In the context of new science and technology and new modes of operation, some aspects of labor have become the source of capitalists' pursuit of surplus value. With the continuous blessing of the Internet and digital technology, digital labor has taken on the characteristics of the times, which has been continuously amplified by Western liberal capitalist scholars. In this context, they believe that Marx's labor theory can no longer be applied in the era of digital capitalism, technology has replaced labor itself as the main driving force of the current society, and the labor theory of value has been transformed into a technological theory of value.
Therefore, it is particularly important to take Marx's labor theory as the basis and use the method of Marx's political economy criticism to expose the nature of the new transformation of labor in the period of digital capitalism and explore the "labor" of digital labor.
1. Marx's Theory of Labor
Marx's labor theory is the direct source of digital labor theory, Marx's labor theory plays an important role in the formation of digital labor theory, but its origin has long existed in the history of Western thought, Aristotle's labor thought, Hegel's labor thought all provide philosophical inspiration for Marx's labor theory.
Marx took this as a research environment, drew nutrition from it, and melted into the reasonable core of Marx's labor theory, and digital labor theory drew nutritional value from Marx's labor theory to form a unique labor theory with the characteristics of the digital age. Hegel said in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy that Greece had given Germans the feeling of home. Marx is a thinker who grew up under the nourishment of Western culture, and the construction of his ideological edifice is inseparable from the fertile soil of Western culture.
In ancient Greece, labor was seen as a way for slaves to realize their own worth, an activity performed by the most humble people, and philosophers represented by Aristotle in this period put forward their views on labor in the form of systematic philosophical arguments. Although the word "labor" is not explicitly mentioned in Aristotle's writings, it is clear from his expression that he equates production with labor, because the purpose of production is to satisfy the natural needs of survival, and so is labor.
Therefore, from a narrow point of view, Aristotle's labor refers to production, and from a broad point of view, Aristotle's labor includes three aspects: theory, practice, and production, because whether it is theory, practice, or production is a subset of labor, all contained in the idea of labor, and the three ultimately point to labor or better realization of labor. At the same time, Aristotle believed that man is a rational animal and is born with social instincts, so he paid attention to human rationality from a political and ethical point of view, believing that labor is the activity and responsibility of people below.
Aristotle's discourse became the direct source of the lack of attention to labor in Western countries for a long time to come. Hegel studied the labor problem as a philosophical problem for the first time, and elevated "labor" to a philosophical problem, that is, labor dialectics, Hegel's discussion of labor dialectics at least from the transformation of individual labor and social labor, the interaction between individuals and groups, the abstraction of labor to promote the improvement of labor skills, the transformation of the master-slave relationship, etc., Hegel's labor thought was paid attention to by Marx, so that Marx continued to absorb the reasonable core of Hegel's dialectic in future research.
With the establishment of the capitalist system, thinkers' views on labor have changed dramatically, from the previous contempt for labor to the emphasis on labor, and this change originated with Locke, developed by Adam Smith, and completed the cleansing in Marx's thought. Marx's labor theory can be analyzed from the general and the particular.
In general, Marx believed that labor is first and foremost the activity of material production. Therefore, people must carry out material production, which is the basis of survival and the prerequisite of life, and all this is inseparable from human labor. The second is the activity carried out with the help of the tools of labor. The medium of people's activities is a tool, whether or not to use tools is also an aspect that distinguishes people from animals, and the tools of production are also divided into tools of "natural formation and civilization creation", and the production tools created by civilization are one of the important factors to promote social development.
Finally, there is "the process of material transformation between man and nature". The relationship between man and nature has changed in the process of labor, from the initial reverence for nature, respect for nature, and conquest of nature to the harmonious coexistence between man and nature. From the point of view of particularity, Marx placed labor in the framework of capitalism for discussion and study. In capitalist society, laborers suffer from the abuse and exploitation of capitalists, and they are forced by life to be unable and unable to give up their employment relationship with capitalists, but this phenomenon also exists in digital labor in the period of digital capitalism.
With the development and change of the economy, there are some new phenomena different from Marx's era in today's society, in order to better analyze the new phenomenon, to understand the problems behind the new phenomenon requires us to use a new vision, stand in the perspective of the times to analyze and understand Marx's labor theory, and the mastery of Marx's labor theory will also help us to have a deeper understanding and analysis of digital labor in the information age, Marx's labor theory is the initial domain of digital labor theory.
