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Abstract The Achievement Society is a product of collusion between capitalist accumulation logic and digital technology. Its core lies in shaping individuals into perpetually striving achievement subjects through affirmative governance. In traditional Disciplinary Societies, capitalists relied on mechanisms of “bodily punishment” and “biopolitical regulation”, using panopticon-like surveillance to internalize external discipline, molding laborers into “docile bodies” compliant with capitalist production systems. However, accelerated digitalization, social transformation, and the intensification of life rhythms have rendered the “negative governance” of Disciplinary Societies obsolete, paving the way for the rise of the Achievement Society rooted in affirmative logic.
The Achievement Society constructs an illusion of freedom through narratives of self-actualization, trapping individuals in a competitive cage meticulously designed by digital capitalism.First of all,“Meritocracy”as the dominant value principle, exacerbates structural inequalities by ignoring innate talent disparities and unequal resource distribution. This creates a dual paradox of “elite arrogance” and “relative deprivation”. Digital technologies reduce humans to quantifiable“human capital”, eroding pluralistic values and subjectivity.Secondly,the liquefied nature of digital labor increasingly blurs work-life boundaries. The pathological pursuit of “hyper-efficiency” and “limitless achievement” transforms traditional external exploitation into self-imposed self-exploitation. Workers voluntarily become tools of capital accumulation under the guise of “free choice”,leading to spatial, temporal, and material impoverishment, as well as existential disintegration between “elf-perfection and “elf-destruction.Finally, overwork manifests in new forms in the digital age—platform gig workers engage in “proactive forced labor” under algorithmic surveillance and performance competition. Physical and mental exhaustion have become pervasive, reflecting a profound crisis of the Achievement Society.
The predicament of subjects in the digital Achievement Society epitomizes the intensifying contradiction between capital logic and human development. To resolve this, social relations must be reconstructed through:Firstly，at the level of distributive justice, it is necessary to establish the distributive principle of “getting what they need”. This means taking the all-round development of human beings as the core criterion for resource allocation, and achieving a leap from formal justice to substantive justice through improving social security, tax regulation and the third distribution mechanism.Secondly, at the level of labor liberation, it is necessary to reshape the free nature of labor. The “self-exploitation” under digital capitalism stems from the contradiction between private ownership of the means of production and socialization of labor. This requires the establishment of a data rights confirmation system and the regulation of the data element market, enabling digital workers to become creators and sharers of data value, and thereby restoring the human essence of free labor.Finally, at the level of time ethics, the ontological significance of “free time” needs to be reconstructed. The free time emphasized by Marx, as a condition for the all-round development of individuals, has been encroached upon by the logic of capital proliferation in the meritorious society. Therefore, only by criticizing the ideology of “time acceleration”, establishing a scientific working hour system and universal leisure security, enabling individuals to develop interests, cultivate emotions and pursue meaning in non-productive time, can we ensure that workers truly enjoy discretionary time.
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Published: 22 May 2026
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