labor manifests as the objectification of both the laborer’s and the capitalist’s independent personalities. Under these circumstances, the generated system of human rights—including property rights—for the whole of society also presents itself as an alien power, wherein "appropriation appears as estrangement, as alienation ^[10]; and alienation appears as appropriation, estrangement as true enfranchisement."

Technological colonialism takes the aforementioned concept of property rights as its theoretical premise. But for technological colonization to achieve the goal of capital expansion, another factor must intervene: capital power. In modern society, the relationship between technology and capital is the same as the relationship between all other things and capital: technology arises from capital and is subordinate to capital. Under the rule of capital, "machinery becomes the form of capital, the power of capital over labor, the means by which capital suppresses all demands for independence on the part of labor. Here, machinery, in accordance with its own vocation, also becomes a form of capital antagonistic to labor." As an important constituent of the means of production in capitalist society, technology is itself an indispensable element of capital. Since the dawn of the modern era, technological progress and capital expansion have been parts of the same process. Within this, the popularization and large-scale application of technological production depend on capital drivers. Capitalists continuously improve instruments of production to obtain high profits, thereby objectively driving technological progress. Furthermore, the massive wealth and resources brought by capital create the material conditions for technological advancement. Therefore, from the very beginning, technology is closely linked to capital at the level of production. When the capitalist system becomes the governmental basis of modernity, technological property gains the protection of coercive force; the establishment and consolidation of technological property rights likewise depend on capital. Marx pointed out: "Capital is not a thing, but rather a definite social production relation, belonging to a definite historical social formation." More precisely, capital embodies the relations of production between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The legal foundation maintaining this relationship is the ownership of private property. This means that all objectified products of human activity that exist in the form of "things" are subject to the dictates of capital and take the appropriation and command of capital as their premise. Technological property must rely on the power of capital to function; only through the collusion of capital and technology can the powerful control of technology be realized.

The result of the collusion between technology and capital is that "science, huge natural forces, and the social mass labor are all embodied in the system of machinery, and together with the system of machinery, constitute the power of the 'master'." Whether this power manifests as a relationship between people or between people and things, it can essentially be attributed to capital power. It merely expresses itself as economic power, political power, cultural power, or technological power under different historical conditions. Clearly, in an era of social change dominated by technological revolution, capital power is increasingly embodied in the force of technology. Under this premise, technological colonialism brings about the global division of technological property under the operation of capital power. This is a process by which capital appropriates the world through the means of technological expansion. First, capital power forms a global monopoly of technology. Herbert Marcuse argued that "the technology of industrialization is political technology." In capitalist society, industrialization and modernization do not merely signify pure technological progress but serve as a means. Regarding the acquisition of profit, it is an economic means; regarding the consolidation of political power, it is a political means. When industrialization and modernization become an inevitable step in the process of human civilization, the scope of capital power’s influence breaks through the boundaries of nation-states to dominate such industrialization and modernization in underdeveloped countries and regions. Technological production and application subsequently break through regional limitations and become popularized as a global civilization. During this process, technologically backward countries are firmly tied to and subject to technologically advanced ones. Once this relationship of dependence and subordination is formed, capital can further utilize all available wealth, resources, labor, and even institutional bodies to serve the consolidation of its original technological property. Moreover, with these favorable conditions, capitalism faces fewer obstacles on its path to maintaining technological leadership. This is because they understand that "knowledge is power, and power is knowledge." Finally, capital power controls the distribution of technological property. Capital’s control over the process of social production includes the principles of product distribution. By the same token, when technological property manifests as a category of commodity, its distribution principles are already contained within the entire logic of capitalist production. This rule is: ownership of the productive forces determines the right to distribute products, and distribution serves capitalist reproduction. Thus, the distribution of technological property is actually the distribution of technological property rights. Whoever possesses the technology holds the power over how it is applied, who uses it, and how the technological fruits are distributed. From this perspective, the completion of technological colonization ultimately manifests as the control over an entire foreign social sphere by dictating the distribution of technological property rights through capital power.

