Lu Yankai and Zhang Liwei: The Capitalist Production Logic of Digital Labor and Its Subjective Alienation
As information technologies such as the Internet, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and blockchain become extensively embedded in every facet of human life, a landscape of "digital existence" has taken shape. Empowered by these technologies and manipulated by capital, a brand-new form of capitalism has emerged that drives social development through digital capital: digital capitalism. The arrival of the era of digital capitalism is updating the technical means of corporate development, transforming the operating mechanisms of capitalism, and reshaping human modes of production. Human behaviors such as production, life, and consumption, which were traditionally difficult to quantify, can now be converted into quantifiable indicators through data integration and analysis technologies. Consequently, a brand-new mode of labor—digital labor—has emerged. As one of the core topics in the study of digital capitalism, digital labor centrally embodies the complex relationship between information technology and labor power within the socio-economic structure of contemporary capitalist society. Under the digital wave, clarifying the essence of digital labor and revealing its underlying operational logic is of significant practical importance for breaking technological monopolies and alleviating the social "birth pangs" [1] associated with the process of "delivering" digital capitalism, thereby moving toward digital socialism.
I. Conceptual Analysis of Digital Labor
Looking at current research, scholars tend either to situate the concept of digital labor entirely within the digital system—investigating the forms of labor adopted by various digital technology enterprises closely related to the process of digital capital accumulation, and arguing that digital work and digital labor are broad categories involving all activities in the process of digital media technology and content production—or they tend to define it as the free, unpaid labor existing on Internet platforms, which helps form a unified paradigm for the concept of digital labor. With the development of the digital economy, our understanding of the essence of digital labor must also continue to deepen. In this regard, only by grasping the internal connection between "labor in general" and the "particularity of digital labor" can we better understand its essential connotation.
(i) Existing definitions of digital labor in academia
Defining digital labor is, in the final analysis, a matter of understanding what digital labor is. If the conceptual definition is unclear, it easily leads to a generalized notion of digital labor, resulting in the loss of the essence of labor and the dissolution of its meaning. Research on digital labor can be traced back as far as the "audience commodity" theory proposed by Canadian communications scholar Dallas Smythe in the 1970s, which serves as one of the early theoretical foundations. In the early 21st century, Italian scholar Tiziana Terranova first explicitly proposed the concept of digital labor in Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy. She argued that all activities on network platforms in the digital economy constitute labor, a significant portion of which is voluntary, unpaid "free labor," manifested in the provision of data and information. Subsequently, in his 2014 book Digital Labor and Karl Marx, British scholar Christian Fuchs further extended the scope of digital labor to cover all fields and links of the value chain involving traditional media and Information and Communication Technology (ICT). These research findings laid the foundation for subsequent theoretical developments and academic discussions. Academia began to adopt the basic views of Terranova, Fuchs, and others to define digital labor, forming a concept where any activity directly or indirectly related to digital technology belongs to digital labor. Research focused heavily on the free, unpaid labor of Internet users, leading to two classification methods for digital labor: broad and narrow. Broadly defined digital labor is roughly divided into three types: first, digital labor with stable employment relationships, primarily consisting of traditional professional and vocational workers such as software developers and website designers; second, digital labor under non-employment relationships, namely the behaviors of the vast majority of users engaging in media consumption through digital devices; third, digital labor under flexible employment relationships, mainly including gig services represented by groups such as ride-hailing drivers and food delivery couriers, whose labor force mostly consists of the flexible employment population. Narrowly defined digital labor refers to unpaid labor using Internet platforms and other digital information terminals as social media; depending on the research perspective, various terms such as "prosumption," "playbour," and "audience labor" have emerged in academic circles.
