The new issue of "Cultural Perspective" was released in October 2022
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Pay attention to the emerging issues raised by the emerging middle class
Notes on the new issue of the October 2022 issue (No. 5) of "Culture Perspective".
▍Why discuss the middle class today
The issue of the middle class has been hot for a while in Chinese academic circles and public opinion. As a core concept of a society in transition, the middle class is seen as the foundation of social stability for China's Western-style constitutional system, and is also regarded as the mainstream class of modern society. If the middle class dominates a society, it means that the society is healthy; For a society in transition to complete the construction of democratic politics, the predominance of the middle class will ensure its stability.
But since the 2008 global financial crisis, socio-political currents around the world seem to have presented the opposite. Whether it's the "Jasmine Revolution" of the Arab Spring, or the vicious fight of Thailand's Yellow Shirts vs. Red Shirts; Whether it's the France of the noisy Yellow Vest movement or the Trump fans who United States storming Capitol Hill...... It shows that the middle class is the main source of strength for these social movements, although their demands always end in failure. But it is clear that the middle class does not provide a guarantee of stability for the capitalist order during periods of intense upheaval and disorder in the liberal capitalist international order.
What's the problem? The previous theoretical narratives that defined and described the political and social status of the middle class have seriously deviated from the reality of the middle class in the face of global changes.
The method of class analysis has always been a powerful tool for Marxism to dissect the social structure, and thus laid a solid social foundation for the party of the working class. However, after World War II, capitalism entered a golden period of development, social contradictions were greatly eased, coupled with the challenge and pressure of the socialist camp, the capitalist welfare state policy and a series of efforts to average social wealth, all of which reduced social polarization and increased the proportion of the middle class. This economic and social reality has led to the marginalization of the class analysis method, which has been replaced by the concept of "middle class" in modernization theory, and has been extended to the social and political field to explain the general laws of modernization development.
However, the series of evolutions after the global financial crisis in 2008 proved that when liberal capitalism entered a downward phase and the capitalist order was chaotic, the upward channel of the middle class narrowed, and the middle class on a global scale fell into a general anxiety and panic, and their social stability was greatly reduced, so that the concept of the middle class and the series of modern development theories derived from it began to lose their explanatory power.
▍How to understand the middle class in contemporary China
The middle class in contemporary China is a social class that is constantly derived from the development of the market economy. From the point of view of Marxist theory, it is not a primary class born out of the means of appropriation of the means of production, but a secondary class – once included in the sphere of the petty bourgeoisie. However, with the gradual development of industrialization on a global scale and the increasing complexity of the social division of labor, the overall size of the middle class in the social structure and the corresponding way of life are becoming increasingly important and need to be recognized. In a market economy, the key factors of production for industrialization are capital, land, and labor, while the middle class roughly controls the production links such as technology, management, and services, and their existence can greatly improve the production efficiency of capital, land, and labor. With the continuous upgrading of the industrial structure and the continuous increase of social wealth, the role of technology and management is becoming more and more important, and the proportion of the middle class in society is also increasing.
In the context of traditional socialism, the middle class does not constitute an independent social structure and political concept. For example, in socialist countries such as the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, professional and technical personnel, managers, and intellectuals are understood and defined as an important part of the socialist labor structure, and along with them there is also the problem of the so-called "workers' aristocracy" and "privileged class". In contemporary China, the implementation of the socialist market economy has brought about a completely new social structure and governance tasks. The composition of China's middle class is markedly different from that of capitalist countries. Due to the leadership of the Communist Party and the strong state-owned economy in China, China's middle class is clearly under the influence and interaction of institutional forces and market forces outside the system, and is constrained by the dominant forces of these two societies.
Generally speaking, the contemporary Chinese middle class is divided into three parts: first, civil servants, teachers, soldiers, management and technical personnel, etc., which are derived from the system; the second is the smaller owner class in the market; The third is the management personnel, technical personnel, lawyers, consultants, etc. outside the system. Among these three groups, the middle class outside the system accounts for the largest proportion and has the greatest social influence, and was once defined as a new social class.
Because of this characteristic, the problem of China's middle class is more complicated. On the one hand, a large part of the middle class is in the structure of the global division of labor, which not only faces global competition and global crises, but is also profoundly influenced by the ideology and way of life of global capitalism. On the other hand, the elements of traditional socialism and institutional resources still have a profound impact on the living conditions and perceptions of the middle class, especially in the context of the increasingly prominent global crisis, as evidenced by the "institutional fever" of the new generation of young people's employment orientation. In the past, the "dual system" of the market and the system was once regarded as "incomplete marketization" and therefore needed to be overcome. However, in the context of the survival crisis of the global middle class, how to better solve the problem of the survival and development of the middle class and explore a more ideal way of social construction and national governance has become an important proposition that we must face at present.
▍Common prosperity and the middle class
An important goal of Marxist theory and the socialist road is to explore how to share the dividends of social progress brought about by technological breakthroughs and the revolution of productive forces with a wider range of human social groups, and to form a positive cycle of progress in the productive forces and the progress of the mode of human social organization.
