Numerical logic and its internal fissures: Lukács’s crisis theory in digital capitalism

Abstract

This paper re-examines the critical path of numerical logic in Lukács’s crisis theory within the context of digital capitalism. It traces the transformation of numerical logic from pre-capitalist sacred numbers to the abstract unity of modern capitalism, revealing its role as the core mechanism of capitalist reification. In industrial capitalism, numerical logic served exchange value in a “Value–Number” axis. In digital capitalism, the platform economy reverses this into a “Data–Value” axis, prioritizing datafication to capture surplus value. Although algorithmic governance promises quantifiability and predictability, it exposes internal tensions by continuously absorbing qualitative differences, generating cycles of irrational emotion and fostering populist tendencies. Drawing on Lukács, the paper argues that capitalism’s objective economic crises and subjective ideological crises form a dialectical unity. Only when laboring subjects transcend reified consciousness through organized practice can these internal fissures open a path toward genuine emancipation.