Cai Wanhuan: Research on the Relationship between Digital Capital and Financial Capital in the Digital Economy
With the continuous development of digital information technology, significant changes have occurred in social modes of production and lifestyles. The importance of big data in the process of commodity production and sales has become increasingly prominent. Unstable employment, such as the gig economy and labor crowdsourcing, has become the primary form of employment under the digital economy. Consumers' purchasing and consumption behaviors are also captured by digital platforms and serve their objective of pursuing maximum profit. The primary manifestation of capital under the digital economy is referred to as digital capital. Is digital capital, then, a higher form of capital than financial capital? What is the relationship between digital capital and financial capital? Is the digital economy seeing a replacement of financial capital by digital capital, just as financial capital replaced industrial capital during the stage of financial capitalism? What exactly is new about the means of profit extraction driven by digital capital? Answering these questions requires a foundation built upon an understanding of the essence of capital and a correct understanding of the driving forces behind the development of capitalist production.
I. Review and Analysis of Perspectives on the Substitution and Integration of Digital and Financial Capital
Currently, "a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is reconstructing the global innovation map and reshaping the global economic structure." "Developing the digital economy is of great significance and is a strategic choice for seizing new opportunities in the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation." Digital technology and the digital economy represent the vanguard of the world's technological revolution and industrial change. Much like the Industrial Revolution of the past, the digital revolution has opened up vast spaces and possibilities for the development of productive forces. The digital economy is a new type of economic formation following the agricultural and industrial economies; it is a formation with higher technical levels and efficiency, representing the trend of economic development. Consequently, some scholars refer to the current stage of capitalist development as "digital capitalism" and argue that it has replaced the previous stage of capitalist development. Has digital capital replaced financial capital in the same way that financial capital replaced industrial capital during the stage of financial capitalism? What is the relationship between digital and financial capital? Academic circles are currently conducting in-depth research and discussion around these questions.
There are currently two main perspectives in academia regarding the relationship between digital capital and financial capital. One view holds that digital capital is a replacement for financial capital. Scholars holding this view argue that the logic of financialization is increasingly insufficient for understanding the core role of digital technology in economic and social life. The rising status of companies like Apple and Microsoft implies a reversal of power relations similar to the previous shift between financial and industrial capital. Digital capital has ascended above all industrial and financial capital, occupying the apex of the capital structure pyramid and attaining the most advantageous dominant power. Digital capital is a new form of capital existence based on industrial and financial capital. By virtue of digital power and relying on internet companies or data platforms, digital capital has achieved effective regulation over the operational processes of industrial and financial capital. Digital capital is leading a transformation of industrial and financial capital to the point where the concept of financial capitalism is gradually receding. The role of financial capital depends on its information function in the economy; with the emergence of data markets, the role of money will be replaced by data, and the capitalist economy is about to shift from financial capitalism to data capitalism.
The other view holds that financial capital and digital capital are not isolated from each other but are deeply integrated and mutually penetrating. This depends on the characteristics of digital capital: it is a mediating capital that converts former offline capital into digital activities, and subsequently transforms these activities into constituent links within digital capital. Digital capital is not an entity independent of economic, cultural, and social capital. Due to its ubiquitous nature, it is intertwined with various types of capital. It possesses composite characteristics, capable of merging with real-world industrial capital, financial capital, technical capital, and monopoly capital. Therefore, the integration of digital capital and financial capital has become the greatest change occurring in current capital forms. The complex of financial and digital capital can utilize both the exchange medium advantages of financial capital and the productive force advantages of digital capital to achieve comprehensive penetration into all social circulation links. This integration is specifically manifested in "Digital Finance." Digital finance is the combination of internet enterprises and traditional financial institutions, realizing new modes of financial business such as loans, deposits, payments, investments, and insurance through digital technology. This indicates that digital capital and financial capital have achieved integration in business models and technological innovation. Scholars holding this view have provided different definitions for this integrated form of capital. First is "financial-monetary capital": the technical characteristics of digital platforms allow a few monopoly platform organizations to occupy the majority of digital infrastructure. The emergence of payment platforms poses a direct challenge to traditional financial capital centered on banks; large platforms can control financial-monetary capital