Social Sciences in China Review

No.1, 2020

The Logical Development of New Forms of Contemporary Capital, with a Philosophical Reflection (Abstract)

Xia Ying and Niu Ziniu

Since the financial crisis of 2008, changes in global capitalism’s mode of operation and the accelerated progress of the new technological revolution have made the global economy more uncertain and created a degree of tension in the traditional interpretation of the Marxist critique of political economy. This requires us to start from the perspective of historical materialism to gain a critical historical understanding of the changes in capital operation produced by history from the 1970s to the present, that is, of the “new forms of capital.” These emerge in diverse fissures in the fields of finance, science and technology, and the monetary system, and can be divided into the broad categories of financial capital, platform capital, and data capital according to their respective sources of revenue. Critical understanding of these phenomena requires the general methods of the critique of political economy, which will enable their various fetishistic representations to be restored to the relationships of change and struggle between people. On this basis, we can analyze the inherent contradictions of capital operation represented by the new forms of capital and find possible programs for a post-capital society under new technological and organizational conditions.