The mutual penetration of technological property and capital power, and their linkage in the sense of world history, constitutes the property rights logic of contemporary Western technological colonialism. Technological property can only maximize its monopolistic effects within a system of world interaction dominated by the logic of capital when it is fortified by capital power. It is becoming increasingly difficult for individual countries and regions to independently achieve innovative breakthroughs in technological civilization. "The bourgeoisie, by the exploitation of the world market, has given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country." This situation was formed entirely under the grasp of capital. Therefore, the production, circulation, and distribution of technology cannot escape the control of capital power. Simultaneously, the capitalist production of technology in turn enhances the colonial efficacy of capital power. Since the creation of information and digital technologies, capital traditionally existing in natural forms (land, natural resources, and the means of production based on them) has gradually transformed into capital existing in mental or abstract forms (such as knowledge, technology, patents, or digital information, also known as digital capital or technological capital). Capital existing in digital form can utilize technological means to command and dominate means of production such as land and natural resources, thereby controlling the entire process of capitalist production efficiently, conveniently, and accurately. It is precisely this irreplaceable role of technology in production and life that drives capital expansion to every corner of the globe, such that "the law of capitalist progress is contained in the formula: technological progress = growth of social wealth = enhancement of enslavement."

III. Technological Property and its Concepts of Rights: A Critique of the Property Rights Logic of Technological Colonialism

The collusion of technological property and capital power constitutes the logical basis upon which technological colonialism relies. On the surface, the relationship between the two seems tightly linked, but the crux of the matter lies in how we should understand the meaning of technological property itself and the fundamental nature of the concepts of rights built upon it. To explore what technological property is, one must first return to a historical materialist analysis of property. It is generally believed that property, whether as means of production or means of subsistence, is the result of human labor and the product of social productive activities. This is understood, of course, from the level of the objectification of labor. However, this easily leads to the following misconception: since property or labor products are the objectified products of labor, then the property of the entire society should be distributed according to the elements constituting labor or the contributions to labor (capital and labor power). Yet, property is not only a result "realized only through production itself," it is also a relationship: an individual "relates to the natural conditions of his production as belonging to him, as his own, as prerequisites presupposed with his own existence." In essence, property is both the result of labor and the prerequisite of labor. In the original process of human productive labor, land and natural resources were man’s "inorganic body." Humans viewed the means of production as an extension of their own bodily organs; they were the objective conditions of productive labor itself and were unified with the laborer's physical functions. It was only with the arrival of a society based on private ownership that the two were forcibly separated. Technological property possesses the same historical content. Although technology did not develop to a significant degree in pre-private-property societies, it nonetheless existed as part of the bodily functions. Therefore, technological property has always been a prerequisite for productive labor, and with social development, this prerequisite role has become increasingly obvious. Describing modern society’s dependence on science and technology, Marx pointed out: "To what degree general social knowledge has become a direct productive force, 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. It indicates to what degree the forces of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process."

Another fallacy in the property logic of technological colonialism lies in viewing technological property solely as a product of private labor, driven by the expansion of capital. The defining characteristic of private labor is production for the purpose of private interests and needs, carrying a strong "private character." This "private character" encompasses two aspects. First, regarding the production process of a single department, the entire process is governed by private will. In the production of a specific commodity, due to the role of individual rights endowed by private ownership, the possessor of the means of production wields autonomy over production; thus, subjectively, how much is produced, how it is produced, and how the products of labor are distributed are all determined by actual private needs. The production of technology is no different. Under the capitalist mode of production, technology naturally becomes a product of labor that can be exchanged. When capital controls modern resources, the genesis of technological property also takes on the character of private labor. Second, regarding the relationship between different production departments, the differences between types of private labor are related to private conditions of production—primarily the size, scope, and capacity of the capital held privately. During the stage of free-competition capitalism, the capital held by private individuals was relatively equivalent, but after a series of "survival of the fittest" struggles between capitals, individual private persons and private groups gradually seized the vast majority of social capital, leading to the emergence of monopoly capitalism. From this evolutionary process, one can see that private labor is closely linked to pre-existing private production conditions. Particularly in the process of technological production, the degree to which an individual occupies natural and social resources is the key condition for their possession of a monopolistic technology. Consequently, on the explicit side, labor products—including all property and commodities—are directly associated with private labor. However, the conclusion that "private individuals can therefore arbitrarily dispose of and possess all products of labor" is divorced from the reality of production. This is precisely where the one-sidedness of technological colonialism lies. We know that since humanity escaped the state of nature and initiated the history of human civilization, production has never departed from social labor; even primitive forms of production were predicated on the natural community. In describing the nature of property in the primitive state, Marx argued: "His property, i.e., the relation of his regarding the natural prerequisites of his production as belonging to him, as his own, is mediated by his being himself a natural member of a community." ^[11] When human history developed into capitalist society, this social attribute of production became even more apparent than in pre-capitalist times. The reason is that as private labor bears a "private character" and is limited by its departmental nature, the social division of labor becomes increasingly complex, leading to closer ties between departments and private entities. Whether these ties take the form of competition or cooperation, they constitute a massive system of social production. Private labor is a link in the system of social production; it becomes a part of social labor. Therefore, the product of labor is simultaneously the product of social labor. This implies social limitations on private labor. First, the production of any product is constrained by actual social conditions. These social conditions include the overall state of social production and the relationships of competition and cooperation between departments and between nations. Second, current actual production is limited by conditions accumulated through history. Especially in the process of technological production, the degree of development of human civilization profoundly influences technological progress, because people "do not make [history] under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."