that was previously difficult for monopoly industrial organizations to fully integrate. Second is "digital-financial capital": in the digital stage, massive data replaces the information function held by money. Financial capital presents itself in the form of data finance and combines with digital capital to form digital-financial capital. Third is "finance-digital capital": financial capital realizes the self-expansion [1] of capital and extends the logic of capital from the perspective of G (Money). Digital capital allows the process of capital's subsumption of labor to break free from external constraints and expand infinitely, thereby extending the logic of capital from the perspective of W (Commodity) [2]. The need for capital to pursue infinite self-expansion will inevitably tend toward combining financial and digital capital to form a "finance-digital capital," extending the logic of capital from both the G and W perspectives, enabling it to fully break free from various external constraints and trend toward the infinite self-expansion of capital. Fourth is the "digital-finance complex": digital capital and financial capital are deeply integrated, jointly constituting a "digital-finance complex." This refers to giant companies that provide digital products and services through new technologies and conduct large-scale financial business on this basis. This complex utilizes digital technologies (such as big data, cloud computing, blockchain, and artificial intelligence) to provide digital products and services, conducting large-scale financial operations upon this foundation. The development of digital technology drives the innovation and transformation of financial business, while the intervention of financial capital provides funding support for the research, development, and application of digital technology.
Current academic discussions on the relationship between digital and financial capital are fruitful and have laid the foundation for our further reflection. The analysis of the relationship between the two is not only an important theoretical issue but also a major practical issue concerning economic development and the historical process of human society. First, according to current academic views, if digital capital either replaces financial capital or merges with it, will it be replaced by other forms of capital in the future? Second, the evolution of capital forms is fundamentally determined by the level of development of productive forces, with technological progress being the key factor driving this evolution. The emergence of digital technology provided the material basis for the digital transformation of capital forms, but is technological drive the sole determining factor? Do capital forms adjust according to social technological development? Finally, if digital capital has replaced financial capital or merged with it to occupy a dominant position, do Lenin’s theory of financial capital and theory of imperialism still hold? The emergence of digital capitalism marks a new stage in the evolution of capital forms; this process both continues the general laws of capital accumulation and exhibits new characteristics of the era. Issues such as the relationship between digital and financial capital, the techno-social conditions of the evolution of capital forms, and the contemporary applicability of Lenin's theory of financial capital all require in-depth research and innovative development within the theoretical framework of Marxist political economy. In reality, digital capital has not replaced financial capital or merged with it; on the contrary, current digital capital is the dominant form of capital under the control of financial capital—it is a tool and means for financial capital to strengthen profit extraction under new technological conditions. Only by accurately grasping the historical logic and realistic characteristics of the evolution of capital forms can we better understand the new changes in contemporary capitalism, provide theoretical guidance for guiding and regulating the healthy development of capital under the conditions of a socialist market economy, and promote the high-quality development of the digital economy.
II. The Logic and Reasons for the Formation of Digital Capital and its Intervention in the Production Process
Digital capital is the core category of the digital economy. Digital capital appears to have transcended traditional forms of physical capital, reconstructing the logic of capital expansion and distribution structures through the commodification of data elements, the centralization of algorithmic power, and the monopolization of the platform economy. From the perspective of a rigorous theoretical system of political economy, as some scholars have pointed out, the use of the category "digital capital" does not conform to the norms of political economy. Problems remain, such as misinterpretations of the nature of digital platforms and data, and misinterpretations of the modes of digital capital accumulation. However, because this concept uses the form of "digital + capital" to relatively concisely indicate many new changes under the digital economy—such as the inequality in the possession of big data as a key productive factor, the continued existence of labor-capital relations and the new changes they exhibit under new technological conditions, and how digital platforms analyze and process massive data to optimize production processes and greatly enhance efficiency and product added value through their control and utilization of data resources to achieve precise market forecasting and rapid response to demand, thereby driving the circulation and consumption of goods and services—this article will temporarily use this concept to analyze its impact. Digital capital is a form of capital that, in the process of the digitalization of productive forces and relations of production, adds new productive factors centered on data and information to the original production and service processes, guiding production and services to better meet consumer market demands—that is, achieving value expansion through the application of digital technology.