The academic definition of digital labor is appropriate for understanding its basic digital characteristics and the phenomenon of consumers providing useful data to digital capital. For instance, Nie Yang believes that digital labor is labor containing the special production material of "digitality," supported by the Internet, with Internet users as the subjects of labor and digital technological achievements as the products. Wu Huan and Lu Lige argue that digital labor realizes the sharing and consumption of data and information; based on intangible factor inputs in the form of human intelligence, it creates a series of data including text, images, video, and audio. These isolated, fragmentary data, once processed through technical means, achieve the leap from "data to information to knowledge," forming the final state of knowledge. Although Marx lived during the rapid development of the Western Industrial Revolution—a time very different from today's digital age—and his works do not directly discuss the concept of "digital labor," his thoughts and principles provide a profound theoretical perspective for interpreting problems in the digital economy. In fact, the digital economy and the commodity economy exhibit consistency at the core level of the relations of production. Even against the backdrop of the digital era, capitalist relations of production have not transcended the categories defined by Marx's labor theory of value. Therefore, Marx's theory of productive labor not only continues to play an important guiding role in the field of material production but is equally applicable to the analysis of the current non-material production field.
(ii) Limitations of existing academic definitions of digital labor
Although scholars have defined digital labor starting from its basic digital characteristics and the manifestations of materialization and intangibility in the labor process—emphasizing the importance of data in the digital age while revealing capital's dual exploitation of workers' emotions and time—this level of abstraction is still far from sufficient. For example, from the perspective of labor results and processes, Dallas Smythe argued that media companies package audience attention and loyalty to sell to advertisers; audiences are forced to watch advertisements during leisure time, providing unpaid audience labor for advertisers. This only notices the importance of data in the digital age but fails to analyze the process of value creation for digital commodities in digital capitalism, nor does it clarify the boundary between "labor" and "activity," making it easy to fall into misconceptions such as "being online is labor" or "all labor is digital labor." From the perspective of the production process, Marx's concepts of "productive labor" and "non-productive labor" are far more capable of revealing the full picture of the value production process of capitalist digital commodities than the distinction between "material labor" and "immaterial labor."
Thus, even if "digital labor" has high generalizability, it cannot be equated with the basic concept of labor. The essence of digital labor is labor, and its definition should focus more on the aspect of "labor" itself. Domestic scholars have used relevant Marxist theories to deeply analyze the connotation of digital labor. For example, Meng Fei and Cheng Rong conducted a political-economic analysis of digital labor itself, arguing that it essentially possesses material attributes and a labor nature. Although these interpretations are valuable for revealing the essence and basic attributes of digital labor, existing research rarely distinguishes between its specific manifestations—that is, which activities belong to digital labor and which do not. In particular, there is a lack of direct discussion regarding the controversial issue of unpaid Internet labor. This method of classification, which weakens the distinction between "labor" and "activity," is sufficient for describing features like the digitization of labor tools, the diversification of labor forms, and the flexibility of labor processes. However, to truly clarify the prerequisites for data becoming a source of use-value and to understand the causes of the alienation of user consumption activities, one must start from Marx's basic theory of productive labor to reveal the essence of production under digital capitalism.
(iii) Labor in general and the particularity of digital labor
Before defining the concept of digital labor, one must first understand the difference between "labor in general" and the "particularity of digital labor." To do this, one can only look to Marx's most fundamental theories of productive labor.
In Marx's analysis, labor is regarded as "purposeful productive activity... for the purpose of adapting specific natural substances to specific human needs... [it is] a condition of human existence which is independent of all social forms and an eternal natural necessity for the realization of the metabolism between man and nature, that is, for human life." It is evident that labor is an activity, and a specific type of human activity; it embodies the relationship between man and nature and serves as the foundation for the formation of human social relations. Furthermore, labor possesses three prominent attributes: first, objectivity (object-orientedness). Labor is not for its own sake but is a purposeful and planned transformation of natural objects to adapt them to human needs. In other words, the labor process already exists in the worker's conception before it begins. Second, productivity. Labor is first and foremost a productive activity, an activity through which humans can create new value or use-value. Third, the nature of work. Labor is a basic component of human social life; it is not an isolated individual act but a human behavioral activity established within certain social relations. Marx pointed out that labor has a dual character: "On the one hand all labor is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labor power, and in its character of identical abstract human labor, it creates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labor is the expenditure of human labor power in a special form and with a definite aim, and in this, its character of concrete useful labor, it produces use-values." This means that labor, as a type of work and a means of subsistence, inevitably brings a sense of "toil" and "expenditure"; otherwise, it can only be called an activity. These constitute the basic standards for distinguishing between the concepts of "labor" and "activity."
