Talent Cultivation and the Development of New Quality Productive Forces

During the 11th collective study session of the Politburo of the 20th Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that "in accordance with new trends in scientific and technological development, we must optimize the disciplinary setup of higher education institutions and the model of talent cultivation, so as to train the urgently needed talent for developing new quality productive forces and promoting high-quality development." Developing new quality productive forces requires the solid construction of a talent cultivation model that adapts to the development of new quality productive forces. In contemporary Western discourse, the cultivation of talent is understood as "investment in human capital per se." Industries related to "investment in human capital per se," such as education and healthcare, have become important areas where contemporary Western capital concentrates. Relatedly, the concept and theory of "human capital" have gradually become part of the mainstream discourse in contemporary Western societies, spreading widely across the world and participating to a considerable extent in the construction of the thinking mode of the subject. Analyzing and critiquing Western "human capital" discourse from the perspective of Marxist philosophy helps to avoid the misleading influence of contemporary Western discourse in talent cultivation and to scientifically think about a talent cultivation model that promotes the development of new quality productive forces.

习近平总书记在二十届中央政治局第十一次集体学习时指出，“要根据科技发展新趋势，优化高等学校学科设置、人才培养模式，为发展新质生产力、推动高质量发展培养急需人才”。发展新质生产力需要扎实构建适应新质生产力发展的人才培养模式。在当代西方话语下，人才的培养被理解为“对人自身进行投资”。与“对人自身进行投资”相关的教育、医疗等行业成为当代西方资本聚焦的重要领域。与之相关，“人力资本”的概念和理论逐渐成为当代西方社会主流话语的一部分，在世界范围内广泛传播，较大程度上参与了主体思维方式的建构。从马克思主义哲学视角对西方“人力资本”话语展开分析与批判，有助于在人才培养方面避免当代西方话语的误导，科学思考推动新质生产力发展的人才培养模式。

The Discursive Characteristics of "Human Capital"

“人力资本”的话语特质

In the contemporary West, capital has widely entered traditional fields of labor-power reproduction such as education and healthcare. Concomitantly, the concept and theory of "human capital" have gradually entered the everyday discourse of the masses after the 1960s. In this field, the theories of two Nobel laureates in economics, Gary Becker and Theodore Schultz, have had a significant impact. Among them, Becker gave a relatively clear definition of "investment in human capital": "Those activities that influence future monetary and psychological income by augmenting the resources of people. These activities constitute investment in human capital." According to the epistemology of "human capital" theory, to study the laborer concretely rather than abstractly, one must start from the individual lived experience of the laboring subject to study the planning of their economic behavior. From this perspective, consumption is also production and investment, and the return on this production and investment is the "psychological return" experienced by the consumer as the subject of consumption.

在当代西方，资本广泛进入教育、医疗等传统劳动力再生产领域。与之相伴，“人力资本”概念和理论在20世纪60年代以后也逐渐走进大众的日常生活话语。在此领域，两位诺贝尔经济学奖获得者加里·贝克尔和西奥多·舒尔茨的理论产生了较大影响。其中，贝克尔曾对“人力资本的投资”作出一个较为明确的定义：“那些通过增加人的资源来影响未来货币和心理收入的人类活动。这些活动就是人力资本的投资。”根据“人力资本”理论的认识论，要具体地而非抽象地研究劳动者，就需要从劳动者主体的个体亲身体验出发研究其经济行为的规划。在此视角下，消费也是在生产和投资，其生产和投资的收益是作为消费者亲身体验的“心理收益”。

Similarly, from the first-person perspective of the laborer, wages are also regarded as a kind of "return" on investment. In this context, what is the "capital" of the "investment"? "Capital" is regarded as the skill of the laborer. Thus, wages are understood as the "return" on the "human capital" of the laborer's skills. According to the reasoning of "human capital" theory, if one wants to increase the "return" of wages, the individual needs to add to the "investment" in "human capital," which means increasing personal financial input in areas such as education and healthcare. The discourse of "human capital" theory evades a crucial question: who should be responsible for the "investment" in "human capital"? The discourse of "human capital" theory presupposes that the individual laborer is naturally responsible for the "investment" in "human capital," and also presupposes that the thinking pattern modeled on "investment–return" is universally applicable. In fact, these presupposed "naturally existing" conditions are all generated under specific historical conditions and also have historical boundaries.