Digital capital is the form of capital under new technology. As the starting and ending point of the capitalist mode of production and economic operation, capital possesses a dominant power over social production and circulation. According to Marx’s discourse, capital includes the following three dimensions: First, capital is value capable of bringing about surplus value. Most intuitively, capital manifests as a sum of money or assets; conducting investment activities may bring profit to its owner. Second, capital is a movement. To obtain profit, capital must undergo processes of production and circulation. For example, industrial capital must undergo three stages—purchase, production, and sale—transforming into three forms: money capital, productive capital, and commodity capital. "Value here has become the subject of a process in which, while constantly changing its form from money to commodities and back again, it changes its own magnitude, throws off surplus value from itself as the original value." The reason capital as a process appears as a static object like money is that "Value... requires an independent form by which its identity with itself may be established. And it possesses this form only in money. It is under the form of money, then, that value begins and ends every process of its own self-expansion." Thus, "value becomes value in process, money in process, and, as such, capital." Finally, the essence of capital is the capitalist relations of production embodied in things. "Capital is not a thing, but a definite, social, belonging to a definite historical formation of society, relation of production, which is manifested in a thing and lends this thing a specific social character." As a historical category, capital is a relation of production under the cover of things, where the owners of the conditions of production, under the guise of equal buying and selling relations, exploit the surplus value created by wage laborers. Capital is value capable of bringing about surplus value; more precisely, capital is value that expands itself by appropriating the unpaid labor of workers. Only after appropriating productive factors such as labor power, land, technology, and data can capital represent social productive forces as the productive forces of capital, thereby presenting itself as a factor of production. Based on Marx's discourse on the essence of capital, we can summarize the essence of digital capital at three levels.
First, in terms of the form of existence of "things," digital capital is value capable of utilizing digital technology to generate surplus value. In Capital, Marx profoundly revealed that the essence of capital is value capable of bringing forth surplus value. This classic thesis provides the theoretical foundation for our understanding of digital capital. Through its end-to-end capabilities in data collection, mining, processing, storage, transmission, and analysis, digital capital achieves the efficient allocation and value transformation of information factors. This transformation process not only continues the logic of value valorization found in traditional capital but also, through the enabling role of digital technology, significantly enhances the operating efficiency and value-creation intensity of the economic system. Specifically, the value valorization mechanism of digital capital is primarily reflected in three ways: first, it expands the sources of value creation through the deep development of data factors; second, it improves the efficiency of value creation with the aid of innovative applications of digital technology; and third, it expands the space for value creation by relying on the network effects of digital platforms. This new mode of value valorization is both an inheritance of traditional capital valorization methods and an innovative development of the form of capital in the era of the digital economy.
In the digital economy, digital capital realizes the efficient utilization of information through its capacity for data collection, mining, processing, management, control, storage, transmission, and analysis, thereby creating and capturing surplus value. The core source of valorization for digital capital is the enhancement of the economic system's efficiency and intensity via digital technology.
Second, digital capital is value in constant motion; it must enter the processes of production and circulation through the cycles and turnovers of digital industries to achieve value valorization. First, based on the control of "general data," digital capital achieves effective regulation over the operational processes of industrial and financial capital through the restructuring of digital power. This regulatory mechanism not only reduces the risk of traditional relative overproduction [3] but also significantly improves the ability to control investment risks. Second, by constructing a digital market system centered on information processing and transmission, digital capital promotes a significant increase in the efficiency of commodity and service transactions. This efficiency gain is reflected both in the reduction of transaction costs and the expansion of market scale. Finally, by continuously spawning emerging production sectors, digital capital opens up new spaces for value valorization. This spatial expansion is evident both in the digital transformation of traditional industries and the vigorous development of emerging digital industries, thereby effectively mitigating the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and promoting the optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure.
Based on the capitalist control of "general data" and the rise of digital power, digital capitalism achieves effective regulation of the operations of industrial and financial capital, reducing the risks of relative overproduction and investment loss. Digital capital gradually forms through digital markets; characterized primarily by the facilitation of commodity or service transactions through information processing and transmission, it realizes the valorization of value. In the digital economy, digital capital expands the space for valorization by continuously creating new production sectors, mitigating the decline in the general rate of profit while simultaneously enhancing financing efficiency and promoting the expansion and upgrading of industry.
