商品的权力化还是权力的商品化——马克思主义政治经济学批判视域下的“权力商品”概念

The Powerization of Commodities or the Commodification of Power?—The Concept of the “Power Commodity” from the Perspective of Marxian Critique of Political Economy

摘要: 既有研究多把货币、机器、职位、平台、数据视作“权力商品”，但缺少判定标准，概念边界不清。“似乎具有权力效力”不等于“权力本身已成为商品”。本文在马克思政治经济学批判的视域下，把“权力”界定为社会关系在特定制度与物质载体中的现实效力，由此区分两个方向相反的过程：“商品的权力化”说明商品关系何以呈现为支配力量，“权力的商品化”说明权力效力及其实现条件如何进入商品形式。判定权力商品需同时满足五个可检验要件：载体化、产权化、定价化、市场依赖化、国家规制化；五要件同时满足才构成权力商品。以货币为反例校准判定边界——货币具有普遍权力效力，却只是权力效力的抽象媒介，不构成权力商品。以十八世纪棉纺织业机器体系与东印度公司特许为历史检验，表明机器使用权与特许经营权只有在进入生产资料产权、雇佣劳动、工厂组织和特许制度时，才成为可转让的权力商品；以数据、算力与算法接入权为当代检验，表明算法接入权等正在成为新的权力商品形态，但商品化程度不等于权力程度。本文由此给出两个理论后果：分析“权力商品”必须回到生产关系、国家制度与市场依赖的复合框架；不能把货币、机器、数据或算法本体化为权力主体。

Abstract: Existing studies identify money, machinery, positions, platforms, and data as “power commodities” without determinate criteria, leaving the concept’s boundary ambiguous. This paper argues that “seeming to exercise power efficacy” is not equivalent to “power itself having become a commodity.” Within Marx’s critique of political economy, it defines power as the real efficacy of social relations embedded in specific institutions and material carriers, and distinguishes two opposite processes: the powerization of commodities, whereby commodity relations manifest as a dominating force, and the commodification of power, whereby power efficacy and its conditions of realization enter the commodity form. The latter defines the power commodity. Five testable conditions must be satisfied simultaneously—carrier materialization, propertization, pricing, market dependence, and state regulation. Money serves as a counter-example: possessing universal power efficacy, it is nonetheless merely the abstract medium of that efficacy and does not qualify as a power commodity. Historical tests on the eighteenth-century cotton machinery system and the East India Company charter show that machine-use rights and chartered franchises become transferable power commodities only when embedded in property rights over the means of production, wage labor, the factory system, and the charter system. Contemporary tests on data, computing power, and algorithmic access show that the right of algorithmic access is emerging as a new form of power commodity, while the degree of commodification does not equal the degree of power. The paper concludes that analyzing power commodities requires returning to the composite framework of production relations, state institutions, and market dependence, and that money, machinery, data, or algorithms must not be reified as power subjects.