与之相似，从劳动者的第一人称视角出发，工资也被视为一种投资的“收益”。那么，在此情境下，“投资”的“资本”是什么呢？“资本”被视为劳动者的技能。于是，工资被理解为劳动者技能的“人力资本”的“收益”。按照“人力资本”理论的推论，如果要增加工资“收益”，个人就需要追加“人力资本”的投资，这就意味着追加教育、医疗等领域的个人资金投入。“人力资本”理论话语回避了一个至关重要的问题：谁应该为“人力资本”的“投资”负责？“人力资本”理论话语预设了劳动者个人理应为“人力资本”的“投资”负责，同时预设了以“投资—收益”为模式的思维形式普遍适用。事实上，这些被预设的“理应存在”的条件都生成于特定的历史条件，也具有历史界限。

The Discourse of "Human Capital" and the Mode of Accumulation of Contemporary Capitalism

“人力资本”话语与当代资本主义积累方式

The construction of the "human capital" discourse is closely related to the mode of accumulation of contemporary capitalism. Facing the crisis of overaccumulation, contemporary capital tends to incorporate the external spaces of capital into the domain of capital accumulation, a process manifested in the increasingly widespread privatization, monetization, and capitalization of social public spheres in the West after the 1960s. As a result, many undertakings in the social public sphere (such as education and healthcare) have become "industries" engaged in "commodity production" under the domination of capital, and are designated by the concept of "tertiary industry." These "new industries" absorb surplus capital and surplus labor power released by the falling rate of profit, alleviating the crisis of capitalism to a certain extent. The consequence of this process is that public undertakings in the social sphere become a sphere of commodity exchange in which the vast majority of laborers must pay out currency, further burdening the lives of laborers. Yet in contemporary Western discourse this is falsely labeled as "marketization" and "liberalization."

“人力资本”话语的建构与当代资本主义积累方式息息相关。面对过度积累的危机，当代资本倾向于将资本的外部空间纳入资本积累的领域，这一过程表现为20世纪60年代以后在西方日渐普遍化的社会公共领域的私有化、货币化、资本化。于是，社会公共领域的诸多事业（如教育、医疗等）成为由资本支配的从事“商品生产”的“产业”，并被赋予“第三产业”的概念。这些“新产业”吸收了因利润率下降而游离出来的剩余资本和剩余劳动人口，在一定程度上缓解了资本主义的危机。这一过程的后果是，社会领域的公共事业变成了广大劳动者必须在其中付出货币的商品交换领域，劳动者的生活负担进一步加重，但这在当代西方话语下却被打上了“市场化”“自由化”的虚假标签。

At the same time, laborers freed from surplus capital become a relative surplus population, forming an industrial reserve army. This situation intensifies competition among laborers, forcing all of them to use their limited wages to upgrade their skills in order to seek employment by capital and obtain higher wages. The "human capital" discourse narrates this process as laborers obtaining "returns" in the form of wages through "investing" in their skills. In fact, laborers do not obtain real choice in "investment"; under conditions of relative surplus of labor power, they are compelled to increase their input in skill upgrading. What they obtain is less a "return" than a possibility of being exploited by capital and, under that possibility, the satisfaction of means of subsistence.

与此同时，从过剩资本中游离出来的劳动者成为相对过剩人口，变成了产业后备军。这种状况加剧了劳动者之间的竞争，致使劳动者都不得不将有限的工资用于提升自身的技能，以求资本的雇佣，获得更高的工资。“人力资本”话语将这一过程叙述为劳动者通过对自身进行技能方面的“投资”获得了呈现为工资形式的“收益”。劳动者并未获得“投资”的实际选择权，他们在劳动人口相对过剩的状况下被迫加大提高技能的投入，而他们所获得的与其说是“收益”，不如说是一种被资本盘剥的可能性以及在此可能性下所能获得的生活资料的满足。

Thus, the so-called "investment in oneself" actually shifts the responsibility and cost of labor-power reproduction outside capital. When laborers are forced to bear a greater burden of labor-power reproduction in education, healthcare, and other links, their living conditions deteriorate further. Worse still, laborers who lack the means of production and means of subsistence are forced to incur debt in education and healthcare before obtaining the possibility of wages under capitalist conditions, thereby further falling under the dominance of money capital.

由此可见，所谓的“对自身进行的投资”实际上是将劳动力再生产的责任和成本转嫁到资本之外。当劳动者被迫在教育、医疗等环节承担更大的劳动力再生产负担时，其生活状况将进一步恶化。甚至，缺少生产资料和生活资料的劳动者为了在资本主义条件下获得工资的可能性，被迫在获得劳动的可能性之前背负教育、医疗方面的债务，从而进一步被货币资本所支配。

Promoting a Talent Cultivation Model to Serve the Development of New Quality Productive Forces

推动人才培养模式服务新质生产力发展

When the "human capital" discourse claims that the fulcrum on which it stands is the active economic subject, what it actually sees is a pseudo-subject constructed by economic structures. The subject that carries out "self-planning" in the so-called "investment" in "human capital" is precisely the abstract presupposition; what the "human capital" discourse misses here is precisely the profound insight of Marx's historical materialism into the determinations of historically generated social objective forms.