Third, digital capital is essentially a set of relations of production under digital conditions, formed through the privatization of data as a means of production, the algorithmic control of the labor process, and platform monopolies over market exchange. By virtue of their command over digital technology, digital capitalists establish a dominant position over digital laborers and data providers (consumers) within the digital labor process. This relationship of dominance is further reinforced through the deep application of algorithms, which both increases the degree of exploitation and intensifies the squeeze on consumer surplus. This attribute of digital capital as a relation of production is manifested in the sphere of circulation as the expansion of platform monopoly advantages, and in the sphere of production as the penetration and restructuring of traditional forms of capital. Owners of digital capital integrate the valorization chain of digital capital accumulation into the capitalist economic production system through the collection and appropriation of digital means of production and the production and circulation of digital commodities. Relying on digital platforms and monopolizing digital technologies, digital capitalists appropriate without compensation the surplus value created by digital laborers to carry out the production and accumulation of digital capital. Compared to original forms of capital, the new changes in digital capital are also reflected in the extension of the scope of exploitation from the "paid labor" of wage labor to the "unpaid labor" of non-wage labor, including digital workers and platform users. Through data technologies such as cloud computing and algorithms, user information and behavior are transformed into data flows and information networks, achieving exploitation on a wider scale. Relying on their mastery of digital technology, digital capitalists hold a superior position over digital laborers and data providers (consumers), using algorithms to increase the degree of exploitation and squeeze consumer surplus, while simultaneously extending their monopoly advantages in circulation into vertical monopolies to, in turn, control capital in the production sphere.
In summary, digital capital can be understood from three levels: as value capable of bringing forth surplus value, as value in motion, and as a relation of production. Examined from the theoretical perspective of Marxist political economy, digital capital is an important manifestation of the evolution of capital forms in the era of the digital economy. In the process of the digitalization of productive forces and relations of production, new production factors centered on data and information are deeply integrated into traditional production and service processes. Through the innovative use of digital technology, value valorization is achieved, driving production and services to interface more precisely with consumer market demand. The emergence of this new form of capital reflects both the logic of the historical evolution of capital forms and the profound transformation of the mode of production wrought by the digital technological revolution.
III. The Financialization Process of Digital Capital and Its Impacts
In the process of digital technology reshaping the global economic structure, the relationship between digital capital and financial capital exhibits a profound dialectic: digital capital is not a new phenomenon independent of traditional capital logic, but rather an advanced manifestation of financial capital evolving under digital conditions. Capital always seeks to break through the limitations of time and space to maximize valorization, and the network effects, data monopolies, and platform characteristics of digital technology provide financial capital with new tools for exploitation and paths for accumulation. The life cycle of the platform economy—from startup incubation and "barbaric growth" [4] to monopolistic consolidation—essentially maps the intention of financial capital to restructure the paradigm of capital accumulation through a technological shell. The commercial utilization of data facilitates the production and realization of surplus value for industrial capital and enhances the ability of financial capital to extract surplus value. Through means such as algorithmic pricing, data rents, and traffic control, financial capital comprehensively commodifies user behavior, social relationships, and even public space. This shift from "productive investment" to "rent extraction" indicates that platforms have not only become sites for the production of surplus value but also corporate infrastructures that incorporate the entire process of social reproduction into their profit-extraction systems. It is worth noting that financial capital, with the help of tools like digital currencies and algorithmic financial derivatives, transforms the monopoly advantages of the platform economy into a valuation game in global capital markets. This reveals the deep logic of financial capital behind digital capital: through technologically empowered capital concentration, social wealth is transferred to a few financial oligarchs in more concealed and polarized ways. This evolution of the form of capital has not transcended Marx’s diagnosis of the internal contradictions of capital; rather, with the support of digital technology, it has pushed the antagonism between labor and capital to new dimensions such as "prosumer exploitation" and the "data proletariat."
