词元经济中知识型零工的劳动过程:控制机制、权益困境与保障路径OACHSSCD

Since the first proposal of"creating a new form of intelligent economy"in the 2026 Government Work Report,a token economy—predicated on the token as its fundamental unit of measurement—is rapidly taking shape,profoundly restructuring the labor contexts and value distribution paradigms of knowledge-based gig workers in fields such as literary creation,code development,and advertising design.These workers have transitioned from independent individual creation to a new production model characterized by human-AI collaboration and token-based metering,yet the value of their labor is being systematically repriced and extracted under algorithmic billing regimes.Existing scholarship has predominantly focused on the rights protection and platform governance of manual gig workers,while lacking systematic theoretical attention to the internal logic of the labor process and income distribution mechanisms of knowledge-based gig workers.Grounded in the Marxist labor process theory,this study constructs a dual analytical framework encompassing technical control and bureaucratic control to systematically examine how capital exercises control over the labor process of knowledge-based gig workers within the token economy,its multidimensional impacts on labor rights,and the corresponding regulatory pathways.The study reveals that,along the dimension of technical control,capital exercises rigid domination through three interrelated mechanisms.First,by monopolizing the design authority over tokenization algorithms,capital constructs the token as a highly artificial and opaque unit of measurement,depriving labor pricing of any objective foundation and engendering inherent linguistic efficiency discrimination.Second,through hidden consumption mechanisms—including multi-turn conversational history accumulation,covert pre-deduction via system prompts,and invisible internal chain-of-thought reasoning—compounded by asymmetric pricing between input and output tokens,capital erects a floating consumption structure that is imperceptible and unverifiable to workers,thereby achieving technicized systematic extraction of labor income.Third,by enclosing the backend computation and verification pathways of token consumption behind technical complexity and proprietary protection,capital constructs an informational black box that dissolves the epistemological preconditions for workers to mount collective resistance.Along the dimension of bureaucratic control,capital achieves deep-seated domination through flexible discipline.Algorithmic ranking and order allocation rules forcibly bind AI tool proficiency tiers and token investment levels into a survival threshold for market competition.Elaborately calibrated incentive structures generate lock-in effects of escalating investment with diminishing returns once workers have incurred sunk costs.Through the unilateral determination of token unit prices,consumption rules,and platform commission rates,creative premiums and professional value are excluded from the pricing architecture,enabling value to be systematically transferred via two successive rounds of appropriation at the technology and platform ends.The interweaving of this dual control subjects the labor rights of knowledge-based gig workers to multiple forms of erosion.Their earnings confront a triple predicament:nominal income is constrained by token unit prices,actual returns are eroded by tool costs,and disposable income is compressed by platform commissions—while the quality and creative value of their labor are systematically undervalued.Token standardization and algorithmic discipline drive the deskilling of professional expertise and the entrenchment of technological dependence.The loss of labor autonomy and the deepening of voluntary alienation exacerbate psychological and moral harm.A coercively competitive landscape intensifies internal stratification and undermines the capacity for collective action.To address these issues,this study proposes a systematic strategy encompassing the improvement of institutional supply,the regulation of algorithmic power,the promotion of collaborative governance,and the strengthening of worker empowerment,thereby providing both a theoretical foundation and practical pathways for safeguarding the labor rights of knowledge-based gig workers and fostering the healthy development of new forms of employment in the token economy.