内卷与躺平：唯物史观视域下当代青年劳动心态剖析

Involution and Lying Flat: An Analysis of Contemporary Youth’s Labor Mentality from the Perspective of Historical Materialism

摘要: 近年来，“内卷”与“躺平”作为一组互为镜像的流行话语，以悖谬性的并置方式呈露出当代青年在劳动领域的深层生存困境。“内卷”表征着既定结构内竞争的白热化与意义的耗散，“躺平”则隐喻着对过度消耗的消极退却与象征性抗议。二者并非孤立的心理现象，而是同一结构性困境的两种反应方式。本文以唯物史观为理论框架，坚持社会存在决定社会意识的基本方法论原则，从生产力与生产关系的矛盾运动出发，揭示内卷与躺平心态生成的社会历史根源。研究表明，这一心态现象的深层本质是劳动异化在当代生产关系下的集中显现，是资本增殖逻辑与人的自由全面发展之间的根本矛盾在精神领域的折射。扬弃这一困境，不能诉诸道德说教或个体心理调适，而必须从变革产生这些心态的物质条件入手，在推动生产力质变的基础上调整生产关系，使劳动逐步向“自由自觉的活动”回归，为青年主体性的复辟开辟现实道路。

Abstract: In recent years, “neijuan” (involution) and “tangping” (lying flat) have emerged as a pair of mirror-image catchphrases, paradoxically juxtaposed to reveal the deep existential predicaments faced by contemporary youth in the sphere of labor. “Neijuan” signifies the intensification of competition within established structures and the dissipation of meaning, while “tangping” metaphorically denotes a passive retreat from excessive consumption and a symbolic protest. The two are not isolated psychological phenomena, but rather dual responses to the same structural predicament. Grounded in the theoretical framework of historical materialism and adhering to the fundamental methodological principle that social being determines social consciousness, this paper starts from the contradictory movement between productive forces and relations of production to uncover the socio-historical roots of the involution and lying-flat mentality. The study demonstrates that the deep essence of this phenomenon is the concentrated manifestation of labor alienation under contemporary relations of production, and the refraction in the spiritual domain of the fundamental contradiction between the logic of capital accumulation and the free and comprehensive development of human beings. To transcend this predicament, one cannot resort to moral exhortation or individual psychological adjustment; rather, one must start from transforming the material conditions that give rise to these mentalities, adjusting the relations of production on the basis of promoting a qualitative transformation of productive forces, so that labor may gradually return to “freely conscious activity”, thereby opening up a realistic path for the restoration of youth subjectivity.