- The Startup Stage of Platform Organizations: Continuous Financing by Financial Capital Represented by Venture Capital
Digital platform enterprises are considered companies with a "New Economy business model." When these types of enterprises are in the stage of developing, innovating, and testing applications, they have little or no sales revenue, and their activities are funded by venture capital, requiring massive upfront investment. The investment of financial capital (primarily venture capital) in digital platform enterprises is based on a specific assumption: first attract enough users to occupy a monopoly position, and then financialize the business to make a profit. Venture capital funds look for so-called "unicorn" companies; the extremely high capital gains obtained from these companies can compensate for all other venture investments, most of which are unprofitable. The development of the digital economy remains based on finance; it is financial capital that has driven the rise and prosperity of the digital economy.
The leverage effect of finance is conducive to transferring and diversifying risk. By using financial financing to operate with larger amounts of money than one's own funds, money-lenders can take greater risks; even if they fail, the losses are shared by the owners of the various funds. As the dominant business model under the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution, the digital platform economy depends heavily on a financialized accumulation regime. Taking Europe and the United States as examples, after the 1970s, an institutional complementarity existed between the intellectual property systems of the software and biotechnology industries and the increasingly important financial markets. Direct monetary incentives through financial markets helped increase the number of patents applied for by software companies. Although digital platform enterprises generate losses in the short term during their startup phase, the existence of network economics allows venture capital to create an expectation of future monopoly rents for the winner or first-mover. In the startup stage of platform enterprises, financial capital—through tools such as venture capital and private equity—uses the "burning money for market share" [5] model to push digital platforms onto a track of hyper-expansion. The goal of venture capital funds is not the immediate creation of value and profit, but the pursuit of future profitability. Adopting a "growth before profit" model, they increase the market value of enterprises through high stock valuations and sell their shares to larger companies, which will then use the data and their networks to create value.
At a time when the digital economy is profoundly reshaping the forms of capital, venture capital—as the contemporary form of financial capital’s pursuit of profit maximization—increasingly needs to utilize the manifestation of digital capital. This shift uses the platform economy as a strategic carrier and relies on digital technology to restructure the path of value valorization; its essence remains the concrete extension of capital logic in digital space. By controlling data factors, monopolizing traffic entry points, and building closed-loop ecosystems, digital capital continuously strengthens its capacity for valorization capture, exhibiting more efficient profit-extraction characteristics than traditional financial capital.
Financial capital uses network effects to build asymmetric competitive advantages, forming a system for the production of extraordinary surplus value unique to the digital age. In this process, technological breakthroughs like artificial intelligence and big data are systematically restructured into tools for value valorization; patent barriers and algorithmic "black boxes" become institutional safeguards for transforming technological dividends into capital gains. More critically, by securitizing the corporate growth cycle, capital breaks through physical time and space constraints, using valuation models to discount expected future earnings into immediate gains, thereby achieving a reconstruction of the time dimension of the value creation process.
- The Competition and Development Stage of Platform Organizations: Digital Platforms Expand Financial Capital Business
In the process of competition and development within the platform economy, financial capital consistently dictates changes in the market landscape through various means. In the platform's early stages, financial capital provides massive funding support to platform enterprises through venture capital and other methods. Even if a platform suffers long-term losses, financial institutions continue to inject capital. This "money-burning" or "blood-transfusion" style of support not only helps the platform survive but also, by controlling valuations and the tempo of financing, allows the profit logic of financial capital to permeate the entire digital ecosystem. This capital selection intensifies the "Matthew Effect": leading head platforms, by virtue of the funding advantages acquired early on, suppress competitors through price-cutting subsidies and other means, ultimately forming a cycle of "financing advantage – market monopoly – extraordinary profits." For example, Meta's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp was essentially an achievement of centralizing market dominance by eliminating competitive barriers.
Once a platform has grown large, the ways in which financial capital participates become more complex. Large platforms not only use accumulated user funds and cash flow to establish their own financial systems but also utilize the new resource of user behavioral data to transform traditional financial services. This "embedded finance" model allows platform enterprises to break through the service boundaries of traditional banks. Through a complete chain from data collection and credit assessment to risk transfer, they transform users' daily behaviors into sources of financial profit.