Technological colonialism's understanding of the form of technological property is also one-sided. In today's society, with the increasing degree of digitalization and informatization, technology is increasingly reduced to a system of knowledge or a system of science. This can lead us into a cognitive trap—the belief that the fundamental form of technology is the human spirit and the series of ideas arising from it. Consequently, a common misunderstanding is to equate the level of technological civilization in a society directly with its level of scientific knowledge, assuming that as long as one masters the relevant knowledge, one can achieve breakthroughs in the relevant technology. On one hand, we must indeed acknowledge that technology is the practical application of scientific knowledge in the process of production and life, and technological progress must take advanced scientific knowledge as its prerequisite. However, for technology to truly become a real productive force driving historical development, certain material conditions are required. An intuitive example is that certain high-end, sophisticated scientific products are predicated on the discovery and production of special materials. Mastering such technology requires not only mastering relevant scientific knowledge but also possessing the material conditions to produce or obtain these special materials. Therefore, technology is a unity of spirit and matter in both form and content. Technological property is the unity of intangible and tangible property. Yet in capitalist society, technological property has always been understood as "individual, specific spiritual property," and this spiritual property is integrated into the operation of capital from the very beginning. "The accumulation of knowledge and of skill, of the general productive forces of the social brain, is thus absorbed into capital, as opposed to labour, and hence appears as an attribute of capital." Capitalists usually declare that they own the patent rights to a certain technology or intellectual property rights in a certain field to govern and control the production process of that department. The justification is that technology—as a form of knowledge or idea—represents their individual spiritual independence, and personality rights are natural rights. However, once we analyze technological property as a unity of ideal [conceptual] form and material form, we can discover the erroneous orientation of this view. Because technology as a real productive force can only function when the material conditions for transforming scientific knowledge into technology are possessed. Capital's possession of technology is its possession of the material means to realize technology—the possession of things (物). In other words, the essence of technological property is material, not conceptual. In discussing the emergence of machinery, Marx explained that machines are "products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature." The deviation in technological colonialism's understanding of the concept of technological property inevitably leads it astray in its view of technological property rights.

First, the capitalist concept of rights is itself built on the foundation of abstract human nature—that is, it views the human desire for things as a universal human characteristic. Thus, in the conception of property rights, capitalism understands the ownership of property as a relationship of possession between humans and things. It is undeniable that human survival and development cannot be separated from material conditions and are predicated on the production of material means. The problem, however, is that the "thing" mentioned here is not a natural object or something external to humans, but a product of human activity. This requires investigating how humans produce "things." Under the capitalist conception of property rights, the relationship of human possession over things is actually an "illusion" (错觉), "as if private property itself rested on nothing but the individual will, on the arbitrary disposal of things." Technological colonialism is built on such an "illusion" of property rights, using the possession of things to infringe upon the interests of other countries. In fact, under the cover of this "legitimate" possession of things, technological colonialism creates unequal relations between people. In other words, behind the relationship of humans possessing things lies the relationship of humans possessing others. This relationship is hidden within capitalist relations of production; it is the legalistic manifestation of the relationship between capital and labor. "The worker's propertylessness, and the ownership of objectified labor over living labor, or the appropriation of alien labor by capital." According to Marx's theory of surplus value, capital's ownership of labor is unjust because capital exploits the labor of others (surplus labor) without compensation; thus, capital's ownership of property is illegitimate.

Second, technological colonialism views property rights merely as a special private right and pits them against public social rights. With the awakening of subjective consciousness in modern the West, the individualist concept of rights gradually became the universal ideology of the West, and the capitalist system elevated individual rights to the national will. Among these, property rights are the legal foundation of private ownership. In the private-ownership concept of rights, private property is equated with state property; protecting private property is protecting the state. Max Stirner said: "My private property is only that which the state yields to me from its own, which it takes from (expropriates) other members of the state for this purpose: it is state property." Obviously, Stirner places private property above the state, thereby placing individual property rights above public social rights. In Marx’s view, this concept of property rights is the conception of "petty-bourgeois and small-peasant ownership," because this view regards "every relationship, whether caused by economic conditions or direct compulsion, as a relationship of 'agreement' (协议)." A "relationship of 'agreement'" means that individuals compromise, ally, cooperate, or exchange to satisfy their own needs. The capitalist concept of property rights derives public social rights from individual rights. But as Marx said: "The essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations." ^[12] Obviously, human social relations constitute a community. In this community, the most fundamental social relation is the relation of production; the concept of rights only arises when people handle relations of production. The concept of property rights arises from this as well. Therefore, property rights are built upon certain social relations and reside within the community of a certain historical period; they represent the public will of the community and serve its development. Technological property rights should likewise follow this principle.