The three elements of the productive forces are indispensable parts of the labor process: the laborer, the instruments of labor, and the subjects of labor; together, they constitute the complete system of labor. In the digital age, these three basic elements exhibit particularity through the process of digital labor. Regarding the subject of labor, laborers show diverse characteristics. In the field of Internet platforms, besides the operators and maintainers of the platforms, this includes Internet users who seemingly "produce" certain information products. Simultaneously, the development of digital technology has given rise to many emerging industries, such as food delivery couriers, Internet marketers, and ride-hailing drivers. These occupations are usually characterized by high flexibility, relatively low barriers to entry, and diverse forms of work; thus, such workers are also called "digital gig workers." Regarding the instruments and subjects of labor, data exhibits particularity in the digital age: it can serve both as an instrument of labor—combining with other instruments to participate in production—and as a subject of labor, which, through corporate processing and integration, is put into the market as a product.
Thus, by examining labor in general and the specificity of digital labor, we can further clear the mist surrounding the online activities of internet users. In fact, the two stages currently demarcated by academia within the production process of digital capitalism can serve as a standard to concretely distinguish the online activities of internet users: the "unpaid" stage and the "paid" stage. The online activities of internet users are complex and diverse, but two types are relatively common. First are the various entertainment and leisure activities of ordinary users on the internet; the "prosumption" [2] and "playbor" [3] we are familiar with can be classified under this category. Second are the activities of professional content creators, freelancers, and others who use various forms such as text, video, and audio on the internet to attract audiences and build brands, thereby obtaining income; these activities can be classified under the category of traditional digital labor in a broad sense. Obviously, the latter, along with gig service labor in traditional digital labor, belongs to the "paid" stage of "digital activity," exhibiting the characteristics of wage labor or flexible employment. These digital activities display the characteristics of labor in general and therefore belong to the category of labor. In contrast, the former resides in the "unpaid" stage of digital capitalist production; here it is more of an entertainment activity without a productive aim, belonging neither to labor nor to productive labor. First, although the various entertainment and leisure activities of ordinary users on the internet generate large amounts of data, they are primarily based on personal interests, needs, or social motivations, rather than for the purpose of producing data for exchange. Second, the data created by digital activities in the "unpaid" stage lacks value and use-value before it is filtered, organized, and processed by enterprises; from this perspective, it does not conform to the productive attributes of labor. Finally, such activities are largely for the purpose of recreation and entertainment, lacking a sense of "toil" or "exertion," and thus do not possess the character of "work." From this, it can be seen that whether the online activities of internet users belong to digital labor must be judged based on the specific context of the behavior. Generally speaking, simple browsing and entertainment do not fall within the scope of digital labor, while the behaviors of professional content creators and freelancers—such as publishing information and creating content—possess a certain subjective purposiveness, productivity, and value-creativity, and can thus be classified as a form of digital labor.
In summary, guided by Marx's basic theory of productive labor, and on the basis of clarifying labor in general and the specificity of digital labor while integrating previous research, digital labor can be defined as follows: digital labor is a purposeful human activity that relies on digital technology and equipment (or uses digital technology and equipment as core tools of production) to process and transform labor objects such as data and information, thereby creating digital wealth. Specifically, this includes professional and vocational technical labor such as software development and website design, as well as gig service labor such as ride-hailing drivers and food delivery workers.
II. The Operation of Digital Capital: Analyzing the Deep Logic Behind Digital Labor
The above definition of the concept of digital labor clarifies the boundary between "labor" and "activity" and summarizes the concrete manifestations of digital labor. It is further necessary to reveal its deep essence and the operational logic behind it. Currently, "digitality" and "platforms" constitute the fulcrum of digital capitalism; digital productive forces have induced new forms of exploitation and alienation in digital labor relations, and the labor process is precisely the production process of material goods. To this end, it is necessary to start from the perspective of the platform production process, integrate the elements of data, labor, and capital that construct digital capitalist production and their mutual relations, and deeply analyze the capital operation process behind digital labor. By revealing its internal logic, the analysis of digital labor can rise from perceptual cognition to the level of rational scrutiny and critique.