The competition and cooperation between digital finance and traditional finance reveal deeper changes in capital relations. On the surface, digital technology improves the efficiency of financial services—for instance, using AI to optimize risk assessment or blockchain to speed up transfers. In reality, once platforms possess a user's comprehensive data, the credit assessment power of traditional banks is gradually weakened, forcing them to become mere auxiliary service providers to the platforms. More notably, the so-called "decentralized" financial networks established by platforms through cross-border payment systems and digital currencies actually form new centers of monopoly. For example, cross-border payment tools launched by certain tech giants appear to break down national borders but are in fact constructing their own systems of financial power.
This evolution of capital forms is essentially a digital upgrade of the way capital extracts profit. Financial capital breaks through geographical limitations with the help of the Internet, while digital platforms transform user data into profit through financial means. The combination of the two has formed a "digital + finance" dual-profit model. When financial services are embedded into daily scenarios such as online shopping and social interaction, the flow of capital shifts from visible monetary transactions to value transfers hidden within data. This not only accelerates the digital transformation of financial capital but also signifies that capitalism is entering a new stage of dual exploitation through "digital + finance" means.
3. The stage of platform monopoly: the financialization of the platform economy As the platform economy enters the stage of monopoly, its developmental trajectory exhibits a significant financialization turn. The financialization of the platform economy, serving as an accumulation mechanism of financialization, is one of the new changes in the contemporary capitalist economy. Financial capital utilizes platform enterprises to integrate into the circulation of capital, and the financialization of the platform economy makes it a tool for the valorization of financial capital. This process not only reflects the deep transmutation of capital forms but also reveals the dominant position of financial capital in the era of the digital economy. Platform enterprises that occupy a dominant market position have transformed from pioneers of technological innovation into carriers for the valorization of financial capital—realizing the ultimate realization of capital gains through equity exit mechanisms, the platform has essentially become a value conversion hub within the circulation system of financial capital. In this process, although digital capital expands under the guise of technological empowerment, its essence remains a digital tool for financial capital to realize super-profits; the core power structure of the capitalist accumulation system has not undergone fundamental change.
The formation of the monopoly status of platforms provides the structural foundation for financialization. Once leading platforms establish market barriers through data monopoly, ecological closed loops, and network effects, their business logic shifts gradually from user value creation to capital value extraction. The core characteristic of this stage is that platform enterprises, through financialized operations such as Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and equity transfers, transform years of accumulated user scale, data assets, and market share into quantifiable financial assets. In this process, the platform appears to be the subject of value creation, but in reality, it is relegated to an intermediate medium for financial capital to realize the $G—W—G'$ circuit—the massive funds injected by venture capital in the early stages are ultimately transferred to public investors through the secondary market, completing the institutional arbitrage of the socialization of risk and the privatization of returns.
The penetration of the platform economy by financial capital presents two dimensions: it both reconstructs digital technology as a new tool of exploitation and expands the boundaries of accumulation through financial innovation. On the one hand, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and big data analysis are no longer limited to the scope of technical optimization but have evolved into algorithmic weapons for financial capital to accurately capture surplus value. For example, hedge funds use machine learning to predict market volatility, and investment banks use natural language processing to analyze the emotional leanings of financial reports; the essence of these technical applications is to transform the behavioral data sedimented by platforms into super-profits in financial markets. On the other hand, the rise of blockchain financial products such as cryptocurrencies marks the opening of a value extraction channel by digital capital that runs parallel to the traditional financial system. By creating new categories of financial assets, platform enterprises both evade traditional regulatory frameworks and construct cross-sovereign, cross-entity capital flow networks. The formation of this "technology-finance" complex is essentially a strategic choice by financial capital to use a digital shell to break through geographical boundaries and policy constraints.
The financialization process of contemporary capitalism reveals a brutal reality: the so-called technological revolution of the platform economy is merely a manifestation of financial capital reconstructing its accumulation regime in the digital age. Beating beneath the shell of platform enterprise technological innovation is still the profit-seeking heart of financial capital. What financial capital accomplishes through the platform economy is not only an upgrade in the mode of accumulation but also an evolution of the mechanism of exploitation—data replaces machines as the core means of production, algorithms replace assembly lines as the means of control, and the violence of capital valorization penetrates every capillary of digital society in a more concealed manner. The wave of financialization in the platform monopoly stage fully demonstrates that the capitalist mode of production is merely a historical form of the movement of capital; even when draped in a digital cloak, its essence of pursuing the maximization of surplus value remains unchanged.
