Experts and scholars exchanged ideas on new economic and social phenomena in the digital age at a webinar on “Challenges and Opportunities of Marxist Philosophy in the Digital Economy Era” on March 26.

Scholars at the webinar asserted that digitization brings serious challenges while benefiting mankind. This calls for a response on both theoretical and practical levels, and requires analysis of the complex social reality in the digital age from a philosophical perspective.

New economic models

In the digital era, the digital economy has penetrated into people’s lives. Accordingly, the internet, as a basic technology in the digital economy era, has reconstructed people’s lives as the production forms, labor paradigms, and organizational forms have all undergone tremendous changes. New economic phenomena are emerging one after another, noted Wu Jing, a professor from the philosophy department at Nanjing Normal University.

“Marxist philosophy has an obligation to reinterpret and respond to the tension between contemporary economic phenomena and the development of Marxist theory,” Wu said.

“The digital economy is a method of economic production, so it is first and foremost an economic issue. When discussing major political and philosophical issues such as fairness and justice, we need to return to the context of economics,” said Li Dian, a professor from the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University.

The digital age has witnessed significant changes in modes of economic production, which has made the digital economy a major force leading contemporary economic development, Li continued. This not only provides new opportunities, possibilities, and space for addressing issues of fairness and justice, but also presents new challenges, since it has changed the way resources are distributed under the traditional labor-based economic production mode.

Platform capitalism

In the digital economy era, the platform has become the main channel for data aggregation, which enhances data’s capital value. Scholars at the webinar made a more in-depth political economy critique and analysis of platform capitalism.

Pan Bin, a professor from the philosophy department at East China Normal University, noted that platform capitalism is an inevitable outcome of the development from laissez-faire capitalism to monopoly capitalism, and is a new form of capital monopoly. Platform capital innovates the production method of surplus value, but does not change the platform’s inherent attributes of capital logic. Platform capitalism has achieved limited breakthroughs in the transformation of traditional labor methods, but it has not changed the labor principles criticized by Marxist political economy.

“It is necessary to prevent the disorderly expansion of platform capital, regulate the competition order of the platform economy, and stimulate the innovation vitality of the platform economy,” Pan said.

“Data itself is not capital. Only when it enters production and becomes a data flow, can it be capitalized and become a resource and tool for digital capital to make profits,” said Lan Jiang, a professor from the philosophy department at Nanjing University. Not all data can generate profits. The platform’s important work is to process data and turn the original static data into dynamic traffic. As long as data-traffic is constantly flowing and exchanging across various platforms, digital capitalism can reap higher profits than ever before.

In this process, production relations have changed from the capitalist wage-employment model to a platform-user model. While digital capitalism is changing the world, it often creates greater imbalances, concentrating wealth and data. This is highly related to social redistribution—as well as fairness and justice. “It is a serious practical issue that we must pay attention to,” Lan said.

Returning to ‘people’

Digital technology has been widely used in the process of production, circulation, distribution, and consumption, said Hu Daping, a professor from the School of Marxism at Nanjing University. Whether it has contributed to a revolutionary change in the capitalist mode of production, and whether it has challenged Marx’s analysis of the different aspects of these relations, requires further exploration.

“At the end of the day, technology has really changed people’s way of life, and raised a series of new topics for the study of Marxist philosophy,” Hu said.

Xu Qiang, a professor from the philosophy department at Nanjing Normal University, believes that the biggest problem in the digital age is the alienation of people—not the confusion of data, but the confusion of people, not the change in data, but the change in people.

Whether it is capital itself, or the possession and domination of capital, what is reflected are the real social relations among people. Only by returning to the “people” themselves and realizing the effective confirmation of identity and confirmation of the identities of digital subjects, can a correct attitude be formed, and a correct choice be made.

Building a digital community with a shared future may be a quite realistic choice. Dong Hui, a professor from the School of Marxism at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, believes that to deal with the problems and challenges brought to mankind by the digital age, it is necessary to uphold multilateralism, to consider both security and development, and adhere to fairness and justice. It is advisable to realize the healthy development of the digital economy on the premise of ensuring security, maximize the allocation efficiency and utilization of data resources, and reduce operating costs and transaction costs.

In addition, it is necessary to smooth channels for sharing, so that people from all over the world can share the fruits of digital economic development and bridge the digital divide, Dong said.