(1) The Preset Foundation: The "Marriage" of Digital Technology and Capital Forms Digital Platforms and Digital Algorithms
Digital labor under digital capitalism depends on digital capitalist production; to a certain extent, the two reflect the relations of production of the digital capitalist social formation. An important prerequisite for the conduct of digital capitalist production is the existence of digital capital; otherwise, digital capitalist production loses its subject of analysis. Furthermore, the legitimacy of digital capital’s dominance over production would be shaken or destroyed. To escape periodic economic crises and prolong its own lifespan, capitalism undergoes continuous self-repair and improvement. Currently, digital technology is developing rapidly and entering the brand-new Web 3.0 era; information such as audio and images on internet platforms can be represented through binary digital coding, thereby providing the technical foundation for "enhanced" big data platforms. Consequently, digital technology and capital have swiftly "married," forming digital platforms and digital algorithms.
The construction process of digital platforms and digital algorithms is a complex manifestation of the interaction between technical evolution and capitalist relations of production. It is not only the direct result of technical innovation but also a modern extension of the capitalist mode of production. The construction process of digital platforms first originates from capital’s thorough exploration of the platform's target market, user needs, and functional positioning, which lays the foundation for technical implementation and architectural design. Subsequently, in the stages of technology selection and architectural design, key elements such as hardware infrastructure, software systems, network architecture, and data management are comprehensively considered. Under the premise of ensuring hardware reliability, software scalability, network performance and security, and data management efficiency, the technical foundation of the digital platform is built. In the platform construction and deployment stage, the deployment of distributed computing clusters and the integration of big data ecosystem components mark the materialization of technical implementation. The implementation of the entire process in the development and testing stages, along with the continuous iteration of performance, ensures system stability and algorithmic precision. Finally, the deployment and application of digital platforms complete the transition from technical conception to social practice on the basis of ensuring compliance within legal and market frameworks. The generation of digital algorithms first involves deep research, improvement, or innovation of existing algorithms, while fully considering algorithmic efficiency, accuracy, and scalability. Mathematical modeling serves as a key step—especially in the fields of signal processing and data analysis—describing problems precisely through mathematical tools and theories to provide a solid theoretical foundation for the production of algorithms. Subsequently, designs are transformed into specific code, choosing appropriate programming languages and development environments for coding, debugging, and testing. Then, through a series of operations such as adjusting parameters, improving data structures, and optimizing code, the operational efficiency and accuracy of the algorithm are enhanced, promoting its realization. Finally, algorithms that have undergone rigorous testing and verification are deployed into practical applications and adjusted and optimized according to data and environmental conditions. The entire process is iterative and dynamic, requiring multiple cycles of the above steps until the algorithm achieves the expected performance and effect. It must be emphasized that these processes are completed on the basis of capital employing large numbers of professional technical personnel at various stages, yet the core technology remains the property of capital.
At its root, the "marriage" of digital technology and capital stems from the profit-seeking nature of capital. Marx pointed out, "Capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value." From this perspective, capitalism completed the primitive accumulation of capital through violent plunder, and its developmental process is filled with exploitation, oppression, and inequality. In terms of the ownership of the means of production, capitalists possess key means of production such as data and digital platforms. Through the "marriage" of digital technology and capital, they create digital algorithms, achieving the connection between humans and things across the entire process and industrial chain of digital capitalist production. They firmly control and dominate the operation of the modern capitalist system, making data algorithms an important force in structuring the capitalist order. It is worth mentioning that although digital capitalism can, to a certain extent, improve production efficiency, boost consumer demand, and promote technological progress, as long as the profit-seeking nature of capital remains and the internal contradictions of capitalist society persist, economic crises will be inevitable.