IV. Promoting the healthy development of the digital economy on the basis of clarifying the relationship between digital capital and financial capital
The structural transformation of social total capital always exists in a dialectical unity with technological progress. As a new manifestation of financial capital under the conditions of digital technology, the essence of digital capital remains the continuation and reinforcement of the logic of capital on a new technological carrier—namely, the extraction of maximum surplus value by continuously breaking through the boundaries of productive forces and reconstructing the relations of production. From the transition of industrial capital to financial capital, and then to the reorganization of financial capital by digital capital, technological revolutions have always played the role of a catalyst for the evolution of capital forms: the steam engine liberated production space, the computer reconstructed the speed of circulation, and big data and algorithms have directly allowed capital valorization to break through the constraints of physical matter, turning toward the abstract appropriation of data flows, attention, and even social relations. In this process, financial capital, due to its high liquidity and self-valorizing characteristics, centrally embodies the essence of capital’s pursuit of profit maximization. Through digital technology, it upgrades the "Money—Commodity—Money" ($G—W—G'$) formula in the traditional capital circuit to a new paradigm of "Data—Credit—Data Valorization" ($D—C—D'$), utilizing the network effects of the platform economy to incorporate global users into a real-time data collection system, extending labor exploitation from the factory floor to every interaction node of the digital ecosystem. This technology-empowered evolution of the capital form not only accelerates the concentration of social total capital into a few digital-financial oligarchies but also, through tools such as algorithmic pricing and cross-border payment networks, pushes the contradictions of the capitalist accumulation system to a new dimension of global resonance.
1. Digital capital becomes a new means for financial capital to obtain profit under new technological conditions In the era of the digital economy, financial capital remains the dominant form of capital. This is because only in the form of financial capital does capital completely shed the constraints of its material form, attaining maximum autonomy and flexibility, thereby most fully expressing its nature of pursuing the maximization of valorization. As Marx pointed out, "money is the power of all powers" [6]; in a commodity society, as the universal equivalent, money abstracts all concrete labor into commensurable magnitudes of value. This abstraction makes money the ultimate scale for measuring, appropriating, and dominating social wealth. "Money is the god among commodities" [7], establishing universal dominance over the products of labor and social resources by transforming difference (concrete labor) into identity (abstract value).
Marx’s conclusion that "money is the power of all powers" was directed at the period of primitive accumulation of capital and a mode of production where land was the primary means of production, because those forms of capital that are more liberated from material constraints and possess greater liquidity and flexibility always occupy the core position of the social capital structure. In the capitalist production system, this thesis provides a core clue for understanding the laws of capital movement today. During the period of industrial capitalism, monetary power was mainly manifested in the capitalist’s purchase of means of production and labor power through the holding of money capital, thereby controlling the production and distribution of surplus value. At this time, as the starting and ending point of capital movement, the power of money was directly reflected within the factory walls. However, as capitalism entered the stage of financial capital, monetary power began to detach from the constraints of the concrete production process, deriving self-valorizing virtual forms through the credit system and securitization tools. Financial products such as stocks, bonds, and derivatives constructed a vast system of symbolic economy, allowing monetary power to achieve geometric expansion in global capital markets in the forms of interest, dividends, and capital gains. The 2008 international financial crisis clearly exposed how this monetary power, detached from the real economy, backfires on society; Wall Street transformed residential mortgages into financial derivatives through debt securitization, and monetary power had alienated into a meat grinder for a few to plunder social wealth.
The emergence of digital technology has opened a new field of action for monetary power. On the surface, digital tools such as online payments seem to weaken the physical form of traditional currency; in reality, through the accumulation of payment data, they extend the tentacles of monetary power into the capillary-like fields of social life. When users complete transactions on e-commerce platforms, they are not only realizing the exchange of commodities but also invisibly contributing data resources such as consumption preferences and credit trajectories. Platform enterprises transform this data into digital credit assets, further developing consumer credit products like "Buy Now, Pay Later." At this point, monetary power has broken through the physical limitations of traditional financial intermediaries, forming a closed-loop system of "data collection—credit assessment—capital valorization."
