Abstract:With the rapid development and wide application of digital technology, data has gradually become the core element of social production. Data has become a commodity pushed by capital under the capitalist mode of production. The labor for producing data commodities includes employment digital labor and non-employment digital labor. Employment digital labor produces production and operation data mainly within the employment system, while non-employment digital labor produces personal data, intermediate data and public data outside the employment system. Capitalists can possess the fruits of these two kinds of labor and their surplus value at the same time. In order to greatly expand the source of surplus value, capital forces invade from the field of production to the realm of life by technological bias, transforming a large number of digital activities into non-employment digital labor, and the workers engaged in non-employment digital labor are abstracted into a series of data and then become “digital individuals”. The “digital individual” breaks through the limitations of traditional capitalist production methods in terms of labor time, labor population, and labor space, but it does not have the ownership of key digital production materials, thus becoming the object of exploitation by capitalists. However, the cost paid by capital for the reproduction of “digital individuals” has been greatly reduced, and labor’s dependence on capital has further increased. It can be seen that digital capitalism has not changed the essence of capitalist relations of production, but has expanded the scope of exploitation, increased the intensity of exploitation, and enhanced the concealment of exploitation. Therefore, in the process of actively developing the digital economy, China should not allow private capital, especially foreign capital, to control and monopolize digital platforms, and should take better advantage of the role of government in promoting common prosperity.