(2) Upgrading and Leapfrogging: Digital Capital Covertly Completes Capital Valorization Through "Living Labor"
The digital footprints generated by the online activities of internet users are captured by social media platforms to form data commodities, helping them complete the process of capital valorization. This seemingly suggests that the unpaid "labor" provided by users creates the value of data commodities, thereby being exploited by capital. In reality, the production process of digital platforms obscures the process by which the living labor of employed technical workers creates value. To be sure, data generated by the online activities of internet users does indeed drive platforms to obtain high profits. However, the crux of the issue lies not in exploring the phenomenon of data being generated during the user's online process, but rather in tracing the source of data value—specifically, tracing the source of data value in the capital valorization of digital platforms. In the production process of digital platforms, capitalists use original money capital $G_1$ to establish a digital platform $W$. At this point, the digital platform realizes value addition through two paths: first, by realizing its own commodity value $G_1'$ through methods such as charging advertisers. This part of the value comes, on the one hand, from the transfer of the value of the means of production, and on the other hand, from the value created by the wage laborers who design, produce, and maintain the platform—namely, the surplus value part. Second, it continues into the next stage of production in the form of consumer goods; the vast number of internet users, acting as consumers $S$, automatically generate data information $T$ during "digital activities." It must be emphasized that such irregular data information cannot directly enter the next stage of the digital platform's production process. Only when combined with the living labor of employed technical workers—that is, through operations such as organization, analysis, and processing by employed technical workers—can regular data information $T_1$ be formed. At this point, data information $T_1$ realizes value $G_{11}$ as a data commodity on one hand, and on the other hand, combines with new money capital $G_{22}$ invested by the capitalist to establish a higher-level digital platform $W'$ with higher operational efficiency and a better user experience. The higher-level digital platform $W'$ again realizes value through two paths: first, realizing its own commodity value $G_2'$ through methods such as charging advertisers; second, continuing into the next stage of the production process in the form of consumer goods... through such a repeating cycle, capital continuously completes its valorization. The production process hidden behind the platform connects advertisers with the vast groups of online users in real life, opening up new spaces for capital valorization and a new logic for capital accumulation. Clearly, under digital capitalism, the living labor of employed technical workers remains the source of capital valorization for digital platforms.
The main production process of digital platforms described above is especially applicable to social media platforms. Another type of logistics platform involving gig labor basically follows this logic in its production process as well, but its profits mainly come from the commissions taken from gig workers, which can be categorized into $G_1', G_2', G_3'...$ At this time, the production process of the platform is transformed into a gig labor process outside the platform, and the platform utilizes gig labor to complete capital valorization. When the commission exceeds normal service fees, it possesses, in a sense, the characteristics of monopoly profit. This is another source of capital valorization besides the value created by living labor. By continuously increasing investment in technical research and development, digital platforms form competitive advantages, thereby occupying a monopoly position in the market. To maximize high profits, digital platforms do not even hesitate to use tactics such as "choose one of the two" [4] or "big data-enabled price discrimination against existing customers" [5] to further deepen capital exploitation. It can be seen that while such monopolies increase user stickiness, they also bring the risk of damaging user rights and interests.
Figure 1: The Basic Operational Process of Digital Platform Capital
(3) Empowerment and Consolidation: Digital Control Solidifies the Power Base of Digital Capital
With the development of digital capitalism, the power of digital capital is continuously consolidated, further domesticating digital labor, expropriating more labor time, and increasing the difficulty of organized resistance by laborers, making them completely reduced to tools for capital valorization. During the second industrial revolution, enterprises achieved standardized and systematic management through standardized assembly line production and vertical integration strategies, gradually establishing the Fordist labor process. At this time, the capitalist's control and exploitation of wage laborers were mainly reflected in harsh working conditions, unfair compensation, and excessively long labor hours. Faced with the fact that "capital's unbounded drive after self-valorization necessarily extends the working day to an unnatural length, thereby shortening the life of the worker," laborers engaged in collective resistance. However, the internal logic of capital accumulation still drives capitalists to continuously explore and adopt new technologies or management strategies to achieve more covert and efficient control over the labor force, consolidating and enhancing their dominant position in the production process.
Today, as a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation develops in depth, and technologies such as high-efficiency logistics and information and communication advance rapidly, the traditional model of capitalists supervising and controlling laborers has gradually been replaced by an invisible mode of digital management and control. Although this shift in model appears mild, or even carries a slight hue of liberal humanism, it has not changed the fact that laborers are absolutely controlled by digital capital. Utilizing algorithmic technology, digital capital can collect labor data in an all-encompassing manner, intelligently analyze labor indicators from multiple angles, and implement real-time monitoring and feedback across the entire labor process. This allows for personalized rewards and punishments for laborers, further strengthening exploitation and the extraction of surplus value. The intervention of algorithmic control technology into the supervisory process has broken the restriction that supervisors and laborers must be gathered in the same physical space; it has achieved dual-spatial control over both the physical and virtual behaviors of digital laborers. Simultaneously, digitalized supervision and control are gradually phasing out the traditional human-centered bureaucratic management mechanism, moving it toward a flattened structure. The result is the further optimization of the production process, enhanced production efficiency, the consolidation of the power base of digital capital, and the expansion of the space for capital to continually acquire high profits.
