The Cellular Evolution of Capitalism: From “Enclaves” to “Digital Platforms”—A Perspective Based on Dos Santos’ Dependency Theory

二十世纪中期以来，全球格局发生了深刻变革，亚非拉地区的殖民体系逐步瓦解。在这一历史进程中，众多长期遭受殖民统治的第三世界国家相继挣脱殖民枷锁，实现了国家主权独立与民族解放，但其主权上独立并没有带来国家的独立发展和繁荣。众多左翼学者意识到即使脱掉了罩在外围国家身上的外衣，中心国家仍然可以通过各种各样的手段和方式控制诸多发展中国家，形成了“去殖民地的帝国主义”，在这个背景下呈现出——中心–外围依附关系，基于此，帝国主义理论迎来了一波新的研究热潮。多斯桑托斯作为依附理论的代表人物之一，其提出的依附理论对现代国际关系和发展理论具有重要影响，同时被视为是对帝国主义理论的补充和完善，在《帝国主义与依附》一书中对资本主义不同时期的细胞做了详细的分析与阐释。进入21世纪以来，随着科学技术的发展，以数字技术为基础的发达资本主义国家随着数据技术的高度发展，逐渐形成了数字资本主义，站在依附理论的视阈下对数字资本主义的细胞——数字平台进行分析，才能更好的找到走出依附大门的钥匙。Since the middle of the 20th century, the global political landscape underwent profound changes, and the colonial system in Asia, Africa and Latin America gradually disintegrated. During this historical process, many Third World countries that had long been under colonial rule successively broke free from colonial shackles and achieved national sovereignty and liberation. However, their sovereignty did not lead to independent development and prosperity. Many left-wing scholars realized that even if the colonial mantle was removed from the periphery countries, the core countries could still control many developing countries through various means and methods, forming “decolonized imperialism”. Against this backdrop, the center-periphery dependency relationship emerged, and the theory of imperialism witnessed a new wave of research. As one of the representatives of dependency theory, Dos Santos’ dependency theory has a significant impact on modern international relations and development theory, and is regarded as a supplement and improvement to the theory of imperialism. In his book “Imperialism and Dependency”, he provided a detailed analysis and explanation of the cells of traditional and new imperialism. Since the 21st century, with the development of science and technology, developed capitalist countries based on digital technology have gradually formed digital imperialism. Only by analyzing the cells of digital imperialism—digital platforms from the perspective of dependency theory can we better find the key to breaking free from dependency.