关键词: 数字经济, 虚拟偶像, 资本逻辑, 剩余价值

Abstract: Replacing real idols with virtual ones has become an important way for the capitalist idol industry to reduce risks and produce virtual space. As a result, the virtual idol industry is dominated and controlled by the capital logic and has become a new venue for the capital to solve the two main problems of excessive accumulation and overproduction. In order to produce more surplus value, the capitalist class continues to expand the scope of exploitation and increase the degree of exploitation. From the free labor of fans to the paid labor of hired workers, they are all included in the capitalist valueadded system, thereby maximizing the production of surplus value. At the same time, in order to achieve the maximization, the capitalist class applies consumerism to the virtual idol industry, symbolizing virtual idols, implementing symbolic consumerism, and constructing illusory meanings by using modern communication means such as digital platforms, so that the consumption motivation goes beyond the use value while turns to the symbolic value. According to Marxs research method of “from concrete to abstract and then from abstract to concrete”, this paper explores the capital logic of surplus value production and realization abstracted from the production and consumption of goods and services in the virtual idol industry, as well as the inevitability of digital labor exploitation and symbolic consumerism, and finally returns to the specific practice of the development of the virtual idol industry in China.

Key words: digital economy, virtual idol, capital logic, surplus value