III. The Three-Dimensional Alienation of Digital Laborers and the Subsequent Alienation of Human Subjectivity
The emergence of digital labor has caused human subjectivity to be transformed into quantifiable and tradable data, subjected to the monitoring, management, and control of algorithms, whereby it gradually loses its inherent creativity and autonomy. Digital labor dominated by the logic of capital inflicts a pain of alienation upon humans at both the temporal and spiritual levels that is difficult to alleviate; under the joint action of capital, digital technology, and digital labor, human subjectivity is constantly distorted and alienated. Through digital labor, capital not only deprives people of the fruits of their labor but also invisibly weakens their subjective consciousness and capacity for self-actualization. This alienation is manifested not only in the process of digital labor but also profoundly affects relations between people, leading to the gradual dissolution of human subjectivity amidst the digital tide.
(1) Manifestations of the alienation of the digital laborer's subjectivity
First, the digital "de-skilling" control of digital labor leads to the loss of the laborer’s subjective value. Although the vigorous development of digital technology has enabled digital labor to break through the limits of time and space with the support of technology—exhibiting characteristics such as flexibility and autonomy—and although digital capital has replaced the enslaving methods of the period of large-scale industrial production (which "tortured the flesh and ravaged the spirit" [6] of the laborer) with a "gentle-fire" [7] style of digital management, a look beyond the surface reveals that the phenomenon of "de-skilling" has become increasingly prominent in the evolution of digital technology. This trend not only deconstructs the skill requirements of traditional occupations but also strengthens the dominant position of technology as a factor of production. With the penetration of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the technical threshold for certain occupations has lowered, rendering the role of the laborer's living labor increasingly opaque while the importance of technology is elevated. As Harry Braverman pointed out: "The more science is incorporated into the labor process, the less the worker understands of the process; the more complex the machine becomes as a product of intelligence, the less the worker can control and understand the machine." When performing labor tasks, digital laborers no longer need to rely on deep work experience or specific professional skills; the popularization of intelligent technologies such as smart navigation and automated order-receiving has greatly reduced the social demand for the traditional skills of laborers. For example, in the ride-hailing industry, with the support of advanced navigation and dispatch systems, drivers can efficiently complete pickup and drop-off tasks without having a comprehensive grasp of city road conditions or passenger flow. Similarly, the low barrier to entry means delivery riders do not need to master complex route information; they only need to deliver goods according to the route planned by the platform application. In this process, the time the laborer actually uses for independent calculation, thought, and analysis is infinitely compressed. While digital capital strengthens its control over digital labor, it also weakens part of the laborer’s subjective initiative. At this point, the laborer is no longer a vital force capable of fully exerting subjective initiative, but has gradually degenerated into an appendage of capital, resulting in the loss of their subjective value.
Second, the digital algorithmic veiling of digital labor leads to the reification of labor relations. In a reified world, "the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labor within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising therefrom. It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things." Marx called this phenomenon "fetishism." The arrival of the digital age has exposed the entire labor process to the control of digital algorithms. Meanwhile, the collection and analysis process of the laborer’s behavioral data often involves proprietary technology that is not disclosed to the public, thus further highlighting the mysterious nature of digital algorithms. Simultaneously, due to the complexity of algorithms, most laborers lack the necessary professional skills to understand how algorithms manipulate and analyze their data, making it difficult to decipher the results of algorithmic control. To a certain extent, the emergence of digital algorithms has satisfied people’s pursuit of flexible and efficient ways of working; people’s dependence on algorithms and machines has strengthened, forming a kind of blind worship of digital terminals—namely, digital fetishism. This worship appears to be a worship of technology, but it is in fact a worship of the group of capitalists who control these technologies. This reified relationship leads to social relations between people being ignored, while relations between things are overemphasized. In this relationship, the value and subjectivity of the laborer are marginalized, the value of algorithms and data is over-magnified, and the "virtual self" comes to "dominate" the "true self." In fact, the logic of capital appreciation has not undergone a fundamental change; digital labor is essentially a tool for capital to reconfigure and expand amidst the digital tide, reflecting a "new stage" of the capitalist mode of production. Its core driving force remains the comprehensive control and domination of human living labor by capital, only this relationship of exploitation and oppression has become more concealed and dispersed under the guise of digitalization.