In addition, digital labor theory is the extension of Marx's labor theory in the digital age, and at the same time, Marx's labor theory is the cornerstone of the formation and development of digital labor theory. Marx lived in the era of machine large-scale industry, so what he criticized was also capitalism in the machine large-scale industrial age, especially the criticism of private ownership is the base station of his thought, and we are in the digital age to criticize the capitalism of the digital age, that is, digital capitalism.
In the digital age, although the way, content and means of labor have changed compared with the machine industrial age, it is still essentially the era of digital capital dominance, and the premise of our criticism is still capitalist private ownership, so digital labor as a new way of labor still exists exploitation and alienation.
Second, the consistency between digital labor and Marx's labor theory
Marx's labor theory is the original carrier of digital labor. Whether in the period of the industrial revolution or in the era of digital capitalism, the core of the entire social production relationship is the relationship between labor and capital, and the corresponding multiplication of digital capital is also dependent on digital labor to expand. Based on the premise of capitalist production conditions and the characteristics of labor, it can be found that there is consistency between digital labor and Marx's labor theory.
First, the external premises under capitalist production conditions are consistent. The category of "labor" mentioned by Marx generally includes two levels: philosophy and political economy, labor is not only the object activity of people to transform the objective world, including labor subjects, objects and intermediaries, but also the use and expenditure of labor based on employment relations in the capitalist production process.
These two levels are dialectically unified in the Marxist concept of labor, and Marx did not depart from its philosophical level when analyzing the labor of hired workers from the perspective of political economy, especially in the analysis of the problem of alienated labor. The alienation caused by labor is essentially due to capitalist private ownership.
Through the philosophical and political analysis of labor-management relations in capitalist society, Marx revealed the reality of exploitation, exploitation and oppression of laborers in capitalist society, and built a scientific and systematic "labor criticism" theory on this basis.
Marx profoundly pointed out that capital is dead labor, like a vampire, it only lives by sucking live labor, and the more labor it sucks, the more it lives. Therefore, the essence of capital's exploitation of labor is the accumulated "dead labor", that is, the exploitation of the current "living labor" of workers by capital.
In the period of digital capitalism, living labor crossed the canyon of traditional employment relations, jumped out of the boundaries of time and space, and became digital labor with employment and non-employment relationships, active in the production and reproduction of society, and shuttled through the "era of capital".
Therefore, the change of labor form has not changed capitalist private ownership, nor has it changed the dominance of digital capital, labor-management relations are still the contradiction that existed in the period of digital capitalism, and the alienation and exploitation of digital labor are more hidden and rampant than ever before.
Second, the production characteristics of labor are consistent with the intrinsic nature of value creation. "Labor that produces material products is productive labor" is Marx's initial definition of productive labor, and then, through the investigation of social reality, Marx believes that "productive labor is wage labor, which is the labor of workers to reproduce their own labor force value and production surplus value", based on this, Marx formed a complete understanding of production labor.
Marx's interpretation of productive labor is the basis for the analysis of his labor value and surplus value, and distinguishing the essential attributes of labor has also become one of the important topics in Marx's political economy research. However, in the age of digital capitalism, laborers not only make physical goods, but also a large number of non-physical goods.
Moreover, some digital labor no longer has a traditional employment relationship and becomes unpaid digital labor, based on this, some scholars classify digital labor into the category of unproductive labor, believing that it can neither produce value nor surplus value, thus producing a wave of weakening Marx, which is obviously a limited and one-sided understanding of Marx's concept of productive labor.
In the era of digital capitalism, the decommodification of labor has become the mainstream, and it has also made some unpaid labor without employment relations the main form of digital labor, and also laid the foundation for the spread and penetration of digital capital in time and space, and the color of "digital factory" has become more and more intense.
In this process, regardless of whether labor power becomes a commodity or not, as long as the capitalist has the ownership of the product produced by the laborer and serves the value added of capital, it can be regarded as productive labor and also participates in the creation of value. Therefore, simply limiting productive labor to the traditional labor relations or the production of material goods is impossible to understand the problem of surplus value production and capital accumulation in digital labor.
It can be seen that digital labor and Marx's labor thought are in the same vein and keep pace with the times. To better understand digital labor, we must base ourselves on Marx's labor thought, and take Marx's critique of political economy as a research method to further scientifically explain and deeply understand digital labor.