The Theoretical Framework of Digital Socialism Abroad: Foundational Logic
Zhang Zhongyuan, Xiao Guangpan
Abstract
This article offers a comprehensive Marxist analysis of the global digital economy, arguing that the rise of digital technologies — artificial intelligence, big data, and the metaverse — has created both the material foundation for a new socialist planned economy and the highest stage of capitalist monopolization. Zhang Zhongyuan and Xiao Guangpan trace the historical evolution of the socialist calculation debate — from Mises and Hayek’s critiques to Lange and Neurath’s defense of planning — showing how digital computation resolves the epistemological and logistical limits that once constrained socialist planning. The authors examine the emergence of “digital capitalism” through Big Tech monopolies, identifying it as a new form of super-imperialism that concentrates data and power in the hands of global elites. Against this backdrop, the paper articulates the principles of digital socialism, drawing on the works of Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell to propose a planned economy based on labor-time accounting, ecological optimization, and digital democracy. The authors argue that digital infrastructure makes real-time, participatory economic planning technically feasible for the first time, uniting the efficiency of advanced computation with Marx’s vision of collective human emancipation. By integrating socialist economic theory with contemporary information science, this article situates digital socialism as the dialectical negation of neoliberal globalization and the historical successor to industrial capitalism.
Keywords
digital socialism, Marxist political economy, economic planning, Big Tech monopolies, ecological civilization, Zhang Zhongyuan, Xiao Guangpan