Furthermore, this digital algorithmic veiling not only leads to the replacement of laborers whose production efficiency is lower than that of intelligent machinery but also greatly increases the workload of those in positions not yet replaced by machines. For example, laborers are required to wear monitoring devices that can record their movements and locations in the labor process in real-time, intelligently analyzing their work pace and degree of leisure from multiple angles. This close monitoring by intelligent machinery invisibly increases the work intensity and volume of the laborer. In the eyes of capital, the laborer is seen as a labor-power commodity used to earn profit, whose value must be extracted to the maximum; in the eyes of the laborer, the capital owner is seen as an inhuman "financial backer." The exchange between the two parties unfolds based on commodities and money, reflecting an unequal interest relationship and further leading to the laborer’s disadvantaged position in labor relations, characterized by a lack of autonomy and voice—resulting in the reification of labor relations.
(2) Manifestations of the alienation of human subjectivity
Within capitalist relations of production, digital labor presents a unique developmental trend and undergoes the phenomenon of alienation, of which the alienation of the laborer is a key manifestation. However, the laborer is not only the subject of digital labor but also possesses the identity attributes of a human being as an individual. Given this, this alienation of subjectivity at the labor level by no means exists in isolation; rather, it spreads like a ripple, further triggering the alienation of the subjectivity of "man as the ensemble of social relations" within the context of digital existence.
First is the inversion of the relationship between subject and object. Digital algorithms produced during the process of digital labor should have served humanity, yet they have gradually become tools used by capital to control and dominate people. Capital utilizes digital algorithms to penetrate human daily life intensively to construct "digital prisons" and "digital spectacles" [8] to maximize profit. In the "digital prison," everyone faces the panoptic domination of digital capital at various levels, such as the spiritual and psychological. For example, when shopping online, every act of consumption is equivalent to providing raw data for the platform to analyze individual consumer behavior and preferences. Through digital algorithms, capital precision-predicts the user’s next consumer behavior and constructs a "digital spectacle" that conforms to the user’s will and preferences, stimulating the consumer's vision and thereby further strengthening their desire and consumer psychology, enticing them to purchase. Thus, in consumption activities where they seem free and happy to select goods or services that meet their needs, users gradually weaken their capacity for self-choice; they not only serve as providers of raw data but also as "instrumental beings" dominated by digital algorithms. In the age of digital algorithms, humanity still faces the risk of "reducing oneself to a weakling and being ruled by machines." [9]
Second is the estrangement of relations between subjects. On one hand, if an individual remains for a long time within a specific information environment filtered by digital technology, their ability to accept new things will gradually weaken, leading them into the predicament of the "information cocoon." With the help of digital algorithms, capital deeply parses user data and pushes information content matching their preferences with extremely high precision, causing users to frequently encounter an information flow that is highly homogenized and tailored to their likes. In this context, information interaction between the user and their internal community becomes increasingly efficient and convenient, yet it is difficult for different communities to use information technology to break down barriers and achieve open communication, thereby further deepening the gap between communities and breeding a deeper sense of loneliness. On the other hand, digital technology uses its powerful architectural capabilities to build virtual spaces, employing precise quantitative means to express people and society—originally rooted in real soil and full of the texture of life—through the linguistic symbols of "0" and "1." Its rigorous quantitative laws require that all behavioral activities in the real world undergo a process of digital encoding, which is equivalent to a subversive deconstruction of traditional real space, forcibly dragging people into an unfamiliar and uncertain digital environment. During this process, individuals fall into a dilemma of choice: from the perspective of subjective will, individuals harbor a deep attachment to the profound emotional exchange and real interpersonal interaction contained in traditional social interaction, attempting to adhere to original social models and possessing an instinctive resistance toward the trend of digital socialization. However, facing the surging digital tide, individuals fear they may be phased out by the era for failing to adapt in time, thus hesitating on the question of whether to actively transform themselves to fit the survival logic of digital space. The new environment created by the digital tide exerts a form of soft violence, severing the deep ties between individuals and their familiar environments in a subtle yet irresistible way. Many freelancers engaged in digital labor, to precisely adapt to the frequently changing rules and complex algorithmic logic of digital platforms, must continuously submerge themselves in digital space for long periods, inevitably resulting in a drastic reduction in the frequency of real interactions with friends and family, leading to the estrangement of relations between subjects. When facing the expansion of digital interfaces and platforms, every living individual faces a situation similar to that of a tick lurking in a laboratory—that is, on the digital interface, they allow their life to become "bare life." [10] This phenomenon not only brings negative psychological troubles such as loneliness and anxiety but also deals a heavy blow to many key areas such as the construction of overall social cohesion and the stability of the system of cultural inheritance. Therefore, how to reshape close, warm, and vibrant intersubjective relations under the background of a flourishing digital economy has already become an important task in urgent need of resolution.
