Want to "lie flat"? You're right - China is not Carthage

(Chinese netizens are quite creative in getting their point across.  The picture shows Xi Jinping on Chairman Mao's deathbed, and the Chinese characters read "Lying Flat-ism". Involution in this context means turning in on oneself.)

 May 24, 2021

Jinggangshan Weishi

 

(Translator’s preface:  This short piece looks at the phenomenon of “lying flat”, an attitudinal change on the part of mainly young workers in China who say they don’t want a house, don’t want to marry and have a family, don’t want consumer goods etc. It is their way of passively withdrawing from the capitalist rat-race that exploits them whilst also exhorting them to work hard and support the system. The author points to certain social similarities with Carthage, but also says that this won’t last.  China is not Carthage and is poised for a life and death struggle between the workers and their oppressors. The original author’s name, the Guardians of Jinggangshan, the mountainous region where Mao set up the first peasant soviet and created the Red Army.)

 Machiavelli, in his Discourses on Livy, mentions that ancient states can usually be divided into two categories.

 The first category includes Carthage, the Late Successor Kingdoms, and Sparta after the Peloponnesian War. These countries were characterised by great social inequality, an arrogant ruling class, and a working population that was submissive but not motivated to work or fight. Machiavelli argued that these countries usually stagnated and could only survive when there was little external pressure. From a Marxist point of view, the class struggle in these countries is at a stalemate, with the ruling class having no power to squeeze the working people into active work, and the working people having no power to overthrow the ruling class, with both sides in a state of passivity. This state of affairs, day after day, culminates in what Hegel called a state of "no history".

The second group is represented by the early Achaemenid dynasty of Persia and Rome before the failed reforms of the Gracchus brothers. These states were characterised by a degree of control over social inequality, a ruling class that was still simple and productive, and a working population that had a secure life and a chance to make a living, whether by farming, warfare or herding, and therefore had a high level of enthusiasm for production and fighting. The mobilising power of such states is often significantly greater than that of the former, but the class compromises of such states, especially those in favour of the working people, are unsustainable and must be met by constant expansion and plunder.

Today's Chinese "lie-flat philosophy" is representative of the ideology of the working people in the first category. The bosses pretend to be serious about paying wages and the workers pretend to be serious about their work. According to Machiavelli's theory, if there is no world war, China will inevitably enter a stalemate in the class struggle and a state of long-term stagnation. However, the capitalist world system today does not allow China to do so. To maintain capital accumulation, guarantee regime stability and fulfil the "function" of a semi-peripheral country to transfer surplus value to the outside world, China must continue to act as the world's factory, must continue to rely on cheap labour and sweatshop exploitation. The working people want to lie down, but the capitalists will not let us. There is no room for a long-term stalemate in the class conflict in China, and when it breaks out it will be a struggle to the death.