Observed from the essential level, digital capital becoming a new means for financial capital to obtain profit under new technological conditions marks the transformation of monetary power from physical dominance to virtual control, from regional limitation to global flow, and from explicit appropriation to implicit penetration. The remuneration obtained by laborers taking orders on platforms and the interest generated by consumers using credit payments are all packaged in digital technology, making the realization process of monetary power more concealed and coercive. In the digital platform economy, laborers both contribute digital labor for free as data producers and fall into the debt cycle of consumer credit as consumers; investors complete global capital allocation in an instant through algorithmic trading, yet exacerbate the systemic risks of financial markets. This dual exploitation mechanism is precisely the latest manifestation of monetary power in the digital age—it is no longer satisfied with appropriating the surplus labor time of workers but seeks to capture the full life-cycle value of users.
2. Regulating digital capital operations and promoting the development of the digital economy on the basis of public digital capital The leap in productive forces brought about by the development of the digital economy creates realistic conditions for shortening socially necessary labor time and increasing time for free development. However, the digital economy, as a new economic form under digital technological conditions, has not detached from the dominant logic of financial capital. Nevertheless, the dual attributes of digital capital determine that it may break through the traditional operational paradigm of financial capital: on the one hand, as a new type of means of production, data possesses non-rivalry and shareability, creating an essential difference from the scarcity of traditional capital; on the other hand, the synergistic effects of digital networks objectively require the socialized use of the means of production, which stands in internal contradiction with private monopoly.
Under the conditions of the socialist market economy, the diversity of capital forms requires a dialectical treatment of the duality of digital capital. Marx once foresaw: "Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth." [8] Digital technology makes this contradiction even more acute: algorithmic optimization may either liberate labor or intensify labor control. The fundamental path to resolving this contradiction lies in establishing the dominant position of public digital capital. Public digital capital is not a simple exclusion of private capital, but rather, through the transformation of the ownership of the means of production, it makes the synergistic effects of digital technology serve the interests of society as a whole. For example, public data opening platforms and computing power infrastructure established by the state, through reforms in rights registration and income distribution, incorporate data elements into the process of reproducing socialist relations of production.
Constructing new relations of production compatible with public digital capital requires institutional innovation in four dimensions: first, at the level of ownership, implementing a structural separation of data as a means of production—public data persists in ownership by the whole people, enterprise data implements revenue sharing for contributors, and personal data reinforces the right to portability; this puts Marx's [theory into practice...]
The dialectical thinking of "reestablishing individual ownership" [9]. Second, at the level of circulation, a unified national market for data elements must be established. Through a measurement model based on socially necessary labor time, the pricing of data can be made scientific, thereby breaking the price manipulation of platform capital. Third, under the socialist market economy, there exist capitals of different ownership types. Currently, China possesses state-owned capital and collective capital, while also maintaining a large amount of non-public capital, including private and foreign capital. It is necessary to distinguish these in terms of their nature and to be clear in their positioning, so as to regulate and guide the healthy development of all types of capital. For private digital capital, "traffic lights" [10] must be set for its development to prevent the "barbaric growth" and "disorderly expansion of capital," and to comprehensively enhance the efficacy of capital governance. Fourth, at the level of distribution, a fund for the sharing of data value by the whole people should be established to transform monopoly rents into resources for social reproduction, laying the material foundation for the free and comprehensive development of individuals. When digital capital is subordinated to the social rationality of public ownership, algorithms are no longer tools for extracting surplus value, but become the technical carries for optimizing the distribution of total social labor time; data monopolies are no longer means of polarizing wealth, but are transformed into the material conditions for shortening necessary labor time and expanding the space for free development. This is because only on the basis of the social appropriation of the means of production can technological progress truly become a lever for human liberation.
Author affiliation: School of Marxism, Tsinghua University Source: Marxism Studies (《马克思主义研究》), Issue 1, 2026. Editor: Huihui