IV. Conclusion
Digital labor, as a new form in the development of modern social productive forces, marks a profound transformation of human society in the digital age. Under digital capitalism, digital labor is essentially a realization of capital exploitation; the deep logic behind it is the production logic of digital capitalism itself. Cloaked by digital technology, digital capital conceals its exploitation of living labor and obscures the true source of its high profits, while simultaneously precipitating the alienation [11] of subjectivity. The unpaid "digital activities" of internet users are more a form of consumption behavior aimed at satisfying physiological and psychological needs rather than a productive act; the data generated by such behavior can only form a value carrier—that is, a data product—when combined with hired "living labor." Furthermore, such behavior does not constitute the cause of user consumption alienation; rather, the underlying logic of capital is the true cause of alienation for even more laborers. Within the framework of the logic of capital, people become increasingly trapped within the digital labor process and gradually descend into becoming production tools for capital, as their individuality and creativity are suppressed by standardized and homogenized algorithms. Under the triple oppression of capital, technology, and labor, workers are increasingly marginalized and instrumentalized, losing their inherent richness and diversity. The vitality released by digital labor will ultimately suffer a backlash from the relations of production of digital capitalism, fueled by the "marriage" and "collusion" between digital technology and capital. In the process of achieving labor justice, humanity must disenchant digital "fetishism" [12] and recognize that only human beings are the subjects of labor; we must proceed from the human being itself and from the relations between people to restore the subjective status of humans over labor. The critical investigation of digital labor under digital capitalism is not intended to exhort people to abandon digital civilization, but rather to discard the malaises of digital capitalism, alleviate the social "birth pangs" [13] inherent in its delivery, and construct digital socialism, thereby realizing the beautiful vision of a harmonious symbiosis between humanity and digital technology.
China is a socialist country. On one hand, we must accelerate the formation of new quality productive forces, comprehensively construct new relations of production adapted to them, and strengthen labor inspection and supervision of digital enterprises to ensure that the legitimate rights and interests of digital laborers—such as data engineers and digital gig workers—are fully protected. On the other hand, we must increase the intensity of anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition law enforcement to adapt to the new competitive landscape of the digital era, ensuring the rational flow of capital and fair market competition. The Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Advancing Chinese-path Modernization, adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, proposed to "accelerate the establishment of mechanisms for promoting the development of the digital economy, and improve policy systems for promoting digital industrialization and industrial digitization." We must thoroughly implement the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, build a high-level socialist market economy system, and give full play to the institutional advantages of socialism with Chinese characteristics. By adhering to the direction of socialism with Chinese characteristics, we can provide Chinese experience and Chinese wisdom for creating a new form of human civilization. "Facts have repeatedly told us that Marx and Engels' analysis of the basic contradictions of capitalist society is not outdated, nor is the historical materialist view that capitalism's demise is inevitable and socialism's victory is inevitable." History will eventually break through the encirclement of digital capitalism, allowing digital concepts to benefit the world and truly realizing the ultimate goal of human social development.
(The authors' affiliations are Northwest University and the Journal Office of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Academy of Social Sciences, respectively.) Source: Economic Review (Jingji Zongheng), No. 4, 2025. Web Editor: Paul