For the Communist Party of China, on the basis of achieving the phased goals of the poverty alleviation strategy, it will then create the world's largest "middle-income group" in the socialist way of "common prosperity". Expanding the "middle-income group" is in the form of raising the income level of the people, and in essence it means that China wants to obtain more mid-to-high-end jobs in international economic competition. This requires China to demonstrate its own production capacity and technological innovation capability in international competition, and it also means that China must explore a unique development path in the global capitalist system. This practice and exploration will inevitably face many difficulties, and it will also pose more, more complex, and higher-level challenges to the organizational form and leadership style of the Communist Party of China.
The path of socialism, whether it is targeted poverty alleviation or common prosperity, includes the pursuit of collective rights and collective freedom, which is an important difference between the logic of the market economy in pursuing the maximization of individual interests and the individual rights of the global middle class. Freedom, rights, and contracts are the values that the middle class generally believes in, but in the current global capitalist crisis, the middle class in different countries is trying to rely on their own political protection mechanisms to maintain their own status and interests, and its trend is inevitably to beggar-thy-neighbor conservative political movements. This is not conducive to the common development of the world. The socialist practice of common prosperity in China, with its firm advocacy of community interests and the search for a more united social structure, will inevitably require overcoming the shock of global conservatism and realizing a better governance of human society.
Therefore, the core of today's discussion of the middle class is to discuss the question of the socialist road to the 21st century. For this new historical task, China's ideological circles still need to carry out a great deal of original work.
The cover feature of the new issue of Culture Horizontal's October Listing is the middle class in the era of global crisis
— October 2022 New Issue Catalogue —
▍ Edit notes
Pay attention to the emerging issues raised by the emerging middle class
Editorial Department of "Cultural Perspective".
▍Extraterritorial
Friendly Shore Outsourcing: The Biden Administration's New Ideas for Industrial Diplomacy
Li Wei
▍Cover topic: The middle class in the era of global crisis
For a long time, the middle class was seen as a "stabilizer" of society. However, the global crisis of capitalism in the 21st century has caused the size of the middle class to shrink and show a strong state of instability.
The Great Transformation of Chinese Society's Middle Class: A Comparative Analysis of Class Structure in Chinese Mainland, Taiwan and Japan
Liu Xin
Part company with? -- The Chinese and American middle class in the era of de-globalization
Li
The Middle Class in the Epidemic: Shanghai Citizen Culture and Grassroots Governance
Xiong Yihan Wang Zhiheng
The New Middle Class and Chinese Socialism
Xiuyuan Foundation
▍ Focus
Will the hegemony still shift? - Rereading Arriki's The Long 20th Century
Qu Wanwen
Under the influence of the prevailing rhetoric of great power games, it seems that we can only accept the inevitability of the existence of hegemony. However, why does the world capitalist system have to have a hegemonic system that is "fixed in one"? Will there be a change in hegemony? What is the mechanism? What are the factors and mechanisms that determine the process and outcome? What does this have to do with the capitalist system?
▍Academic review
How I think about China's smallholder farmers
Huang Zongzhi
With the exception of the urbanized southeastern coastal and peri-urban villages, we must accept the fact that the given "smallholder economy" will inevitably continue in the long term, and look for a way out of this premise, rather than the big farms that resolutely pursue economies of scale.
From "the people" to "the people" - Maruyama Mao on the Three People's Principles
Sun Ge
▍Re-acquainted with the West
Collapse in the anthill: the primary product dilemma of the new industrial powers in wartime
Yan Peng
The blockade of Germany by United Kingdom became a key factor in the outcome of World War I. The key areas affected by the embargo are not advanced technology or military production, but the most basic primary products and the agricultural sector, which is dependent on food.
The "two-faced state": the entanglement of state planning in the history of United States
Chen Xi
Although the political, cultural and social sentiments of United States contain an extremely strong rejection of state planning, there has long been a long-term ideological motivation for pursuing planning that suits the characteristics of national conditions and corresponding planning experiments.
▍Policy
Future Starting Income: A Preliminary Study on New Redistribution Schemes in the Era of Common Prosperity
Zhai Dongsheng and others
▍ Overseas ethnography
A lawyer's career in the era of the Great Recession
Dai Xin
▍The development path of late-developing countries
The Belt and Road Initiative: The Convergence of Multiple Subjects
Yan Hairong et al
Studying the Belt and Road Initiative requires a two-way perspective, especially from the perspective of the participating countries. Participating countries embed the Belt and Road Initiative into their national development agendas to leverage their strengths and direct investment to areas of national interest. The Belt and Road Initiative is a complex network of multi-stakeholder activities, interactions, and interests.
Is African integration an opportunity for China?
Zheng Yu
Amid the growing tensions between the West and China, led by United States, the Russia-Ukraine conflict may cause China to turn more towards the Third World, including Africa. The establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is an important breakthrough in Africa's integration process, and also provides an opportunity for China to balance its global layout and hedge geopolitical risks.
This article is the notes of the new issue of the October 2022 issue (Issue 5) of "Culture Vertical", welcome to share personally, please contact this official account for media reprinting.
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