当“人力资本”话语认为它们立足的支点是主动的经济主体，实际上看到的是被经济结构所建构的伪主体。在所谓“人力资本”的“投资”中进行“自我规划”的主体恰恰才是抽象的预设，“人力资本”话语在此所错失的，正是马克思唯物史观对于历史生成的社会对象性形式之规定性的深刻洞见。

In reality, the theoretical discourse of "human capital" discards the historical determinations of the laborer, suspends the social objective forms in which the laborer finds himself in the contemporary era, and therefore often understands the laborer as a bourgeois individual. This presupposition of an individual subject engaged in "self-planning" and "self-investment" ignores the dimension of ownership of the means of production and means of subsistence, and consequently fails to answer a key question: without the ownership of the means of production, means of subsistence, and factors of production, how can the subject plan? The practice of contemporary capitalism extends the privatization and monetization of the natural sphere and even the social sphere, forcing the subject to "plan" and "invest" in himself by using money as the objective form. For laborers, the main form in which they obtain money is wages, which is determined by the capital–labor relation in which they find themselves. When "human capital" theory views wages from a first-person perspective, this very perspective conceals the exploitative relation between capital and labor. Thus, "human capital" theory regards the monetary relation under the condition where the means of production and means of subsistence belong to capital as a "natural" form that exists eternally.

实际上，“人力资本”理论话语抛开了劳动者的历史规定性，悬置了劳动者在当代所处的社会对象性形式，因而往往将劳动者理解为资产阶级的个人。这种“自我规划”“自我投资”的个体主体的预设忽视了生产资料和生活资料所有权的维度，进而并未回应一个关键问题：没有生产资料和生活资料、要素的所有权，主体将如何规划？当代资本主义的实践扩大了自然领域乃至社会领域的私有化和货币化，主体被迫以货币作为对象性形式“规划”“投资”自己。对于劳动者来说，他们获得货币的主要形式是工资，这是由劳动者所处的资本—劳动关系决定的。当“人力资本”理论从第一人称视角看待工资，这种视角恰恰掩盖了资本与劳动之间的剥削关系。由此，“人力资本”理论也就将生产资料、生活资料归资本所有的条件下的货币关系视为永恒存在的“天然”形式。

Based on a Marxist perspective, we can see that "human capital" theory analyzes economic growth by detaching it from the production dimension of means of subsistence, and, under a fetishistic mode of thinking, equates the increase of capital and the rise in the degree of rentierism with economic development, ignoring that this so-called "economic development" comes at the expense of the interests of the vast majority of laborers and stands on the opposite side of history. Conversely, to promote economic development and make its fruits benefit all laborers, it is necessary to emphasize and advance public investment in and social sharing of public undertakings such as education and healthcare, reduce the burden on laborers in the process of growing into talent, promote the leap in the quality of laborers, means of labor, and objects of labor and their optimal combination, and foster the development of new quality productive forces.

基于马克思主义视角，我们可以看到“人力资本”理论是脱离了生活资料的生产维度分析经济的增长，进而在拜物教思维下将资本的增殖和食利程度的提高等同于经济的发展，忽视了这种所谓的“经济的发展”是以牺牲广大劳动者利益为代价的，站在了历史的对立面。相反，要促进经济发展并使其发展成果惠及全体劳动者，就需要重视和推动教育、医疗等社会公共事业的公共投入与社会共享，减轻劳动者在成才过程中的负担，促进劳动者、劳动资料、劳动对象及其优化组合的跃升，推动新质生产力发展。

Developing new quality productive forces requires paying attention to public undertakings related to human development, such as education and healthcare. "We must focus on cultivating and bringing up strategic scientists, leading scientific and technological talents, and innovation teams; focus on cultivating and bringing up outstanding engineers and master craftsmen of the nation; strengthen skills training for laborers; and continuously improve the quality of various types of talent." In this regard, we must guard against the intrusion of the "human capital" discourse generated by the mode of accumulation of contemporary capitalism, avoid excessive privatization of public undertakings related to human development such as education and healthcare, reduce the burden on laborers in the process of growing into talent, and provide a fair and effective service platform for cultivating outstanding talent that serves the development of new quality productive forces. At the same time, we need to thoroughly implement the strategy of strengthening the nation with talent in the New Era, "in accordance with the requirements of developing new quality productive forces, smooth the virtuous cycle of education, science and technology, and talent, improve the working mechanism for talent cultivation, introduction, utilization, and rational flow," and continuously guide the allocation of social resources to undertakings related to talent cultivation, introduction, and utilization, prevent the dividends of labor-power reproduction from being seized and appropriated by developed capitalist countries, and effectively promote a talent cultivation model that serves the development of new quality productive forces.

发展新质生产力需要重视教育、医疗等与人的发展相关的公共事业，“要着力培养造就战略科学家、一流科技领军人才和创新团队，着力培养造就卓越工程师、大国工匠，加强劳动者技能培训，不断提高各类人才素质”。对此，需要谨防生成于当代资本主义积累方式的“人力资本”话语的入侵，避免教育、医疗等与人的发展相关的公共事业过度私有化，减轻劳动者在成才过程中的负担，为培养服务于新质生产力发展的优秀人才提供公平有效的服务平台。同时，需要深入实施新时代人才强国战略，“按照发展新质生产力要求，畅通教育、科技、人才的良性循环，完善人才培养、引进、使用、合理流动的工作机制”，并不断引导社会资源配置流向与人才培养、引进、使用相关的事业，避免劳动力再生产的红利被发达资本主义国家攫取和占有，有效推动人才培养模式服务新质生产力发展。

(The author is an associate professor at the School of Philosophy, Nanjing University.)

（作者系南京大学哲学学院副教授）

Online editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