On Digital Capitalist Society

On the basis of Marx's labor theory of value,this essay analyzes the form of commodity and labor,as well as the power of capital.And it reveals the mode of production in digital capitalist society.In the meantime,it focuses on the struggle and liberation of digital laborers.Moreover,this essay argues that in order to achieve man's liberation,digital labor must be turned into man's conscious labor out of free will and digital technologies must be made to contribute to man's free and comprehensive development.First,based on Marx's labor theory of value,this essay shows man's digital survival predicament under digital capitalist society.Marx profoundly criticized capitalist society on the basis of his labor theory of value,discovered the secret of capital's multiplication,revealed the inner regularity of the capitalist mode of production and provided crucial theoretical weapon for proletarian revolution and human emancipation.This essay argues that in digital capital society,the capitalist mode of production still plays a dominate role.And the fundamental contradiction of society is still the contradiction between the socialization of production and the private ownership of means of production.Therefore,Marx's labor theory of value is still in fashion.Setting out from Marx's labor theory of value,we'll see that when it comes to the private ownership of means of production,digital capitalist society shares the same feature with traditional capitalist society.However,aspects of social life have presented a new tendency towards digitalization in digital capitalist society.Specifically,this tendency manifests itself as the prevailing of the digital Taylorism,the industrialization of living space and the colonization of living time.Digital capitalist society provides man's development with open field,however,it is still a form of realizing capital's value multiplication.Man's living dilemma appears as a threefold contradiction between activity and passivity,virtuality and reality,as well as equality and exploitation.Then,on the basis of Marx's labor theory of value,this essay deeply analyzes the form of commodity and labor and the power of capital.And it articulates the new changes of the mode of production in digital capitalist society.Digital commodity is a new form of commodity emerging from digital capitalist society,where the form of fortune appears as mass accumulation of data.The production of commodity as data includes both the production of original data and the processing of it,which contains indiscriminate human labor.Commodity as data is the product of labor for exchange,which is still a unity of use value and value.Commodity as data has the feature of the coexistence of the logic of individual customization and standardization,low consumption and high consumption,as well as the shareability and exclusiveness.The fetishism of data is a new form of fetishism in digital capitalist society.It deliberately beautifies and covers up its aim to maximize surplus value with deceptively neutral means of data and thus dominate man's production and life in a comprehensive way.Digital labor is a new form of labor in the digital capitalist society.Its process shows the feature of the coexistence of compulsiveness and voluntariness,the object of labor's immateriality,as well as the coexistence of the means of labor's privatization and centralization.In terms of form,digital labor can be divided into the original digital labor and the processing digital labor.In terms of nature,it can be divided into digital wage labor and non-wage digital labor.The laborer who is engaged in original digital labor doesn't live on it and belongs to non-wage digital laborers.While the laborer who is engaged in processing digital labor lives on it and belongs to digital wage laborers.During the process of digital labor and production,both the digital wage labor and the non-wage digital labor are the living labor exploited by digital capital.Therefore,the power of capital in digital capitalist society construes as the new dominate force in contemporary capitalist society.With the help of digital technology,the power of digital capital achieves a more comprehensive,covert and thorough domination over man.The digital enclosure movement separates the producers and means of production under digital capitalism.Therefore,it makes it possible for the minor countries and capitalists to occupy the surplus value of the major countries and digital laborers for free,which contributes to the achievement of digital capital accumulation.Digital capital extends the quantity of non-wage digital laborers and makes them online all the time,which extends the field of exploitation over living labor.In the meanwhile,it strengthens the oppression over digital wage laborers,which deepen the exploitation over living labor in order to squeeze the absolute and relative surplus value out of all living labor to maximum extent.Finally,on the basis of Marx's labor theory of value,this essay focuses on the problem of digital laborers' struggle and emancipation and seeks for the way of achieving man's free and comprehensive development.Digital wage laborers and nonwage digital laborers' are engaged in struggles like labor movement,technical resistance,public opinion transmission and community activity respectively through formal and informal organizations and approaches.Although these struggles have had some achievements,they still encounter difficulties like disability in organizing,lack of means,fizzy targets and inequality in distribution.Nevertheless,it should be noticed that the significance of digital laborers' struggle and liberation shouldn't be confined to itself and to the short run.It should be understand under the social historical process of man's free and comprehensive development instead.Digital laborers' struggle and liberation is one of the steps in the historical process of human emancipation,which eventually aims at man's liberation.Therefore,the final aim of digital laborers' struggle is not to abandon the digital living mode and the use of digital technologies.On the contrary,it is to turn digital labor into man's conscious labor out of free will and contribute to man's free and comprehensive development.In brief,it is to break down the capitalist application of digital technologies and sublate the capitalist mode of production.