资本主义一如往昔?——数字知识垄断的启示

Capitalism as Usual:Implications of Digital Intellectual Monopolies

本文从作为权力关系的垄断切入,试图回答“资本主义积累模式是否一如往昔”这一问题,研究以当今数字经济、资本主义、科技巨头与知识垄断几大要素的日益勾联为核心,拓展了乌戈·帕加诺(Ugo Pagno)所提出的“知识垄断资本主义”概念,详细探究了大型科技公司垄断权力的新颖性、促生该类垄断的诸多因素以及其藉以控制其他企业的内在机制。文章以占有市场巨量份额的微软以及其他类似产业巨头为例,剖析了其如何与各国政府、大学与科技工作者在政治、学术和技术方面开展合作,实现其知识垄断的目的。文章认为,科技巨头利用工人知识产权与雇主的分离获得市场影响力,借助人工智能、云服务、数据挖掘等技术手段实施数据垄断,通过数字知识垄断操纵企业、控制市场并打破“创新—传播”的循环。因此,今天的资本主义并非以前的资本主义。随着数字技术的迅猛发展,学界亟需开展深入研究,重估资本主义通过知识垄断实现资本积累的手段机制和潜在威胁。

This paper begins with the monopoly as a power relationship in order to answer the question"Is capitalism accumulating and working as usual"'.It extends the core notion of intellectual monopoly capitalism put forward by the economist Ugo Pagno.It proceeds to explore the increasingly entangled links between digital data,capitalism,big technologies,and monopoly,the innovative nature of Big Tech's monopolistic power,the circumstances that have contributed to it,and the processes utilized to maintain its dominance over other enterprises.Focusing on the cases of Microsoft and other similar giants that control a large portion of the market,it demonstrates Big Tech's monopoly strategies in the intellectual realm,especially through political,academic,and technological ties with international governments,universities,and researchers.It also reveals how tech behemoths gradually gain influence through the separation of workers'intellectual properties and that of their employers,how data-driven monopoly is taking shape with the help of artificial intelligence,cloud services and data mining,and how the digital intellectual monopoly would manipulate even more firms,gain control of greater aspects of markets,and interrupt the cycle that goes from innovation to diffusion.Therefore,capitalism is not as usual,and with the rapid growth of digital technologies,more research is needed to re-evaluate the accumulation dynamics and potential threats of capitalism via intellectual monopolies.