Third, technological colonialism views technological property rights as superior rights enjoyed exclusively by individual [Western] countries and uses various means to maintain these rights. Two historical-perspective biases in the capitalist concept of property rights are Eurocentrism and the theory of civilizational hierarchy. The former locates the center of world civilizational development in the West, believing that the primary impetus for human progress lies in the developmental mechanism of capitalist civilization and that the future of human civilization resides in Western capitalist countries. The latter views the development and future of non-Western civilizations through a biased lens, believing that "backward" civilizations can only develop under the leadership of "advanced" countries and must follow in their footsteps. These two biases have allowed the Western capitalist powers that developed first to seize the discourse power over the global distribution of technological property, creating the intellectual soil for the growth of technological colonialism. Throughout history, the capitalist mode of production indeed opened the path to modern civilizational development for humanity, bringing modern science and technology characterized by machine systems; furthermore, it is an indisputable fact that the current information and digital revolutions also began in the West. But the problem is that the capitalist mode of production simultaneously initiated the process of world history; it "has made every civilized nation and every individual in them dependent on the whole world for the satisfaction of their needs." Therefore, the creation and development of modern civilization are inseparable from human labor within the process of world history, and this human labor was by no means completed by Western capitalist countries alone. We can see this from the history of Western developed countries colonizing backward nations: the development of modern civilization under the dominance of the logic of capital came at the cost of sacrificing vast amounts of land, natural resources, and manpower from backward countries and nations. The so-called "superior rights" have no fundamental historical basis. On the contrary, the distribution of the fruits of human civilization should be established on an equal and open concept of rights.

Although contemporary Western capitalist technological colonialism less frequently employs methods of military violence, replacing them with "agreement-based" economic means, the negative consequences generated by technological colonialism are even more severe than those of previous forms of colonialism. First, the destruction wrought by technological colonialism on colonized nations is systemic. Because technological colonialism is characterized by its systemic nature, once the development of a colonized nation's various social spheres—including politics, economy, culture, and ecology—becomes dependent on the advanced technology of Western capitalist countries, the operation of its entire social system falls under the surveillance and manipulation of Western capitalism. Driven by the impetus of capital expansion, this surveillance and manipulation do not bring long-term benefits to the colonized nation; rather, they serve only to shift the internal contradictions of capitalist countries onto the colonized nations, transferring crises to others.

Second, technological colonialism is detrimental to the development of capitalist countries themselves. Technology belongs to the category of the productive forces and should collaborate with labor and laborers to collectively create material and spiritual wealth. However, for technological colonizers, technology is private property and a tool for controlling others. The bourgeoisie "has turned education and science, the highest achievements and the finest fruits of capitalist civilization, into instruments of exploitation and into monopolies, keeping the vast majority of people in a state of slavery" ^[13]. This pits technology against labor, turning the instruments of labor and the laborers into antithetical parties in a contradiction, thereby intensifying the tension between capital and labor. This not only worsens the relationship between capitalist countries and underdeveloped nations, but this state of tension will ultimately "back-bite" ^[14] (反噬) the development of the capitalist countries themselves. Moreover, since technological colonialism involves property rights, the negative consequences it brings to capitalism will extend from the economic sphere to the political sphere. This situation has long been evident in the disputes over rights between governments and the people in capitalist countries in recent years.

Third, technological colonialism hinders technological progress. When technological colonialism treats technological property as a component of capital, it artificially obstructs the exchange and circulation of technology in order to establish economic monopolies. Regarding this, Lenin pointed out: "To the extent that monopoly prices are established, even if temporarily, the motive power of technical and, consequently, of all other progress disappears to a certain extent; and, further, the economic possibility arises of artificially retarding technical progress" ^[15]. According to Marx’s view of practice, the truth of knowledge can only be proven in the process of practice. Similarly, the reality of technology and its value can only promote the development of human civilization through universal application. The monopoly over technological property held by technological colonialism is not only a restraint on technological progress but also a destruction of the development of human civilization.

(The author is a lecturer at the School of Marxism, Zhejiang University) Source: Ideological & Theoretical Education, Issue 06, 2025 Web Editor: Ma Jingren