Xing Yun-wen, Li Zhen-zhen: Cultural Alienation and Its Criticism in the Digital Capitalism
Release time: 2025-05-29
The cultural alienation in the era of digital capitalism is the result of the interplay between the logic of capital and the logic of technology. Digital capital employs “cultural elements” as a significant driving force for profit, shaping cultural commodities and creating disillusionment with the inherent value of culture under the auspices of technology commandeered by capital. Culture increasingly deviates from its noble purpose of serving the liberation of human nature and the return to rationality, becoming a “governing technique” under the dominion of modern rationality within capitalism. The prominent manifestations of cultural alienation in the digital capitalist era include: the “spectacle production” that encloses and dissolves sublime values, leading to the “desertification” of culture; the “false needs” narrative that distorts audience aesthetics,leading to the “vulgarization” of culture; the “accelerated society” where the dispersion of the internet deconstructs the depth of communication,leading to the “polarization” of culture; and the “digital.life politics” power illusion that constructs a comprehensive control, leading to the “hegemonization” of culture.In response, we should base our reflections and critiques of cultural alienation in the era of digital capitalism on the holistic domain of Marxist materialist historiography, abolish the private ownership of digital capitalist means of production, break free from the technological power of digital capitalism, and sever the manipulation and control of culture by the “logic of capital” and the “logic of technology” and their union.At the same time, within the context of the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics,strengthening the guidance of socialist core values,enhancing the supply of quality cultural products, cultivating the technological ethics and cultural literacy of digital citizens,and identifying the new ideological scenarios of the global expansion of digital capitalist cultural hegemony, are effective ways to break the discipline of digital capitalism and promote cultural confidence and strength.
Editor: Zhong Yao LiuTingting
From: Journal of Shaanxi Normal University(Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition). 2025.No.1.
ACADEMY OF MARXISM CHINESE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES