The Self-Diagnosis of Contemporary Crisis in Capitalist Countries: An Analysis Based on Mainstream Media in the UK and US

After the end of the Cold War, Western liberal thinkers represented by Francis Fukuyama optimistically predicted that liberal democracy and the market economy constituted the end point of human ideological evolution, the so-called "end of history." This view not only established the superiority of the capitalist system at the time but also provided a legitimizing footnote for the subsequent neoliberal globalization process. However, since the beginning of the 21st century, especially after 2008, this confident grand narrative has faced unprecedented questioning and negation. From the outbreak of the international financial crisis in 2008 to the present, a series of shocks have plunged the Western world into a state that historian Adam Tooze calls "polycrisis."

冷战结束后，以弗朗西斯·福山（Francis Fukuyama）等为代表的西方自由主义思想家曾乐观地预言，自由民主制、市场经济等构成人类意识形态演进的终点，即所谓“历史的终结”。这一观点在当时不仅确立了资本主义制度的优越性，更为随后的新自由主义全球化进程提供了合法性注脚。然而，进入21世纪尤其是2008年以来，这种自信的宏大叙事正遭遇前所未有的质疑和否定。2008年国际金融危机爆发至今，一系列冲击使西方世界陷入历史学家亚当·图兹（Adam Tooze）所称的“多重危机”状态。

Faced with this historic transformation, a noteworthy phenomenon is not the crisis itself, but the shift in discourse within the West: the mainstream Western academic circles and media, once staunch defenders of the system, have in recent years begun to intensively publish "pathology reports" on their own system. From Martin Wolf's anxiety over the "crisis of democratic capitalism" to the relentless coverage of "governance paralysis" and "social fragmentation" by mainstream European and American media such as the *Financial Times* and the *New York Times*, a crisis narrative of "self-diagnosis" is replacing the former "triumphalist rhetoric." This discursive shift raises a core question of political sociology: why are Western, especially British and American, mainstream media now choosing to publicly acknowledge this systemic crisis through the form of "self-diagnosis"? Is this widespread "decline anxiety" across political, economic, and cultural fields a manifestation of the system's self-repair mechanism, or a symptom of the structural collapse of neoliberalism?

面对这一历史性变局，一个值得注意的现象并非危机本身，而是西方内部话语的转向：曾经作为制度坚定捍卫者的西方主流学界与媒体，近年来开始密集发布关于自身制度的“病理报告”。从马丁·沃尔夫（Martin Wolf）对“民主资本主义危机”的忧虑，到《金融时报》《纽约时报》等欧美主流媒体对“治理瘫痪”“社会撕裂”连篇累牍的报道，一种“自我确诊”式的危机叙事正在取代昔日的“必胜论调”。这种话语转变引发了一个政治社会学的核心问题：为何西方尤其是英美主流媒体此时选择通过“自我诊断”的形式公开承认这种制度危机？这种遍布政治、经济、文化领域的“衰落焦虑”，究竟是制度自我修复机能的体现，还是新自由主义遭遇结构性崩塌的症候？

In terms of research methods and literature selection, this article takes major British and American media as "discourse samples" reflecting Western public opinion anxiety and consensus rupture. It primarily selects representative in-depth commentaries from mainstream European and American media (such as *The Guardian*, *The New York Times*, *The Financial Times*, and *The Economist*) from 2020 to 2025 as empirical material, presenting theoretical discourses on the crisis from different political spectra. Applying Marxist political economy theory and contemporary critical theory (such as world-systems theory and the theory of legitimacy crisis), it attempts to penetrate the media's surface-level "phenomenal descriptions" to analyze the underlying institutional logic and historical causes. This effort strives to overcome the confusion between journalistic narrative and theoretical analysis that has appeared in previous research, ensuring the academic rigor and normative character of the argument.

在研究方法与文献选取上，本文将英美主要媒体作为反映西方舆论焦虑与共识断裂的“话语样本”，主要选取2020—2025年具有代表性的欧美主流媒体（如《卫报》《纽约时报》《金融时报》《经济学人》）的深度评论作为经验材料，呈现不同政治光谱下探讨危机的理论话语，运用马克思主义政治经济学理论及当代批判理论（如世界体系理论、合法性危机理论），尝试透过媒体表层的“现象描述”，剖析背后的制度逻辑与历史动因。这种尝试力求克服以往研究中出现的新闻叙事与学理分析混同现象，确保论证的学理性与规范性。

Based on the above framework, this article argues that the frequently occurring themes of "political paralysis," "economic stagnation," and "cultural decay" in current British and American mainstream media are not isolated "diseases" but the concentrated projection of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism in the era of financialization and digitalization. The prevalence of this "crisis narrative" reflects a rupture in the "promise of growth" and the "promise of democracy" that sustained the functioning of Western society after the Cold War. By sorting through the "self-statements" of major British and American media on the failure of political governance in major Western countries, the stagnation of economic accumulation, the disintegration of the social contract, and the overextension of geopolitical strategy, the author attempts to reveal: the current decline of European and American capitalist countries remains a manifestation of the contradiction between the socialization of production and the private appropriation of the means of production, an inevitable result of the evolution of institutional defects under new historical conditions.

基于上述框架，本文认为，当前英美主要媒体高频出现的“政治瘫痪”“经济停滞”“文化颓败”等议题，并非孤立的“病症”，而是资本主义基本矛盾在金融化与数字化时代的集中投射。这种“危机叙事”的流行，反映的是冷战后维系西方社会运转的“增长承诺”与“民主承诺”出现了断裂。通过梳理英美主要媒体关于西方主要国家政治治理失效、经济积累停滞、社会契约瓦解、地缘战略过载等的“自我陈述”，笔者尝试揭示：欧美资本主义国家当前的衰退，仍旧是生产社会化与生产资料私人占有之间的矛盾表现，是新的历史条件下制度缺陷演变的必然结果。

I. Declining Institutional Resilience, Governance Failure, and Falling Political Identity

一、制度韧性降低、治理失效与政治认同下降

In the classic post-war narrative of Western political science, the superiority of the liberal democratic system lay in its possession of a set of self-correcting mechanisms: alleviating social conflict through representative institutions and preventing governance failure through checks and balances. However, examining the "pathological diagnoses" of Western political ecology in recent British and American newspapers reveals a clear consensus of anxiety: the once-proud institutional "machine" is heading toward functional "paralysis" due to excessive friction among its internal "components," and the bond connecting state and society—political identity—is undergoing continuous tearing.

在战后西方政治学的经典叙事中，自由民主制度之所以优越，在于其拥有一套通过代议机制缓解社会冲突、通过权力制衡防止治理失效的自我纠错能力。然而，审视近年来英美主要报刊关于西方政治生态的“病理诊断”，可以清晰地看到一种共识性焦虑：曾引以为傲的制度“机器”，正因内部“构件”的过度摩擦而走向功能性“瘫痪”，连接国家与社会的纽带——政治认同，也正经历着持续性撕裂。

(I) "Vetocracy" and Declining Governance Effectiveness

（一）“否决型政体”与治理效能下降

The most intuitive manifestation of the contemporary Western political crisis is the decline in the effectiveness of national governance. This is not due to a lack of resources or technological backwardness, but stems from a structural "self-locking" mechanism within the political system, which Fukuyama summarizes as "vetocracy." In this institutional "pathology," the multiple checks-and-balances nodes originally designed to prevent tyranny, catalyzed by political polarization and partisan infighting, degenerate into tools for each side to block decision-making and paralyze the national will. This political logic of "opposing for the sake of opposing" causes major Western countries to exhibit shocking decision-making delays and action incapacity when facing major strategic challenges and social livelihood issues, with the state machinery trapped in prolonged idle operation under the strangulation of partisan interests.

当代西方政治危机最直观的表征，是国家治理效能下滑。这并非因为资源匮乏或技术落后，而是源于政治体系内部产生了一种结构性的“自我锁死”机制，福山将其概括为“否决型政体”（Vetocracy）。在这一体制“病变”中，原本设计用于防止暴政的多元制衡节点，在政治极化与党派恶斗的催化下，退变为各方相互阻断决策、瘫痪国家意志的工具。这种“为了反对而反对”的政治逻辑，使西方主要国家在面对重大战略挑战与社会民生问题时，呈现出一种令人震惊的决策迟滞与行动无能，国家机器在党派利益的绞杀下陷入长期空转。

As a representative case of the Western political crisis, the functioning of the U.S. system in recent years has been described by many observers as a "near-death experience," a startling rhetoric that reveals the intensity of the crisis. The violent storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not only a physical transgression but also a trampling on the basic norm of liberal democracy—"peaceful transfer of power." *Financial Times* commentator Martin Wolf pointed out that this event marked the U.S. democratic system sliding into an extremely dangerous state, exposing the fragility of institutional rationality in the face of extreme mobilization; even if the system ultimately "survived," its aura of sanctity had been completely stripped away. However, more destructive to institutional resilience than a one-time violent event is the normalization of governance "paralysis." This characteristic of "paralysis" is particularly evident at the level of maintaining basic state functions. The repeated games over the budget are no longer rational policy debates based on public interest but have degenerated into a "game of chicken" for partisan mobilization. In October 2025, the U.S. federal government experienced a record 43-day full shutdown due to congressional partisan conflict, an event widely interpreted by public opinion as a manifestation of institutional dysfunction. Wolf and commentators from *The Washington Post* pointed out that this practice makes the public feel "institutional irresponsibility": in a system with extremely dense veto points, it is easier for all parties to veto each other, yet no one is willing to bear the political cost of compromise. The result is that any compromise on a budget plan may be seen by one's own camp as "surrender," dragging the entire state machinery into prolonged shutdown. The budget, which should be a technical prerequisite for state operation, is used as a bargaining chip in partisan struggle. This practice of "taking the state machinery hostage" makes the public widely feel the "irresponsibility of the system."

作为西方政治危机的代表性案例，美国近年来的制度运转被众多观察家形容为“濒死体验”，这一惊心动魄的修辞揭示了危机的烈度。2021年1月6日国会山遭受暴力冲击事件，这不仅是物理空间上的越界，更是对“和平权力交接”这一自由民主底线规范的践踏。英国《金融时报》评论员马丁·沃尔夫指出，这一事件标志着美国民主制度已滑入极度危险的状态，暴露出制度理性在极端动员面前的脆弱性，即便制度最终“幸存”，其神圣性光环也已剥落殆尽。然而，对制度韧性而言，比一次性暴力事件更具破坏力的，是治理“瘫痪”的常态化。这种“瘫痪”特征在维持基本国家职能层面表现得尤为明显。围绕预算案的反复博弈，已不再是基于公共利益的理性政策辩论，而退变为党派动员的“胆小鬼游戏”。2025年10月，美国联邦政府因国会党争而创纪录地全面停摆43天，这一事件被舆论广泛解读为制度功能失调的表现。沃尔夫与《华盛顿邮报》的评论指出，这种做法让公众感受到“制度性的不负责任”：在一个否决点极其密集的体制中，各方更容易彼此否决，却无人愿意为妥协承担政治成本。结果是对任何预算方案的妥协，都可能被本阵营视为“投降”，整个国家机器遂被长期拖入停摆。预算本应是国家运转的技术性前提，却被作为党争的筹码，这种“拿国家机器做人质”的做法，让公众普遍感受到“制度的不负责任”。

Moreover, the decline in governance effectiveness is accompanied by the arbitrary expansion of executive power and the disintegration of institutional neutrality, exacerbating policy uncertainty and unpredictability. Taking trade policy as an example, Trump's "personalized impulse to rule" during his tenure transformed the tariff and trade framework, which should have been highly predictable and rule-based, into an "on-off switch" serving short-term electoral interests and personal will. In April 2025, the White House suddenly announced large-scale "reciprocal tariffs," imposing tariffs on almost all imports, triggering a global financial market earthquake, and then, under pressure from reality, was forced to announce a "technical pause." Reuters and American commentators generally believe that this policy style of constant change effectively transforms trade and fiscal policies, which should remain relatively stable and predictable, into an electoral tool that can be turned "on and off" at any time according to personal political needs, eroding the neutrality and predictability of the system. This deeper erosion of the system is manifested in the political manipulation of the "deep state" discourse. By denigrating "fake news media," demanding that the judiciary and law enforcement agencies be "loyal to the individual rather than the institution," constantly hinting at "controlling interest rates," and threatening to replace the Federal Reserve chairman, the "strongman politician" is systematically dismantling the "infrastructure" on which the liberal democratic system relies. The judiciary, finance, and intelligence agencies are forced into the vortex of partisanship, and the system's self-correcting capacity is continuously reduced.

不仅如此，治理效能下滑还伴随着行政权力的任意扩张与制度中立的瓦解，加剧了政策的不确定性与不可预测性。以贸易政策为例，特朗普在执政时展现出的“个人化统治冲动”，将本应具有高度可预测性、基于规则的关税与贸易框架，转变为服务于短期选举利益与个人意志的“开关”。2025年4月，白宫突然宣布大规模“互惠关税”，对几乎所有进口品加征关税，引发全球金融市场巨震，随即因现实压力被迫宣布“技术性暂停”。路透社和美国评论界普遍认为，这种朝令夕改的政策风格，事实上将应保持相对稳定、可预测的贸易与财政政策，转变为可因个人政治需要随时“开关”的选举工具，侵蚀了制度的中立性与可预期性。这种对制度的更深层侵蚀体现在对“深层国家”（Deep State）话语的政治操弄上，通过贬损“假新闻媒体”、要求司法与执法机构“忠诚于个人而非制度”，不断暗示要“控制利率”、威胁更换美联储主席，“政治强人”正在系统性地拆解自由民主制度赖以运转的“基础设施”。司法、金融、情报机构被迫卷入党派旋涡，制度的自我纠错能力不断降低。

Across the Atlantic in Europe, the loss of governance effectiveness, though differing in form from that in the United States, shares the same "pathological" substance. Europe manifests this more as the fragmentation of party politics and the normalization of "short-lived governments," making the formation of stable governing majorities a luxury. Taking France as an example, the Fifth Republic's long-cherished tradition of a "hyper-presidential system" and "stable majority" ceased to exist after the 2022 legislative elections. For the first time, the presidential camp lost its absolute majority in the National Assembly, forcing the government to repeatedly negotiate with multiple opposition forces in a "lame-duck" state. This trend further deteriorated between 2024 and 2025, with successive prime ministers changing like a revolving door. Among them, Sébastien Lecornu resigned just 27 days after being appointed prime minister, as his cabinet formation plan failed to secure majority support; his cabinet was described by French and international media as "the shortest-lived government in modern history." *Le Monde* and *Le Figaro*, among other media outlets, characterized this round of the "prime ministerial revolving door" as "unprecedented institutional instability since the founding of the Fifth Republic." They argued that the semi-presidential system, which was supposed to provide stability, has experienced "structural failure" amid multi-party fragmentation and the rise of extremist forces. That is, the relationship between presidential authority and parliamentary representation has become unbalanced, making it impossible either to form a strong governing coalition or to maintain a stable majority through deliberative democracy.

在大西洋彼岸的欧洲，治理效能的丧失虽然在表现形式上与美国有所不同，但其“病理”实质如出一辙。欧洲更多表现为政党政治碎片化与“短命政府”常态化，这使构建稳定的执政多数成为奢望。以法国为例，第五共和国长期以来引以为傲的“超级总统制”与“稳定多数”传统在2022年立法选举后不复存在，总统阵营首次失去国民议会绝对多数，迫使政府在“跛脚”状态下与多支反对力量反复斡旋。这一趋势在2024—2025年间进一步恶化，多任总理如同走马灯般更迭，其中塞巴斯蒂安·勒科尔努被任命为总理后仅27天便因组阁方案无法获得多数支持而辞职，其内阁被法国与国际媒体形容为“现代史上最短命的政府”。《世界报》与《费加罗报》等多家媒体将这一轮“总理旋转门”描述为“第五共和国成立以来前所未有的制度不稳定”，认为本应提供稳定性的半总统制在多党分裂与极端势力崛起的背景下出现了“结构性失灵”，即总统权威与议会代表性之间的关系失衡，既无法形成强势执政联盟，又难以通过协商民主维持稳定多数。

The predicament of party fragmentation and "weak cabinets" is not unique to France but is a widespread political ecology across Europe. In the 2024 European Parliament elections, right-wing and far-right parties made significant gains in France, Germany, Austria, and other countries. Although they did not completely overturn the EU's power structure, they substantially squeezed the living space of traditional center-left and center-right moderate parties, reinforcing a fragmented political landscape. In the Netherlands, between 2024 and 2025, the right-wing populist Party for Freedom both participated in government and caused the governing coalition to collapse, triggering the dissolution of the government and new elections. After the October 2025 general election, even though centrist liberals narrowly won, they had to form a cabinet with great difficulty in a highly fragmented parliament. Media outlets generally described the Dutch political situation as "low trust, fragmented parties." This internal political instability has weakened Europe's capacity for action and coherence on the international stage. *L'Express* and Reuters have pointed out that, at the EU level, political instability not only undermines member states' ability to advance structural reforms but also erodes the EU's consistency on many issues, deepening the external impression of "European political fragmentation." Therefore, whether it is the "veto deadlock" in the United States or "fragmented politics" in Europe, both point to the same conclusion: Western representative democracy, when faced with the complex and changing governance demands of the 21st century, is encountering "institutional blockages," and its capacity to translate social demands into effective policies is steadily declining. As the political system busies itself with power struggles and veto games, the problems that truly need solving—such as the wealth gap, industrial hollowing-out, and the climate crisis—are indefinitely postponed, laying the groundwork for a deeper crisis of political identity.

政党碎片化与“弱势内阁”的困境并非法国独有，而是欧洲普遍存在的政治生态。在2024年欧洲议会选举中，右翼和极右翼政党在法国、德国、奥地利等国取得显著进展，虽未完全颠覆欧盟权力结构，却大幅挤压了传统中左、中右温和党派的生存空间，强化了碎片化的政治格局。在荷兰，2024年到2025年间，右翼民粹政党自由党既参与执政又导致执政联盟垮台，触发政府解散和重新选举；2025年10月大选后，即便中间自由派勉强胜出，也不得不在高度碎片化的议会中艰难组阁，媒体普遍以“信任低迷、政党碎片化”描述荷兰政局。这种内部政治的不稳定性，削弱了欧洲在国际舞台上的行动能力与一致性。《快报》与路透社分析指出，在欧盟层面，政治不稳定不仅削弱了各国推进结构性改革的能力，也消解了欧盟在诸多议题上的一致性，加深了外界对“欧洲政治碎片化”的印象。因此，无论是美国的“否决僵局”，还是欧洲的“碎片化政治”，都指向同一个结论：西方代议制民主在面对21世纪复杂多变的治理需求时，正面临“机制性梗阻”，将社会诉求转化为有效政策的能力正不断下降。当政治系统忙于权力博弈与否决游戏，真正需要解决的问题，如贫富差距、产业空心化、气候危机等便被无限期搁置，为更深层次的政治认同危机埋下了伏笔。

(II) The Crisis of Political Identity: Populism as a "Pathological Expression"

（二）政治认同危机：民粹主义作为一种“病理表达”

Behind the decline in governance effectiveness lies a crisis of political identity. When the political system fails to effectively respond to social and livelihood issues, when mainstream parties degenerate into mouthpieces for interest groups and become disconnected from the lives of ordinary people, the trust contract between voters and the system collapses. In this political vacuum, populism is not an accidental political deviation but emerges as a fierce rebellion against the "failure of representation" and a "pathological expression." It signals that within Western societies, a force of anger has arisen that cannot be absorbed through the existing institutional framework. This force is reshaping the political landscape, transforming the traditional "left-right struggle" into a battle between "elites and the masses" and "the establishment and the anti-establishment."

治理效能下降的背后是政治认同危机。当政治体制无法有效回应社会民生议题，当主流政党沦为利益集团的传声筒而与大众生活脱节，选民与体制之间的信任契约便宣告瓦解。在这种政治真空中，民粹主义并非一种偶然的政治越轨，而是作为一种对“被代表性失效”的激烈反叛与“病理表达”应运而生。它标志着西方社会内部产生了一种无法通过现有制度框架吸纳的愤怒力量，这种力量正在重塑政治版图，将传统的“左右之争”异化为“精英与大众”“建制与反建制”的搏斗。

From the 2016 Brexit referendum, which shocked the world, to the recent normalization of far-right forces in Europe, these events form a clear trajectory. The Brexit referendum is widely regarded as a populist "rebellion" against the "elite"-led path of European integration, revealing the political backlash caused by the extremely uneven distribution of globalization's dividends. Since then, this sentiment has continued to spread across continental Europe, with right-wing populist parties rising successively in France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. In the 2022–2023 electoral cycle, a coalition government led by the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy came to power; the parliamentary seats of France's National Rally increased significantly; support for Germany's Alternative for Germany hit new highs; and a Dutch populist party even won the largest party status in parliament in 2023. The expansion of the far-right voter base stands in stark contrast to the "hollowing out" of traditional center-left and center-right establishment parties, as a large number of voters have defected to anti-establishment emerging forces or political outsiders. Reuters has reported that far-right parties in Europe have successfully converted votes into political influence by exploiting public discontent over issues such as immigration, public security, and the economy, prompting mainstream parties to shift rightward in response to the challenge. This populist trend reflects widespread voter distrust of the existing political system. They generally believe that traditional elites "look down on ordinary people," can neither represent their interests nor provide viable paths for improvement, and therefore turn to charismatic leaders who claim to be "anti-establishment," using their votes as a means to "punish the elites." This behavior is no longer based on rational policy choices but is an emotional catharsis, a form of "revenge" against establishment politicians who are aloof and indifferent to the living conditions of ordinary people.

从2016年英国脱欧公投震惊世界，到近年来欧洲极右翼势力常态化崛起，这一系列事件构成了一条清晰的线索。英国脱欧公投被普遍视为民粹主义对“精英”主导欧洲一体化路径的公开“反叛”，揭示了全球化红利分配极度不均导致的政治反噬。此后，这种情绪在欧洲大陆持续蔓延，法国、意大利、德国、荷兰等国的右翼民粹政党相继崛起。2022年到2023年的选举周期中，意大利由右翼民粹政党兄弟党领导的联合政府上台，法国“国民联合”的议会席位大增，德国选择党支持率创新高，荷兰民粹主义政党甚至在2023年赢得议会第一大党地位。极右翼政党票仓的扩大，与传统中左、中右建制大党的“空心化”趋势形成鲜明对比，选民大量倒向反体制的新兴势力或政治素人。《路透社》报道指出，欧洲极右翼政党利用民众对移民、治安、经济等议题的不满，成功将选票转化为政治影响力，促使主流政党纷纷右移以应对挑战。这一民粹风潮反映出广大选民对现有政治制度的不信任。他们普遍认为传统精英“看不起普通人”，既不能代表自身利益，也无法提供可行的改善路径，于是转而支持自诩为“反建制”的克里斯玛型领袖，以投票作为“惩罚精英”的手段。这种行为不再是基于理性的政策选择，而是一种情感宣泄，是对那些高高在上、漠视普通人生存境遇的建制派政客的“报复”。

It is worth noting that the populist wave triggered by this representational rupture does not only have a right-wing face. In large cities where the lower classes and ethnic minorities are concentrated, a left-wing populism demanding radical redistribution is also gathering strength, presenting a completely different political picture. In the 2025 New York City mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Muslim politician of South Asian descent, won on a democratic socialist platform, becoming the city's youngest and first Muslim mayor. He advocated freezing rent increases, raising the minimum wage, taxing the rich more heavily, and strengthening public services. This event sparked fierce debate across U.S. national media. Trump and right-wing media called him "100 percent communist." London Mayor Sadiq Khan praised his victory as "a tremendous win," congratulating New Yorkers for choosing "hope over fear." The British *Guardian* summarized this left-wing mobilization wave as "heatwave communism," while Reuters interpreted it as a challenge to the influence of billionaire political donations, reflecting the distrust of the lower classes and ethnic minority voters toward the existing order.

值得注意的是，这种代表性断裂引发的民粹浪潮并非只有右翼一种面孔。在社会底层与少数族裔聚居的大城市，一种以激进再分配为诉求的左翼民粹主义同样在积蓄力量，呈现出完全不同的政治图景。2025年纽约市长选举中，34岁的穆斯林南亚裔政治人物佐赫兰·马姆达尼（Zohran Mamdani）凭借民主社会主义纲领，当选该市历史上最年轻、第一位穆斯林市长。他主张冻结租金上涨、提高最低工资、对富人加税、加强公共服务等。这一事件在美国全国媒体上引发激烈争论。特朗普及右翼媒体称其为“百分之百的共产主义”。伦敦市长萨迪克·汗（Sadiq Khan）则称赞其获胜是“一场了不起的胜利”，祝贺纽约市民选择了“希望而非恐惧”。英国《卫报》以“热浪共产主义”概括这一左翼动员浪潮，路透社则将之解读为对亿万富翁政治捐赠影响力的一次挑战，折射出底层与少数族裔选民对现有秩序的不信任。

From a Marxist critical perspective, these two seemingly opposed forms of populism both mobilize the "discontented" with fierce anti-elite rhetoric, but they differ significantly in their class orientation. Right-wing populism often targets immigrants, international organizations, and "cultural elites," engaging in a symbolic politics of redistribution while maintaining the premise of capitalist private property. Left-wing populism, by contrast, attempts to channel discontent into a structural critique of wealth concentration and capital power. However, within the existing institutional structure, neither right-wing nor left-wing populism can easily form a stable governing majority. This further polarizes the "vetocracy": any substantive reform may be procedurally vetoed by the opposing camp. In discussing the "crisis of democratic capitalism," Wolfgang Streeck summarized this situation as a "doom loop": rising inequality and the crisis of the middle class erode trust in the system, fueling the rise of populism and anti-establishment forces; yet polarization and veto politics make it difficult to carry out effective institutional reforms, thereby further intensifying social discontent and "suspicion" of the system. What has thus emerged is not only a reorganization of the party landscape at the electoral level but also a dual crisis of political representativeness and governance capacity.

从马克思主义批判视角看，这两种看似对立的民粹主义都以激烈的反精英话语动员“不满者”，但在阶级指向上存在重大差异。右翼民粹主义往往把矛头指向移民、国际组织、“文化精英”，是在维护资本主义私有制的前提下进行再分配的象征性政治；左翼民粹主义则尝试把不满转化为对财富集中和资本权力的结构性质疑。然而，在现有制度结构中，无论是右翼还是左翼的民粹主义，都难以构成稳定的执政多数。这使“否决型政体”更加极化：任何实质改革都可能被对立阵营以程序性手段否决。沃尔夫在讨论“民主资本主义的危机”时，将这种局面概括为“厄运循环”：不平等加剧与中产阶级危机削弱了对体制的信任，推动民粹主义与反建制力量上升；而极化与否决政治又难以对制度进行有效改革，从而进一步加剧社会不满与制度“怀疑”。由此形成的，不仅是选举层面政党版图重组，更是政治代表性与治理能力的双重危机。

More severe still, this crisis of political identity is manifested not only in election results but also in the setting of political agendas. When mainstream political parties are forced to mimic populist discourse in order to respond to the populist challenge, the entire political center of gravity of the country shifts. In the scramble for votes, traditional center-right parties become increasingly radical on issues of immigration and multiculturalism, while traditional center-left parties sink ever deeper into the quagmire of identity politics. The truly core issues—such as "how to repair the broken social contract" or "how to rebuild a fair accumulation model"—are instead marginalized. This phenomenon undoubtedly reduces the capacity of Western societies for self-renewal in terms of building consensus and mobilizing resources when facing a series of difficult problems. Politics is no longer a transmission belt that aggregates social interests; instead, it becomes a site where social rifts are solidified. Various forms of street protests and electoral chaos become its main manifestations. This is both a visible symptom of "decline" and a prelude to future political order turmoil. The challenges currently facing Western capitalist countries have surpassed the scope of policy repair and touch upon the deep-seated logical predicament of the political system itself: when a democratic system cannot deliver on its promises, its foundation of legitimacy inevitably begins to shake.

更为严峻的是，这种政治认同危机不仅体现在选举结果上，更体现在政治议程设置上。当主流政党为应对民粹挑战而被迫模仿民粹话语时，整个国家的政治重心便发生偏移。为争夺选票，传统中右翼政党在移民与多元文化议题上日益激进，传统中左翼政党则在身份政治泥潭中越陷越深，真正的核心议题，例如“如何修复破碎的社会契约”“如何重建公平的积累模式”等反而被边缘化。这一现象，无疑使西方社会在面对一系列难题时，容易在凝聚共识、动员资源等层面降低自我革新的能力。政治不再是聚合社会利益的传输带，反而变成社会裂痕固化的场所，各种街头抗议与选举乱象成为主要表现，这既是“衰落”的显性症状，也是未来政治秩序动荡的前奏。西方资本主义国家当前面临的挑战已超越政策修补的范畴，触及政治制度本身的深层逻辑困境：当民主制度无法兑现对承诺时，其合法性根基便不可避免发生动摇。

(3) The Social Contract Faces Disintegration and a Crisis of Trust

（三）社会契约面临瓦解与信任危机

The idling of governance effectiveness and the rupture of political identity have triggered an even more fundamental crisis at the level of the social body: the "social contract" on which modern capitalist countries rely for their maintenance is facing disintegration. The implicit agreement whereby citizens exchange political loyalty for economic security and social mobility is facing the risk of collapse. This is no longer merely the localized discontent of specific groups but has evolved into a trust deficit and the non-institutional transformation of collective action.

治理效能的空转与政治认同的断裂，在社会肌体层面引爆了更为根本的危机：现代资本主义国家赖以维系的“社会契约”正面临瓦解。民众以政治忠诚换取经济安全与社会流动的隐性协议，正在面对瓦解的风险，这不再仅表现为特定群体的局部不满，而是演变为信任赤字与集体行动的非制度化转型。

First, "generalized trust," the psychological cornerstone of the social contract, is collapsing. For a long time, the legitimacy of Western democratic systems has depended on the public's basic trust in public institutions. However, recent opinion poll data shows that this foundation of trust is being shaken. According to a 2025 cross-national survey by the Pew Research Center covering major developed economies including the US, France, and Spain, as many as 56% of respondents demanded a "complete overhaul" of the political system; in some countries, this figure climbed to 67%. Even more destructive is the qualitative change in how the public characterizes the existing system: 63% of respondents no longer believe that the government is the "guardian" of the public interest but instead view it as a tool "substantially serving the financial oligarchy." In the United States, this crisis of trust exhibits a pathologically "mirror-symmetric" form: Gallup data shows that public trust in the federal government, mainstream media, and public health institutions is at a low point, with partisan polarization leading different camps to hold diametrically opposed evaluations of the same institution. The situation where "no single institution is worthy of the trust of the entire society" means that the "spirit of contract" is continuously dissolving, and the self-repair capacity of the social organism is consequently in sharp decline.

第一，作为社会契约心理基石的“普遍信任”正在发生崩塌。长期以来，西方民主制度的合法性依赖民众对公共机构的基本信赖。然而，近年来民调数据显示，这种信赖基础正发生动摇。根据皮尤研究中心（Pew Research Center)2025年的跨国调查，在涵盖美、法、西等主要发达经济体的样本中，高达56%的民众要求“彻底重建”政治体制，在部分国家，这一比例甚至攀升至67%。更具破坏性的是，民众对现有制度的定性发生了质变：63%的受访者不再认为政府是公共利益的“守护者”，而将其视为“实质服务于金融寡头”的工具。在美国，这种信任危机呈现具有病理特征的“镜像对称”形态：盖洛普（Gallup）数据表明，公众对联邦政府、主流媒体、公共卫生机构的信任度均处于低点，党派极化导致不同阵营对同一机构评价截然相反。“没有一个机构值得全社会共同信任”的局面，意味着“契约精神”不断消解，社会有机体自我修复能力随之大幅衰退。

Second, when trust mechanisms within the system fail, the disintegration of the social contract externalizes itself in the normalization and radicalization of protest actions. Street politics is no longer a supplement to representative democracy but has become a substitute means of "self-politicization" for marginalized groups. The "Yellow Vest" movement that erupted in France in 2018 was a landmark moment. This protest, initially triggered by a fuel tax, quickly shed the traditional mobilization model of trade unions and left-right ideological labels, evolving into a "rebellion" against shrinking purchasing power, unfair taxation, and arrogant political elites. Analysis by Reuters and several European research institutions indicates that participants were mostly from the "squeezed middle class"—those who receive neither explicit poverty relief nor share in the benefits of globalization—and their demands directly targeted the bottom line of the "social contract": a "dignified life."

第二，当制度内的信任机制失效，社会契约的瓦解便外化为抗议行动的常态化与激进化。街头政治不再是代议制民主的补充，而是成为被边缘化群体“自我政治化”的替代手段。2018年法国爆发的“黄背心”运动是一个标志性时刻。这场最初由燃油税引发的抗议，迅速剥离传统工会动员模式与左右翼意识形态标签，演变为一场针对购买力萎缩、税负不公、反对傲慢政治精英的“反叛”。路透社与欧洲多家研究机构分析指出，参与者多为“被挤压的中间阶层”，他们既无显性贫困救助，又未分享全球化红利，诉求直指“体面生活”这一“社会契约”底线。

This kind of protest centered on the "right to survival" reached a climax during the 2022 energy crisis and the 2023 EU agricultural turmoil. From the wave of strikes in the UK to Dutch and Polish farmers blocking borders with their tractors, these movements together form a clear social thread: the core issues of protest have shifted from abstract political rights to concrete concerns like "wages, rent, and bills." These "cost-of-living protests" reveal a crisis of distributive justice in the context of the green transition. When the costs of ecological transition are asymmetrically shifted onto grassroots producers and consumers, while policymakers, perched on a moral high ground, turn a blind eye to the hardships of people's livelihoods, policy legitimacy vanishes entirely. At the same time, the rupture of the intergenerational contract also intensifies social fragmentation. The climate movement represented by Swedish "environmental activist" Greta Thunberg, who accused political elites at UN climate summits of "stealing our dreams and our childhood," directly points the finger at current political elites for intergenerational injustice and institutional inertia. In the eyes of many young people, the older generation enjoyed high-carbon prosperity while leaving ecological risks and fiscal burdens to future generations; in the eyes of many middle-aged and older people, as well as traditional industrial workers, the youth climate movement ignores the real pressures of work and livelihood. Thus, climate governance is no longer merely a technical and economic issue but has become a comprehensive social issue touching on lifestyles, regional equity, and intergenerational justice.

这种围绕“生存权”的抗议在2022年能源危机与2023年欧盟农业动荡中达到高潮。从英国罢工潮到荷兰、波兰农民驾驶拖拉机封锁边境，这些运动共同构成一条清晰的社会线索：抗议的核心议题已从抽象的政治权利转向具象的“工资、房租、账单”。这些“生活成本抗议”揭示了绿色转型背景下的分配正义危机，即当生态转型的成本被非对称地转嫁给基层生产者与消费者，而政策制定者却在道德高地上对民生疾苦视而不见时，政策合法性便荡然无存。同时，代际契约的断裂也加剧了社会撕裂。以瑞典“环保少女”格蕾塔·通贝里（Greta Thunberg）为代表的气候运动，在联合国气候峰会上控诉“你们偷走了我们的梦想和童年”，将代际不公与制度迟滞直接指向现任政治精英。在许多年轻人看来，老一代享受了高碳繁荣，却把生态风险与财政负担留给后人；而在不少中老年人和传统产业工人看来，青年气候运动则忽视了现实工作与生计压力。由此，气候治理不再只是技术和经济问题，而是触及生活方式、区域公平、代际正义的综合社会议题。

(4) The Institutional Logic from "Class Compromise" to "Legitimacy Implosion"

（四）从“阶级妥协”到“合法性内爆”的制度逻辑

Looking through the above phenomena, we must inquire at the theoretical depth of political sociology: why has the Western democratic system, which once demonstrated strong adaptability, fallen into functional exhaustion in the 21st century? This is not simply the accidental result of political polarization or technocratic errors, but the inevitable outcome of the evolution of the contradictory compound of "democratic capitalism" at a specific historical stage. From the perspective of critical theory, the foundation of post-WWII Western political stability was built on the balance of "class compromise," whereby the state, through intervention in the market and welfare distribution (purchasing legitimacy), exchanged for the masses' loyalty to the capitalist system. However, with the deepening of neoliberal globalization and the stagnation of economic growth, this balance was broken. This is precisely the contemporary manifestation of the logic of the "legitimacy crisis" predicted by Jürgen Habermas: when the state can no longer simultaneously satisfy the demands of capital accumulation (profit) and the demands of mass democracy (welfare) through fiscal expansion, the political system falls into an inescapable "double bind."

透过上述表象，需要在政治社会学的理论纵深处追问：为何曾经展现出强大适应性的西方民主制度，在21世纪会陷入机能性衰竭？这并非单纯政治极化或技术官僚失误的偶然结果，而是“民主资本主义”这一矛盾复合体在特定历史阶段演化的必然结果。从批判理论视角审视，二战后西方政治稳定的基石建立在“阶级妥协”的平衡上，即国家通过干预市场与福利分配（合法性购买）换取大众对资本主义制度的忠诚。然而，随着新自由主义全球化的深入与经济增长的停滞，这一平衡被打破。正如于尔根·哈贝马斯（Jürgen Habermas）预言的，“合法性危机”逻辑在当代的体现：当国家不再能通过财政扩张同时满足资本积累的需求（利润）与大众民主的需求（福利）时，政治系统便陷入无法自拔的“双重束缚”。

Specifically, to maintain the global competitiveness of capital, Western countries have over the past 40 years gradually alienated themselves from a "people's state" into what German economist Wolfgang Streeck calls a "market state," where the policy priority has irrevocably shifted from responding to voter demands to pleasing financial markets and creditors. This process has led to the "instrumental rationalization" and "hollowing out" of public power: politics is no longer a field for building social consensus but has degenerated into a technocratic management system serving the expansion of capital. When political decision-making is deeply captured by money politics, and when the legislative process is precisely manipulated by lobbying groups, representative democracy loses its core function as a regulator of social conflict. Consequently, we witness this pathological symbiosis: on the one hand, formal democratic procedures (elections, parliamentary debates) still function, but they can no longer genuinely address issues of wealth distribution and social justice; on the other hand, to conceal the "impotence" of democratic procedures, political elites are forced to manufacture "culture wars" and identity-based opposition to mobilize voters, leading to the institutional deadlock of "vetocracy." Therefore, the current political crisis is essentially a "legitimacy implosion": when the system can no longer provide inclusive growth economically, effective representation politically, or even the illusion of fairness morally, society's trust in the existing system is exhausted, leaving behind only naked power struggles and angry anti-establishment resistance. This marks the cracking or even the breakdown of the historic marriage between "democracy" and "capitalism."

具体而言，为维持资本的全球竞争力，西方国家在过去40年中逐渐从“人民的国家”异化为德国经济学家沃夫冈·斯特里克（Wolfgang Streeck）所言“市场的国家”，其政策优先级从回应选民诉求为最高级，无可挽回地变为取悦金融市场与债权人。这一过程导致公共权力的“工具理性化”与“空心化”：政治不再是凝聚社会共识的场域，而是退化为服务于资本增殖的技术官僚管理体系。当政治决策被金钱政治深度俘获，当立法过程被游说集团精准操控，代议制民主便丧失了作为社会冲突调节器的核心功能。于是，我们看到当前这种病态的共生：一方面，形式上的民主程序（选举、议会辩论）依然运转，但已无法真正触及财富分配与社会正义等议题；另一方面，为掩盖民主程序的“无能”，政治精英不得不制造“文化战争”与身份对立动员选民，导致“否决政治”的制度僵局。因此，当前的政治危机实质上是一场“合法性内爆”：当制度无法在经济上提供普惠增长，无法在政治上提供有效代表，甚至无法在道德上提供公平幻象时，社会对于现有体制的信任便耗散殆尽，留下的只有赤裸裸的权力博弈与愤怒的反建制反抗，标志着“民主”与“资本主义”的历史性联姻出现裂痕甚至走向破裂。

II. Involution of the Accumulation Regime and the Disintegration of the Social Foundation

二、积累体制内卷化与社会基础瓦解

If the crisis in the political dimension manifests as the idling of governance effectiveness and the tearing of political identity, as a representation of the capitalist crisis in the sphere of the superstructure, then the crisis in the economic dimension touches upon a structural mutation in the material foundation of Western modernity. During the "Golden Age" after World War II, Western capitalism maintained a model of "productive accumulation," which improved real-sector productivity through technological innovation, thereby driving wage growth and mass consumption, forming a virtuous cycle of "production and consumption." However, a review of recent self-diagnoses in mainstream media in the UK and US clearly shows that they believe this model has come to an end. Replacing it is a system of involutionary accumulation characterized by "secular stagnation," "financial predation," and "digital rent." This system no longer creates inclusive growth but redistributes existing wealth through a "rentier" logic, leading to the continuous erosion of the interests of the social base, especially the middle class and the working class.

如果说政治维度的危机表现为治理效能空转与政治认同的撕裂，是资本主义危机在上层建筑领域的表征，那么经济维度的危机则触及西方现代性生存的物质根基的结构性变异。在二战后“黄金时代”，西方资本主义维持着一种“生产性积累”模式，即通过技术创新提高实体生产率，进而带动工资增长与大众消费，形成“生产、消费”的良性闭环。然而，梳理近年来英美主流媒体的自我诊断可以清晰看到，他们认为这一模式已宣告终结。取而代之的是一种以“长期停滞”“金融掠夺”“数字租值”为特征的内卷化积累体制。这种体制不再创造普惠性增长，而是通过“食利”逻辑重新分配存量财富，导致社会基础尤其是中产阶级与劳工阶层的利益不断被蚕食。

(I) The Mutation of Growth Drivers: From "Productive Accumulation" to "Rentier Economy"

（一）增长动力的异变：从“生产性积累”到“食利经济”

A key manifestation of the problem with the growth drivers of contemporary capitalism is "growth exhaustion" beneath the surface of "innovation prosperity." While Silicon Valley's narrative of artificial intelligence and high technology is clamorous, macroeconomic data and social reality tell a very different story: the engine of capitalist economic growth has mutated, shifting from reliance on real-sector productivity gains to a "rentier economy" dependent on financial bubbles and digital monopoly rents.

当代资本主义经济增长动力出现问题的一个重要表现就是“创新繁荣”表象下的“增长枯竭”。在硅谷人工智能与高科技叙事甚嚣尘上的同时，宏观经济数据与社会现实却讲述了一个截然不同的故事：资本主义经济的动力引擎已发生异变，从依靠实体生产率提升转向依赖金融泡沫与数字垄断租金的“食利经济”。

First, "secular stagnation" has evolved from a theoretical hypothesis in academia into a widely perceived social reality, forming the backdrop of a "decadent era." This concept was first proposed by economist Alvin Hansen and has been revived in recent years by scholars such as Larry Summers to describe the inability of Western economies to maintain healthy growth in the absence of strong fiscal stimulus and bubble support. As a long-established capitalist country, the UK is a typical example of this symptom. Bloomberg, in assessing the UK's medium- to long-term prospects, described it as facing a "lost decade" that could be worse than Japan's: under the interplay of multiple factors such as low productivity, insufficient public investment, declining labor force participation, and uncertainty from Brexit, the UK has entered a vicious cycle of "low growth, low investment, and low efficiency," with the central bank's forecast potential growth rate less than half of pre-crisis levels, meaning "the income prospects of an entire generation have been downgraded." Across the Atlantic, Ross Douthat, in *The Decadent Society*, theorizes this state as "sustainable decadence": although superficially technologies like smartphones, streaming media, and social networks are constantly iterating, they have failed to translate into "hard innovation" that drives a leap in total factor productivity (TFP) in the real economy. This state of "stagnation without collapse" means that capitalism's ability to alleviate distributional conflicts by expanding the pie is continuously diminishing, and society falls into a kind of involutionary stagnation wrapped in high-tech packaging.

第一，“长期停滞”已从学界的理论假说演变为被广泛感知的社会现实，构成“颓废时代”的底色。这一概念最早由经济学家阿尔文·汉森（Alvin Hansen）提出，近年来被拉里·萨默斯（Larry Summers）等学者重新激活，用以描述西方经济在缺乏强力财政刺激与泡沫支撑下，无法维持健康增长的现象。作为老牌资本主义国家，英国是这一症状的典型样本。彭博社在评估英国中长期前景时，将其形容为面临“可能比日本更糟的‘失去的十年’”：在低生产率、公共投资不足、劳动力参与率下降、脱欧带来的不确定性等多重因素交互作用下，英国已步入“低增长—低投资—低效能”的死循环，央行预测的潜在增长率不足危机前的一半，这意味着“整整一代人的收入前景被下调”。在大西洋彼岸，罗斯·道塞特（Ross Douthat）在《颓废时代》中将这种状态理论解释为“可持续的颓废”：尽管表面上智能手机、流媒体、社交网络技术不断迭代，但未能转化为推动实体经济全要素生产率（TFP）飞跃的“硬创新”。这种“停滞而不崩溃”的状态，意味着资本主义通过做大蛋糕缓解分配冲突的能力不断降低，社会陷入某种高科技包装下的内卷化停滞。

Second, the disorderly expansion of financialization increasingly detaches capital accumulation from the production process. The 2008 financial crisis should have been an opportunity to curb excessive financialization, but under the logic of "too big to fail" bailouts, the massive liquidity injected by central banks through quantitative easing instead further strengthened the dominance of financial capital over industrial capital. Shadow banking, complex derivatives, and high leverage structures have not only not been effectively regulated but continue to serve as tools for extracting social wealth, causing the economic system to oscillate between cyclical bubbles and crashes. John Cassidy, in an analysis in *The New Yorker*, points out that finance is no longer a lubricant for the real economy but has evolved into a parasitic accumulation cycle: companies buy back shares to boost stock prices rather than investing in R&D, and capital profits from securitizing future earnings rather than creating present value. This model has led to a severe "shift from real to virtual" in the economy, making wealth accumulation increasingly dependent on asset price speculation rather than improvements in productive efficiency.

第二，金融化无序扩张使资本积累日益脱离生产过程。2008年金融危机本应是遏制过度金融化的契机，但在“大而不能倒”的救助逻辑下，各国央行通过量化宽松注入的巨额流动性，反而进一步强化了金融资本相对于产业资本的支配地位。影子银行、复杂衍生品与高杠杆结构不仅未被有效规制，反而继续作为吸取社会财富的工具，导致经济体系在周期性泡沫与崩溃中震荡。约翰·卡斯蒂（John Cassidy）在《纽约客》分析中指出，金融已不再是实体经济的润滑剂，而演变为一种寄生性积累循环，企业通过回购股票推高股价而非用于投资研发，资本通过未来收益证券化而非创造当下价值获利。这种模式导致经济严重“脱实向虚”，使财富积累越来越多依赖资产价格博弈，而非生产效率提升。

An even more insidious and fatal mutation of growth drivers is manifested in the rise of "digital feudalism" and the expansion of the rentier economy. As digital platforms become the infrastructure of contemporary society, the competitive logic of capitalism has undergone a qualitative change. An in-depth analysis published in *Le Monde* points out that a few tech giants, through data monopolies, network effects, and opaque algorithmic rules, have established a "fiefdom order" similar to medieval feudal estates. Under this order, platforms no longer primarily compete in the market by offering better products but by controlling market interfaces and extracting "digital rent" from users and dependent enterprises that survive on the platform. Users' data and social relationships are packaged as assets for continuous extraction, while genuine innovation activities shrink due to suppression and harvesting by platform rules. This "digital feudalism" is essentially a digital upgrade of expropriative accumulation: using the privatized monopoly of key information infrastructure to levy "tolls" on the entire society. When the most顶尖 talent and capital all flow toward algorithmic models designed for "control and extraction" rather than real-sector technologies designed for "production and service," the innovation engine of capitalism "idles," leaving only the enrichment of a few "digital lords" and the relative poverty of the majority of "digital serfs."

更为隐蔽且致命的增长动力异变，体现在“数字封建主义”的兴起与租值经济的扩张。随着数字平台成为当代社会的基础设施，资本主义的竞争逻辑发生了质变。《世界报》刊发的深度分析文章指出，少数科技巨头通过数据垄断、网络效应、不透明的算法规则，建立了类似中世纪封建领地的“封地秩序”。在这种秩序下，平台不再主要依靠推出更好的产品来参与市场竞争，而是依靠控制市场接口、向在平台上生存的用户和依附性企业抽取“数字地租”（Digital Rent）。用户的数据、社会关系等被打包为可供持续榨取的资产，而真实的创新活动则因受到平台规则压制与收割而萎缩。这种“数字封建主义”实质上是剥夺性积累的数字化升级：利用对关键信息基础设施的私有化垄断，向全社会征收“过路费”。当最顶尖的人才和资本都涌向旨在“控制与抽取”的算法模型，而非旨在“生产与服务”的实体技术时，资本主义的创新引擎便发生“空转”，留下的只是少数“数字领主”的暴富与多数“数字农奴”的相对贫困。

(II) The Institutionalization of Inequality and the Normalization of "Downward Mobility"

（二）不平等的制度化与“向下流动”常态化

The mutation of the accumulation system inevitably projects onto the distribution sphere, leading to the institutionalization of inequality and the reversal of social mobility. If the legitimacy of post-World War II Western capitalism was built on the promise of "a rising tide lifts all boats," then the current situation can be said to be built on Thomas Piketty's formula "r > g," that is, the rate of return on capital is higher than the rate of economic growth.

积累体制的异变必然投射到分配领域，导致不平等的制度化与社会流动性的逆转。如果说二战后西方资本主义的合法性建立在“水涨船高”的承诺之上，那么当前则可以说是建立在托马斯·皮凯蒂（Thomas Piketty）的公式“r>g”之上，即资本收益率高于经济增长率。

Wealth concentration is no longer a purely moral issue but a product of systemic mechanisms. Martin Wolf, in an article in the *Financial Times* titled "Inequality Is Threatening Our Democracy," cites data from the World Inequality Report, pointing out that from 1980 to 2016, the richest 1% in North America and Western Europe captured the vast majority of new income, with the United States being particularly pronounced: the top 1% captured roughly the same increment as the bottom 88%. He summarizes this trend as the risk of "plutocratic populism": when wealth is highly concentrated and politics is deeply penetrated by money, voter discontent is more easily transformed into suspicion of the system. John Cassidy, in an article in *The New Yorker*, uses Piketty's analytical framework to point out that under the macro environment where the rate of return on capital has long been higher than the economic growth rate, wealth has an automatic tendency to concentrate at the top. Due to the lack of effective tax regulation and redistribution mechanisms, this trend is further amplified by the wave of financialization: the rich enjoy the dividends of asset price inflation by holding stocks, real estate, and other assets, while the middle and lower strata, who mainly rely on labor income, are excluded from wealth. This structural polarization can deeply entangle money and power, repeatedly frustrating political efforts to break this inequality and solidifying inequality into an institutional norm that is difficult to shake.

财富集中已不再是单纯道德问题，而是系统性机制的产物。沃尔夫在《金融时报》上发表的《不平等正在威胁我们的民主》一文中援引“世界不平等报告”数据指出，1980年到2016年，北美和西欧最富的1%群体攫取了新增收入的绝大部分，美国尤其明显：顶层1%群体获得的增量与底部88%群体大致相当。他将这一趋势概括为“富豪民粹主义”风险：当财富高度集中，而政治又被金钱深度渗透时，选民的不满更易被转化为对制度的怀疑。约翰·卡斯蒂（John Cassidy）在《纽约客》上的文章中运用皮凯蒂的分析框架指出，在资本回报率长期高于经济增长率的宏观环境下，财富具有自动向顶层集聚的趋势。由于缺乏有效的税收调节与再分配机制，这种趋势在金融化浪潮中被进一步放大：富人通过持有股票、房产等资产享受资产价格膨胀的红利，而主要依赖劳动收入的中下层群体则被排除在财富之外。这种结构性分化能够使金钱与权力深度勾连，导致打破这种不平等的政治努力屡屡受挫，将不平等固化为一种难以撼动的制度常态。

A huge “transitional scissors gap” exists between macroeconomic data and micro-level perceptions, revealing the sharp rise in the cost of living in contemporary Western capitalist societies. Although the United States and other countries show passable performance in GDP growth and employment data, surveys by the *Washington Post* and CBS reveal a paradox of “bright macro figures and bleak micro realities”: while the nominal income of most households has increased, after deducting inflation, housing, medical care, and childcare costs, actual disposable income has fallen rather than risen. This phenomenon is vividly described as “richer on paper, more anxious in feeling.” The housing crisis is particularly acute, as real estate increasingly becomes a financial investment vehicle, causing rent and housing price increases to far outpace wage growth. A report by the UK’s *Guardian* notes that in Britain, “a full-time job is not enough to make ends meet” has become the new normal, with one in six employed people having to cut back on food consumption to survive. This squeeze on the cost of living is essentially a secondary expropriation of labor income by rentier capital (landlords, credit institutions, insurance companies), turning wages not only into the price of labor power but also into a channel for capital recovery.

在宏观数据与微观感受之间存在着巨大的“转型剪刀差”，揭示了当前西方资本主义社会生活成本剧增。尽管美国等国在国内生产总值增长、就业数据上表现尚可，但《华盛顿邮报》与CBS的调查则揭示了“宏观亮眼与微观失落”的悖论：多数家庭的名义收入虽有增长，但扣除通胀、住房、医疗、育儿成本后，实际可支配收入不升反降。这种现象被形象地描述为“账面上更富裕，体感上更焦虑”。住房危机尤为剧烈，房地产日益成为金融投资品，导致租金与房价的涨幅远超工资增速。英国《卫报》报道指出，在英国，“一份全职工作不够糊口”已成为新常态，每六名受雇者中就有一人需靠削减食品消费维持生存。这种生活成本的挤压，实质上是食利资本（房东、信贷机构、保险公司）对劳动收入的二次剥夺，使工资不仅是劳动力的价格，更变成资本回收的渠道。

Against this backdrop, the middle class, once a social stabilizer, has fallen into “defensive survival” and the normalization of “downward mobility.” “Downward mobility” is no longer the misfortune of a minority but a widespread social perception. Research shows that compared with their parents’ generation, the income of the contemporary Western younger generation has declined significantly, with the social structure characterized by “narrowing upward channels and expanding downward risks.” To maintain their original class status, middle-class families are forced to adopt “defensive” strategies: delaying childbirth, reducing consumption, and increasing debt leverage. The rising credit card default rate and high household debt are signals that this “defensive war” is gradually failing. When the belief that “hard work leads to a good life” is shattered by reality, middle-class anxiety turns into deep resentment toward the system, forming a socio-psychological source of Western political instability.

在此背景下，曾作为社会稳定器的中产阶级陷入“防御性生存”与“向下流动”常态化。“向下流动”不再是少数人的厄运，而是普遍的社会认知。有研究显示，与父辈相比，当代西方年轻一代收入明显下降，社会结构呈现“向上通道收窄、向下风险扩大”的特征。为维持原有阶层地位，中产阶级家庭被迫采取“防御性”策略：推迟生育、减少消费、增加债务杠杆。信用卡违约率的攀升与家庭债务的高企，正是这种“防御战”逐渐走向失败的信号。当“努力工作就能过上好日子”的信念被现实击碎，中产阶级的焦虑便转化为对体制的深刻怨恨，构成西方政治动荡的一个社会心理来源。

(III) Educational Alienation and Deindustrialization Anxiety: The Rupture of Reproduction Mechanisms

（三）教育异化与去工业化焦虑：再生产机制的断裂

In the Western modernization narrative, education and industrial employment are the two pillars sustaining social reproduction: the former provides a channel for class advancement, the latter a stable foundation for livelihood. However, under the current involution of the accumulation regime, these two mechanisms are undergoing profound changes.

在西方现代化叙事中，教育与工业就业是维系社会再生产的两大支柱：前者提供阶层跃升的通道，后者提供稳定的生活基础。然而，在积累体制内卷化的当下，这两大机制正经历深刻变化。

The education system is transforming from a “ladder of class advancement” that promotes social equity into a “tool of class solidification” that reinforces intergenerational inequality. As state fiscal investment in public education relatively shrinks, the commodification of higher education deepens, with rising tuition costs making education increasingly a luxury rather than a public good. In the UK and US, high tuition forces students to bear huge debts before entering the labor market. A *Guardian* survey shows that about a quarter of British university students face the risk of dropping out due to financial burden, and this pressure forces them to spend considerable time working rather than studying, further reducing educational quality. For children from low-income families, even if they barely obtain a diploma, the heavy student loan burden puts them at a disadvantage in areas such as home buying and entrepreneurship. Education is no longer a liberating force but has become a chain locking young people into debt dependency. A 2025 Gallup survey shows that the proportion of American adults satisfied with the quality of K-12 public education has fallen to 35%; a 2023 Pew Research Center survey shows that about half of American adults believe K-12 public education is “generally headed in the wrong direction,” with only a very small minority believing it is “headed in the right direction.” Evaluations of the role of schools show clear partisan polarization: a majority of Democrats believe public schools have a positive impact on the country’s direction, while a majority of Republicans believe their negative impact is greater.

教育系统正从促进社会公平的“阶层跃升阶梯”，异变为强化代际不平等的“阶层固化工具”。随着国家财政对公共教育投入的相对萎缩，高等教育商品化程度不断加深，学费成本攀升导致教育日益成为奢侈品而非公共品。在英国和美国，高昂的学费迫使学生在进入劳动力市场前就背负巨额债务。《卫报》调查显示，约四分之一的英国大学生因经济负担而面临辍学风险，这种压力迫使他们花费大量时间打工而非学习，进一步降低了教育质量。对低收入家庭子女而言，即便勉强获得文凭，沉重的学贷负担也使其在购房、创业等方面处于劣势。教育不再是解放的力量，反而成为将青年人锁定在债务依附关系中的锁链。盖洛普2025年调查显示，对美国K-12公立教育质量感到满意的成年人比例降至35%;皮尤中心2023年的调查则显示，约半数美国成年人认为K-12公立教育“总体方向错误”，只有极少数认为“方向正确”。在对学校作用的评价上呈现明显党派极化：大多数民主党人认为公立学校对国家走向有正面影响，多数共和党人则认为其负面影响更大。

The wealthy ensure their children obtain high-quality resources and social networks by purchasing expensive private education or school-district housing; meanwhile, public education at the bottom faces funding shortages and quality decline. This “educational segregation” allows intergenerational advantages to be perfectly reproduced within the education system. International research shows that the decisive role of family background in an individual’s future income has significantly strengthened over the past few decades. Additionally, the shift toward “politicization of the scientific research system” after Trump’s second term in the US has further pressured the public nature of higher education. Some view this trend as a “culture-war-style attack” on research universities, further eroding the public character and innovative capacity of education. This policy shift is essentially an erosion of the public nature of education: when the state treats educational investment as a fiscal burden rather than human capital accumulation, and when knowledge production is forced to submit to the logic of short-term market returns, higher education can hardly serve as a “ladder of social progress.”

富裕阶层通过购买昂贵的私立教育或学区房，确保子女获得优质资源与社交网络；而底层公立教育则面临资金短缺与质量下滑。这种“教育隔离”使代际优势得以在教育系统中完美复制，国外研究表明，家庭出身对个人未来收入的决定性作用在过去几十年中显著增强。此外，美国在特朗普二次执政后出现的“科研体系政治化”转向，使高等教育的公共属性进一步承压。有观点这一趋势概括为对研究型大学的“文化战式的打击”，进一步侵蚀了教育的公共属性与创新能力。这种政策转向本质上是对教育公共属性的侵蚀：当国家将教育投资视为财政负担而非人力资本积累，当知识生产被迫服从短期市场回报逻辑，高等教育便难以成为“社会进步的阶梯”。

At the same time, deindustrialization anxiety and the dilemma of transitional justice are tearing apart the social-geographic landscape. Europe faces a dual squeeze: it must both cope with global competition and push forward costly green transformation. The *Financial Times*, through data on manufacturing employment and output, continuously tracks the decline of Germany’s industrial base, arguing that this former “engine of Europe” is experiencing a “slow economic disaster”: under the impact of rising energy costs and global supply chain restructuring, industrial output has stagnated long-term. A Reuters report on large-scale layoffs at Ford provides a micro-level snapshot: multinational automakers are cutting thousands of jobs in Germany and the UK to reduce costs—this is not only a corporate strategic adjustment but also a microcosm of the hollowing out of traditional European manufacturing. Leaders of Italy and other countries have repeatedly warned that if the EU’s green policy path is too narrow and the pace too fast, “it is very likely to result in an ‘industrial desert’ in Europe,” emphasizing that “if only an industrial desert remains, no matter how green it is, sustainable development is out of the question.” Non-EU European countries, represented by the UK, show similar anxiety on another level. The *Guardian* points out that over the past decade or more, the competitiveness of UK manufacturing and high-value-added services has continued to weaken, with no new world-class pillar industries beyond finance, and long-term insufficient public investment and research funding, causing “deindustrialization” and “aging infrastructure” to combine into a medium-to-long-term constraint that is difficult to reverse. The UK is not only increasingly marginalized in trade and investment but also faces the dual pressure of maintaining its financial center status while coping with domestic anti-globalization sentiment.

同时，去工业化焦虑与转型正义困境正在撕裂社会地理版图。欧洲正面临双重挤压：既要应对全球竞争，又要推进昂贵的绿色转型。《金融时报》通过制造业就业和产出数据，持续追踪德国工业基础的下滑趋势，认为这一曾经的“欧洲发动机”正经历一场“缓慢的经济灾难”：在能源成本上升与全球供应链重构的冲击下，工业产出长期停滞。路透社关于福特大规模裁员的报道提供了一个微观切片：跨国车企为削减成本在德国和英国裁撤数千岗位，这不仅是企业的战略调整，更是欧洲传统制造业空心化的缩影。意大利等国领导人多次警告，如果欧盟绿色政策路径过窄、节奏过快，“很可能换来一个‘工业荒漠化’的欧洲”，强调“如果只剩下一片工业荒漠，再绿色也谈不上可持续发展”。以英国为代表的非欧盟欧洲国家则在另一层面呈现类似焦虑。《卫报》指出，过去十多年英国制造业与高附加值服务业的竞争力持续削弱，金融业之外缺乏新的世界级支柱产业，公共投资和科研投入长期不足，使“去工业化”与“基础设施老化”叠加成一种难以逆转的中长期约束。英国不仅在贸易和投资上日益边缘化，而且面临既要维持金融中心地位，又要应对国内反全球化情绪的双重压力。

This industrial transformation leads to regional development imbalances in geographic space: large cities where financial and digital elites gather enjoy the dividends of globalization, while small and medium-sized towns dependent on traditional manufacturing experience job loss and community decline. This opposition between “islands of prosperity” and “declining rust belts” directly constitutes the geographic foundation for the rise of populism.

这种产业变迁在地理空间上导致区域发展不平衡：金融与数字精英聚集的大都市享受全球化红利，而依赖传统制造业的中小城镇则出现就业流失与社区凋敝等现象。这种“繁荣孤岛”与“衰落锈带”的对立，直接构成民粹主义崛起的地理基础。

(IV) The Institutional Logic from “Profit Squeeze” to “Predatory Accumulation”

（四）从“利润挤压”到“掠夺性积累”的制度逻辑

Through the above phenomena, it is necessary to ask, from the theoretical perspective of Marxist political economy: why does capitalism shift from “productive accumulation” to “rentier” and “predatory” accumulation? This is not a mistake in policy choice but an inevitability under the law of the profit rate. Based on Marxist political economy analysis, the long-term decline in the profit rate of the real economy is the fundamental driver of this shift. With global overcapacity, technology diffusion, and rigid labor costs, the profit margins of Western real industries have been greatly compressed. When sufficient surplus value cannot be obtained through normal commodity production and trade, capital, to maintain its own valorization, inevitably seeks other accumulation paths.

透过上述现象，需要在马克思主义政治经济学的理论视角追问：为何资本主义会从“生产性积累”转向“食利性”“掠夺性”积累。这并非政策选择的失误，而是利润率规律作用下的必然。基于马克思主义政治经济学分析，实体经济利润率长期下降是这一转向的根本动因。随着全球产能过剩、技术扩散、劳动力成本刚性，西方实体产业的利润空间被大幅压缩。当通过正常商品生产和贸易无法获得足够剩余价值时，资本为维持自身增殖，必然寻求其他积累路径。

David Harvey’s concept of “accumulation by dispossession” provides a theoretical tool for understanding this process. In the contemporary West, dispossession is no longer primarily manifested as plunder of external colonies but has been internalized as an “inward erosion” of domestic social wealth. First, financial capital no longer serves production; instead, through credit mechanisms, asset bubbles, and debt instruments, it directly extracts wealth from the future income of laborers. Mortgages, student loans, and credit card debts are essentially a pre-deduction and dispossession of labor income by capital, compensating for the shortfall in profits from the productive sphere. Second, when profit rates in competitive sectors dry up, capital turns its gaze to previously non-commodified public domains. The wave of privatization in education, healthcare, elderly care, and infrastructure is essentially the conversion of public assets into private capital at low prices, transforming the basic survival needs of the populace into compulsory sources of profit. Finally, the monopoly of tech giants is not based on enhanced production efficiency but on the privatization and enclosure of public data resources (as a product of socialization). This “digital enclosure” allows platform capital to levy rents on the entire society, which is also a form of dispossession.

大卫·哈维（David Harvey）提出的“剥夺性积累”为理解这一过程提供了理论工具。在当代西方，剥夺不再主要表现为对外部殖民地的掠夺，而是内化为对本国社会财富的“内向性侵蚀”。首先，金融资本不再服务于生产，而是通过信贷机制、资产泡沫、债务工具，直接从劳动者的未来收入中抽取财富。房贷、学贷、信用卡债等本质上是资本对劳动收入的预先扣除与剥夺，弥补了生产领域利润的不足。其次，当竞争性领域的利润率枯竭，资本便将目光投向原本非商品化的公共领域。教育、医疗、养老、基础设施的私有化浪潮，实质上是将公共资产低价转化为私人资本，并将民众的基本生存需求转化为强制性的利润来源。最后，科技巨头的垄断并非基于生产效率的提升，而是基于对公共数据资源（作为社会化产物）的私有化圈占。这种“数字圈地”允许平台资本向全社会征收租金，实质也是一种剥夺。

Therefore, from financial bubbles to the impoverishment of the middle class, from education debt to industrial hollowing out, the underlying logic of these various phenomena is consistent: under the historical constraint of declining profit rates in the real economy, capitalism, in order to survive, must shift from “creating wealth” to “plundering wealth.” Although this maintains capital’s book returns in the short term (reflected in stock market booms and the growth of wealthy individuals’ assets), the cost is the depletion of social reproduction resources, the undermining of the consumption base, and ultimately the erosion of the system’s foundation of legitimacy. This marks the entry of the capitalist accumulation regime into a destructive phase of self-devouring.

因此，从金融泡沫到中产阶级返贫，从教育债务到工业空心化等种种现象，深层逻辑是一致的：在实体经济利润率下降的历史约束下，资本主义为了存续，不得不从“创造财富”转向“掠夺财富”。这虽在短期内维持了资本的账面回报（体现为股市繁荣与富人财富增长），但代价是耗尽了社会再生产资源，瓦解了消费基础，最终侵蚀了制度的合法性根基。这标志着资本主义积累体制进入自我吞噬的破坏性阶段。

III. Cultural Fragmentation and the Limits of Geostrategy

三、文化撕裂与地缘战略的极限

Within the self-diagnosis of mainstream media in the UK and US, a profound “civilizational fatigue” intertwines with “strategic overload.” Internally, this manifests as the fragmentation of a unified value community amidst fierce culture wars; externally, it appears as the once-invincible hegemonic machine, squeezed by a multipolar world, facing the unsustainable cost of maintaining dominance.

在英美主要媒体自我诊断中，一种深刻的“文明疲惫感”与“战略过载”相互交织，在内部表现为，统一的价值共同体在激烈的文化战争中碎裂；在外部体现为，曾经不可一世的霸权机器在多极化世界挤压下，面临护持成本不可持续的困境。

(1) From “Soft Power” Confidence to Self-Diagnosis as a “Decadent Society”

（一）从“软实力”自信到“颓废社会”的自我确诊

Alongside political polarization and economic stagnation, Western media and academia increasingly use terms like “decadence,” “burnout,” and “weakness” to describe the contemporary cultural state. *New York Times* columnist Ross Douthat defines the contemporary West as “economic stagnation, institutional rigidity, and cultural exhaustion atop great material prosperity and technological development,” emphasizing that cultural production exhibits a clear logic of “repetition-reproduction”: the film industry is heavily reliant on superheroes and nostalgic IP; pop music and fashion constantly consume existing symbols; truly groundbreaking “grand narratives” and cutting-edge experiments are instead scarce. This cultural “weakness” is not merely reflected in the “nostalgic” and “sequel-oriented” nature of artistic forms; the “lying flat” [8]8 “Lying flat” (躺平, *tǎng píng*) is a Chinese internet neologism referring to a youth subculture of withdrawing from societal pressures such as intense competition, overwork, and consumerism, choosing a minimalist lifestyle with minimal effort and ambition. tendency in population and lifestyle is also a notable feature. On one hand, low birth rates, singleness, and “de-familialization” are reshaping the demographic and emotional structures of European and American societies: the United Nations Population Fund, in its report *The Real Baby Crisis*, points out that very low fertility rates in high-income countries are accompanied by a growing “loneliness epidemic,” with more and more young people lacking both the desire to have children and the conditions and confidence to form stable intimate relationships. European media, when discussing rapidly declining birth rates in countries like Poland, attribute the cause to “structural loneliness that state subsidies cannot compensate for” and “a crisis of relationships in post-communist societies,” rather than merely economic burdens. On the other hand, mass leisure and consumer culture exhibit more pronounced escapist traits. Research on “digital cocooning” shows that within the framework of “compensatory internet use,” some individuals, facing real-life pressures such as job insecurity and interpersonal isolation, use immersive online entertainment, short videos, and gaming as means of emotional regulation and escape from reality, continuously reducing offline social interaction and public participation. Unlike the psychedelic drugs of the 1960s and 1970s that emphasized “consciousness expansion,” the current US “opioid crisis,” “fentanyl crisis,” and highly commercialized cannabis consumption are closer to what Douthat describes as “numbing placebos”: not for experiencing the world more intensely, but for temporarily escaping real-world frustrations. In this cultural climate, reform narratives requiring long-term sacrifice and complex coordination struggle to gain attention, while simple conspiracy theories, declinist narratives, and emotional labels spread more easily in a fragmented media environment.

与政治极化、经济停滞并行，西方媒体与学界越来越多地使用“颓废”“倦怠”“疲软”等描述当代文化状态。《纽约时报》专栏作家罗斯·杜塔特（Ross Douthat）将当代西方界定为“在高度物质繁荣与技术发展之上的经济停滞、制度僵化、文化枯竭”，强调文化生产呈现出明显的“重复—再生产”逻辑：电影工业高度依赖超级英雄与怀旧IP，流行音乐与时尚领域不断消费既有符号，真正具有突破性的“宏大叙事”与前沿实验反而稀缺。这种文化“疲软”不是仅仅体现为文艺形式的“怀旧化”“续作化”，人口与生活方式的“躺平化”也是显著特征。一方面，低生育率、单身、“去家庭化”正在重塑欧美社会的人口与情感结构：联合国人口基金会在《真正的生育危机》报告中指出，高收入国家的极低生育率与日益显著的“孤独流行病”相伴而生，越来越多年轻人既缺乏生育意愿，也缺乏形成稳定亲密关系的条件与自信。欧洲媒体在讨论波兰等国快速下滑的生育率时，将原因归结为“国家补贴无法弥补结构性孤独”“后共产主义社会的关系危机”，而不仅是经济负担问题。另一方面，大众休闲与消费文化呈现出更加明显的逃避主义特征。围绕“数字茧居”的研究表明，在“补偿性互联网使用”框架下，一些人在面对工作不稳定、人际孤立等现实压力时，将沉浸式网络娱乐、短视频与游戏作为情绪调节与逃离现实的手段，不断减少线下社交与公共参与的投入；与20世纪六七十年代强调“意识扩张”的迷幻药不同，当下美国“阿片类药物危机”“芬太尼危机”、高度商业化的大麻消费，更接近于杜塔特形容的“麻木型安慰剂”：不是为了更强烈地体验世界，而是为了暂时逃离现实挫败。在这种文化气候下，要求长期牺牲与复杂协调的改革叙事难以获得关注，简单的阴谋论、衰落叙事、情绪化标签，更容易在碎片化媒体环境中扩散。

(2) “Culture Wars” and Civilizational Pessimism: The Fragmentation of the Value Community

（二）“文化战争”与文明悲观主义：价值共同体的碎片化

If the “decadent society” focuses on depicting overall weakness, then the “culture wars” surrounding issues of race, gender, immigration, and religion reveal the tearing apart of the internal value community.

如果说“颓废社会”侧重刻画的是整体性疲软，那么围绕种族、性别、移民、宗教等议题展开的“文化战争”，则揭示了内部价值共同体的撕裂。

The “narrative civil war” over identity and history is eroding the foundation of national identity in nation-states. Some scholars argue that this internal conflict has transcended policy differences, escalating into a struggle over “what is the West” and “what is justice.” In the wave of “decolonization” movements and the “Black Lives Matter” trend, radical progressives argue that Western history is essentially a history of racist and imperialist oppression, which must be subjected to “historical reckoning” through toppling statues and rewriting curricula; conservatives view this as a “suicidal attack on Western civilization.” This value split gives rise to “civilizational pessimism,” exacerbating social division.

围绕身份与历史的“叙事内战”，正瓦解民族国家的认同基础。有学者认为，这种内部冲突已超越政策分歧，上升为对“何为西方”“何为正义”的争夺。在“去殖民化”运动与“黑人的命也是命”风潮中，激进进步主义主张西方历史本质上是一部种族主义与帝国主义的压迫史，必须通过推倒雕像、重写课程来进行“历史清算”；保守派则将此视为“对西方文明的自杀式攻击”，这种价值分裂使“文明悲观主义”产生，加剧了社会分裂。

“Civilizational pessimism” reflects a profound unease and questioning within Western societies about their own future. It is both a projection of real-world difficulties and, discursively, further reinforces the sense of decline. This is especially true as social media algorithms amplify the rapid spread of narratives like “the end of the West,” further shaping public sentiment. At the same time, *Guardian* columnist Owen Jones points out that right-wing politicians often blame “Western decline” on “woke culture” and moral laxity, whereas the crisis ordinary people actually feel stems more directly from stagnating living standards, collapsing public services, and declining security. Thus, “decline” becomes a discursive resource contested by all sides: conservatives attribute it to cultural liberalism and moral change, while liberals and the left critique it more from the perspectives of capitalist dysfunction, imperial overreach, and ecological crisis. Although their explanatory paths are completely different, they share the presupposition of “civilizational pessimism.”

“文明悲观主义”反映了西方社会内部对自身前途的深刻不安与质疑。这既是现实困境的投射，也在话语上进一步强化衰落感。尤其是在社交媒体算法推波助澜下，“西方末日”之类的论调容易迅速传播，进一步塑造公众情绪。同时，《卫报》专栏作家欧文·琼斯（Owen Jones）指出，右翼政客口中的“西方衰落”往往被归咎于“觉醒文化”和道德宽松，而实际上普通民众感受到的危机更直接地来自生活水平停滞、公共服务崩塌、安全感下降。由此，“衰落”成为各方争夺的话语资源：保守派将其归因于文化自由主义与道德变迁，自由派与左翼则更多从资本主义失灵、帝国过度扩张与生态危机等出发展开批判，尽管解释路径截然不同，但却共享“文明悲观主义”的预设。

(3) Strategic Overload and the “Transactional” Mutation of Hegemonic Logic

（三）战略过载与霸权逻辑“交易化”突变

In a multipolar landscape, the Western military-hegemonic machine, while still maintaining high nominal expenditures, has fallen into a predicament of “strategic overload” and “resource misallocation” in terms of actual effectiveness. Particularly with Trump’s return to the White House and the implementation of the “America First 2.0” strategy, this predicament no longer manifests as a sense of powerlessness in trying to maintain global order, but has sharply transformed into a defensive contraction aimed at cutting losses through “shifting burdens” and “collecting protection money.”

在多极化格局下，西方军事霸权机器虽然在账面开支上仍居高位，但在实际效能上已陷入“战略过载”与“资源错配”的困境。特别是随着特朗普再度入主白宫并推行“美国优先2.0”战略，这种困境不再表现为试图维持全球秩序的无力感，而急剧转化为通过“甩包袱”“收保护费”等来止损的防御性收缩。

First, the concurrent pressures from multiple theaters have breached the "production capacity baseline" of the Western security system. For a long time, US-European security strategy has been built on the assumption of "winning two local wars simultaneously." However, the Russia-Ukraine conflict that erupted in 2022 and the Middle East crisis that has dragged on since 2023 have exposed the fallacy of this assumption. Although NATO countries' military spending reached post-Cold War highs between 2024 and 2025, this massive investment failed to translate into effective battlefield control; instead, it revealed the severe hollowing out of the Western defense industrial base (DIB). In-depth investigations by the *Wall Street Journal* and the *Economist* point out that the adverse consequences of Western deindustrialization have erupted concentratedly in the military domain: insufficient ammunition production capacity, a shrinking shipbuilding industry, and a shortage of skilled workers have left the "arsenal of democracy" [9]9 "Arsenal of democracy" – a phrase popularized by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a 1940 radio address, referring to the United States' role as the primary supplier of military matériel to Allied powers during World War II. struggling to cope when facing Russia's wartime economic model. The United States admits that its shipbuilding speed can no longer match its decommissioning speed. This awkward situation of "having money but no goods" has forced the West to shift from "global intervention" to "selective abandonment" in geopolitical games.

第一，多战区并发压力击穿了西方安全体系的“产能底线”。长期以来，美欧的安全战略建立在“同时打赢两场局部战争”的假设之上。然而，2022年爆发的俄乌冲突与2023年延宕至今的中东危机，暴露了这一假设的虚妄。尽管北约国家的军费开支在2024年到2025年间创下冷战后新高，但这笔巨额投入未能转化为有效的战场控制力，反而暴露了西方国防工业基础（DIB）的严重空心化。《华尔街日报》与《经济学人》的深度调查指出，西方去工业化的恶果在军事领域集中爆发：弹药产能不足、造船业萎缩、熟练技工短缺，使“民主兵工厂”在面对俄罗斯的战时经济模式时显得捉襟见肘。美国承认，其造船速度已无法匹配退役速度，这种“有钱无货”的尴尬局面，迫使西方在地缘博弈中不得不从“全域介入”转向“选择性放弃”。

Second, the "transactional view of allies" under Trump's second term marks a sudden change in the mode of Western hegemonic maintenance. If the Biden administration attempted to share the costs of hegemony by repairing the alliance system, then the "Trump 2.0 era" directly tore off the veil of the "community of values," turning security relations into naked commercial transactions. Facing unsustainable hegemonic costs, the Trump administration adopted a radical strategy of "externalizing costs": demanding that NATO members raise their military spending to 3% or even higher of GDP, and openly threatening not to protect allies who are "in arrears." Analyses by Reuters and *Foreign Affairs* indicate that this approach is an inevitable and rational choice after the relative decline of US national power; the US can no longer bear the costs of global public goods alone and must forcibly shift the defense burden onto Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Although this "protection fee model" alleviates US fiscal pressure in the short term, it fundamentally undermines the foundation of trust within the Western alliance. When security commitments become commodities that can be haggled over, NATO and the US-Japan alliance lose their sanctity. Major European countries are forced to accelerate their pursuit of "strategic autonomy" and even engage independently with Russia and China, leading to a centrifugal tendency within the Western camp at the strategic level.

第二，特朗普二次执政下的“交易型盟友观”，标志着西方霸权护持模式的突变。如果说拜登政府试图通过修复盟友体系分担霸权成本，那么“特朗普2.0时代”则直接撕下了“价值同盟”的面纱，将安全关系变为赤裸裸的商业交易。面对不可持续的霸权成本，特朗普政府采取了激进的“成本外化”策略：要求北约成员国将军费占比提升至3%甚至更高，并公然威胁对“欠费”盟友“不予保护”。路透社与《外交事务》分析指出，这种做法是美国国力相对衰落后的必然、理性选择，美国已无力独自承担全球公共产品的成本，必须将防务负担强制转嫁给欧洲与日韩。这种“保护费模式”虽在短期内减轻了美国的财政压力，却从根本上瓦解了西方联盟的信任基石。当安全承诺变成可以讨价还价的商品，北约与日美同盟便失去了神圣性，欧洲主要国家被迫加速寻求“战略自主”甚至单独对俄、对华接触，导致西方阵营在战略层面出现了离心倾向。

Third, the moral deficit caused by "double standards" has led to a "bankruptcy of trust" in the West's geopolitical influence in the Global South. The maintenance of hegemony depends not only on "aircraft carriers" but also on rules and order. However, while the West raises the banner of "the sanctity of sovereignty" on the Ukraine issue, it remains silent about or even condones the excessive violence of its allies in the Gaza conflict and the subsequent turmoil in the Middle East. This blatant double standard has provoked collective resentment from the "Global South." A commentary in the *New York Times* notes that this is a watershed moment in Western diplomatic history: major emerging powers such as Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia are no longer willing to "choose sides" but are actively promoting the expansion of BRICS and the process of "de-dollarization." The West's ability to dominate the global agenda through the G7 is declining, replaced by a "post-Western world" where Western discursive power is being continuously diluted.

第三，“双重标准”导致的道德赤字，使西方在全球南方的地缘影响力遭遇“信任破产”。霸权的护持不仅依赖“航母”，更依赖规则、秩序。然而，西方在乌克兰问题上高举“主权神圣”大旗，却在加沙冲突及随后的中东乱局中对盟友的过度暴力保持沉默甚至纵容，这种显而易见的双重标准引发了“全球南方”的集体反感。《纽约时报》的评论指出，这是西方外交史上的一个分水岭时刻：巴西、南非、印尼等新兴大国不再愿意“选边站队”，而是积极推动金砖扩容与“去美元化”进程。西方试图通过G7主导全球议程的能力下降，取而代之的是西方话语权被不断稀释的“后西方世界”。

Fourth, the "weaponization" of strategic tools has backfired, eroding the economic foundation of hegemony. To compensate for insufficient military deterrence, the West has increasingly "weaponized economic relations." From expelling Russia from the SWIFT system, to imposing "small yard, high fence" chip blockades on China, to the Trump administration's brandishing of the "universal tariff" stick, these measures have strategically accelerated the process of "de-Westernization" of global finance and supply chains. Central banks around the world are accelerating their hoarding of gold to replace US Treasury bonds, and multinational corporations are restructuring their supply chains to circumvent long-arm jurisdiction. Wolf warns that this practice of privatizing the global economic commons and using them as geopolitical weapons is "destroying one's own defensive wall" [10]10 "Destroying one's own defensive wall" (自毁长城) – a Chinese idiom meaning to undermine one's own defenses or security through one's own actions.: while it may temporarily protect hegemony, in the long run it destroys the open international order, pushing hegemonic costs to an unbearable high.

第四，战略工具的“泛武器化”反噬了霸权的经济根基。为弥补军事威慑力不足，西方越来越将”经济关系武器化“。从将俄罗斯踢出SWIFT系统，到对华实施“小院高墙”的芯片封锁，再到特朗普政府挥舞的“普惠性关税”大棒，这些举措在战略上加速了全球金融与供应链的“去西方化”进程。各国央行加速囤积黄金以替代美债，跨国企业重构供应链以规避长臂管辖。沃尔夫警告，这种将全球经济公地私有化并作为地缘政治武器的做法，是在“自毁长城”：虽然能短期护持霸权，却在长期上摧毁了开放的国际秩序，使霸权成本进一步攀升至不可承受的高位。

The crisis in the West's geostrategic domain is essentially the ever-widening gap between the "ambition of a universal empire" and the "capacity of a nation-state." Whether it is Trump's contraction and isolationism or the establishment's efforts to barely maintain the status quo, neither can change the basic fact: the West is no longer able to maintain the unipolar liberal international order at low cost.

西方在地缘战略领域的危机，本质上是“普世帝国的野心”与“民族国家的能力”之间的落差不断扩大。无论是特朗普的收缩孤立，还是建制派的勉力维持，都无法改变一个基本事实：西方已无力再以低成本维持单极自由主义国际秩序。

(IV) From "Hegemonic Consensus" to the Involutionary Logic of the "Defensive Empire"

（四）从“霸权共识”到“防御性帝国”的内卷逻辑

Looking through the surface phenomena described above, it is necessary to ask, from the macroscopic perspective of international relations theory and historical philosophy: why have the West's vaunted "soft and hard power" combinations degenerated into "negative assets" regarded as burdens by its allies? This is not merely a tactical misallocation of resources, but a structural involution of its civilizational paradigm after encountering historical boundaries.

透过上述表象，需要在国际关系理论与历史哲学的宏观视野下追问：为何西方引以为傲的“软硬实力”组合拳，在当下会退化为被盟友视为负担的“负资产”？这不仅是战术层面的资源错配，更是其文明范式在遭遇历史边界后的结构性内卷。

From the perspective of Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony, true hegemony is built not only on military coercion but also on obtaining the "voluntary consent" of the ruled through universal value narratives, especially the acquisition of moral and cultural leadership. The reason the West was able to maintain the unipolar order at relatively low cost after the Cold War was precisely its success in packaging "liberal democracy" as the ultimate destination [11]11 "Ultimate destination" (归宿) – a term often used in Chinese political discourse to denote the final goal or end point of historical development, here referring to the liberal democratic model as the purported end of history. for all humanity. However, with the fragmentation of the value community caused by internal "culture wars" and the moral bankruptcy triggered by external "double standards," the West has lost its ability to produce universal consensus.

立足安东尼奥·葛兰西（Antonio Gramsci）的霸权理论视角审视，真正的霸权不仅建立在军事强制之上，更要通过普世价值叙事获取被统治者“自愿同意”，尤其是取得道德与文化领导权。冷战后的西方之所以能以较低成本维持单极秩序，正是因为其成功地将“自由民主”包装为全人类的终极归宿。然而，随着内部“文化战争”导致的价值共同体碎裂，以及外部“双重标准”引发的道德破产，西方已丧失了生产普世共识的能力。

Constrained by the depletion of this mechanism of "voluntary consent," Western geostrategy has had to transform: from an "expansive hegemony" aimed at providing global public goods (such as free trade and open technology) to a "defensive empire" aimed at maintaining vested interests through coercive force. To forcibly maintain its precarious position in a multipolar world, the West has not hesitated to turn the global financial system, supply chains, and technological standards into geopolitical weapons (such as chip blockades and long-arm jurisdiction). Although this approach demonstrates the stock advantage of hard power in the short term, its essence is the swallowing of "value rationality" by "instrumental rationality": it marks the West's abandonment of its constructive role as the "architect" of the global order, turning it into a "gatekeeper" or even a "destroyer" of that order. Therefore, the current crisis in the West's cultural and national power dimensions is essentially an eruption of the tension between "universalist narratives" and "geopolitical self-interest." When a civilization cannot provide an inclusive imagination for the future of humanity and can only rely on "building walls" and sanctions to maintain its sense of superiority over the "jungle," the core of its hegemonic legitimacy has undergone an irreversible implosion, and the pendulum of history naturally swings toward the "post-Western" era.

在这种“自愿同意”机制枯竭的约束下，西方地缘战略不得不转变：从旨在提供全球公共产品（如自由贸易、开放科技）的“扩张性霸权”，转变为旨在通过强制力维护既得利益的“防御性帝国”。为在多极世界中强行护持摇摇欲坠的地位，西方不惜将全球金融体系、供应链与技术标准，转化为地缘政治武器（如芯片封锁、长臂管辖）。这种做法虽在短期内展示了硬实力的存量优势，但其本质是“工具理性”对“价值理性”的吞噬：标志着西方放弃了作为全球秩序“建筑师”的建设性角色，转而成为这一秩序的“守门人”乃至“破坏者”。因此，当前西方在文化与国力维度的危机，实质是“普世主义叙事”与“地缘政治私利”之间张力的爆发。当一个文明不能为人类未来提供具有包容性的想象力，而只能依靠“筑墙”与制裁维系自身相对于“丛林”的优越感时，其霸权的合法性内核便已发生不可逆的内爆，历史的钟摆自然也摆向“后西方”时代。

IV. Tracing the "Pathology" of the Self-Diagnosis of Capitalist Countries

四、资本主义国家自我诊断的“病理”溯源

The failure of political governance, stagnation of economic growth, collapse of cultural consensus, and geostrategic overload in capitalist countries are often attributed in mainstream Western discourse to single factors such as policy mistakes, external shocks, or the moral hazards of political agents. However, from the perspective of Marxist political economy and historical materialism, the above phenomena are not discrete slices of social pathology, but manifestations of the inherent limits of the capitalist modernization development model. The upsurge of "self-diagnosis" in Western public opinion circles is essentially the "self-anxiety" produced by this institutional system when it faces structural contradictions that it cannot overcome through its own mechanisms. The roots of this crisis are deeply buried in the inherent contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, accumulation regime, and civilizational paradigm.

资本主义国家政治治理失效、经济增长停滞、文化共识瓦解、地缘战略过载，在西方主流话语体系中常被归因为单一的政策失误、外部冲击、政治代理人的道德风险等因素。然而，从马克思主义政治经济学与历史唯物主义视角深入分析可见，上述现象并非离散的社会病理切片，而是资本主义现代化这一发展模式内在限度的表现。西方舆论界兴起的“自我诊断”热潮，实质上是这一制度体系在面对无法通过自身机制克服的结构性矛盾时所产生的“自我焦虑”。这种危机的根源，深埋于资本主义生产方式、积累体制、文明范式的内在矛盾。

(I) The Logic of Digital Capital Appropriation and the "Re-solidification" of Private Ownership

（一）数字资本的占有逻辑与私有制的“再固化”

The reason why "self-diagnoses" of the capitalist crisis have emerged intensively in recent years is that the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production have undergone a structural upgrade under digital conditions: the degree of socialization of production has been pushed to a new height by platformization, datafication, and networking, while the form of appropriation, reinforced by platform monopolies and intellectual property regimes, exhibits stronger exclusivity and closure. The contradiction between the socialization of production and the private appropriation of the means of production, as revealed by Marxism, has not been dissolved in the digital economy; on the contrary, it has been institutionalized in a more expansive manner. This can explain the many symptoms discussed earlier—sluggish growth, unequal distribution, and class anxiety.

资本主义危机的“自我诊断”之所以在近年密集出现，是因为资本主义生产方式的矛盾在数字化条件下完成了结构性升级：生产的社会化程度在平台化、数据化、网络化推动下被推至新的高度，而占有形式却在平台垄断与知识产权制度加持下呈现更强的排他性与封闭性。马克思主义揭示的生产社会化与生产资料私人占有之间的矛盾，在数字经济中并未消解，反而以更具扩张性的方式制度化，这就能够解释前文关于增长乏力、分配不公、阶层焦虑的诸多症候。

Digital technology integrates dispersed labor, division of labor and cooperation, and consumer behavior into the same information infrastructure, giving the process of social reproduction a technical character of a highly calculable, traceable, and dispatchable "general factory." However, the "general" character of this factory does not equate to public ownership. By controlling data, algorithms, computing power, and interfaces, platform enterprises convert network externalities and the fruits of social cooperation—which should have the attributes of public goods—into appraisable quasi-property rights. Through rule-making power, they translate market competition into "ecosystem access." In this process, the source of profit undergoes a structural shift: a portion of surplus profit no longer comes primarily from efficiency gains achieved by improving the organization of production, but more from controlling entry points, standards, and information flows, from extracting fees from upstream and downstream actors, from levying "tolls" on third parties, and from the continuous occupation of users' attention and behavior. This form of revenue is less like classical industrial profit and more akin to an institutionalized "extraction of rent" from the digital public sphere, behind which lies the "re-solidification" of private ownership under new technological conditions.

数字技术把分散劳动、分工协作、消费行为纳入同一信息基础设施，使社会再生产过程在技术层面呈现出高度可计算、可追踪、可调度的“总体工厂”特征；然而这种工厂的“总体”特征并不等于公共化。平台企业通过对数据、算法、算力、接口的控制，将本应具有公共品属性的网络外部性与社会协作成果，转化为可计价的准产权，通过规则制定权把市场竞争转译为“生态准入”。在此过程中，利润来源发生结构性偏移：一部分超额收益不再主要来自改进生产组织带来的效率提升，而更多来自对入口、标准、信息流的把持，对上下游的抽成，对第三方征收“过路费”，以及对用户注意力与行为的持续占用。这种收益形态与其说是古典意义上的产业利润，不如说更接近于对数字公共空间的制度化的“地租攫取”，背后正是私有制在新技术条件下的“再固化”。

Consequently, so-called "secular stagnation" cannot be understood merely as the result of macroeconomic policy failures or demographic changes; one must also see the inherent suppression of accumulation dynamics by digital platform monopolies. When capital is more inclined to consolidate advantages within existing network effects and maintain "moats" through mergers, acquisitions, and blockades, innovation may degenerate from a mechanism for "raising social productive forces" into a tool for "preserving monopoly rents." When capital returns come more from assetization and rent-seeking, investment flows more easily toward controllable monopoly nodes rather than uncertain productive expansion, thereby weakening the social diffusion effects brought by raising total factor productivity. Against the backdrop of persistently rising asset prices and sluggish wage growth, this forms a distribution pattern of "prosperity on the asset side, pressure on the labor side," exacerbating class differentiation and hindering intergenerational mobility. This also explains why, when discussing inequality, mainstream media and economic commentary in the UK and US increasingly shift their focus from mere tax redistribution to concerns about platform power, data regimes, and digital monopolies: the focus is not moral condemnation, but a judgment that the accumulation mechanism has "shifted from production to appropriation."

由此，所谓“长期停滞”不能仅被理解为宏观政策失灵或人口结构变动的结果，而应看到数字平台垄断对积累动力的内在抑制：当资本更倾向在既有网络效应上固化优势、以并购与封锁维持“护城河”，创新就可能从“提高社会生产力”的机制退化为“维护垄断租金”的工具；当资本回报更多来自资产化与租金化，投资就更容易流向可控的垄断节点，而非不确定的生产性扩张，进而弱化提升全要素生产率带来的社会扩散效应，并在资产价格持续走高而工资增速乏力的对照中，形成“资产端繁荣、劳动端承压”的分配格局，加剧了阶层分化，导致代际流动受阻。这也解释了为何英美主流媒体与经济学评论在谈论不平等时，越来越多地把注意力从单纯的税收再分配，转向对平台权力、数据制度、数字垄断的担忧：焦点并非道德谴责，而是对积累机制“从生产转向占有”的判断。

(II) The Exhaustion of the Capacity to Externalize Crisis: The Failure of Spatial Fix and the Normalization of "Inward Deprivation"

（二）危机外移能力的衰竭：空间修复失效与“内向性剥夺”的常态化

Historically, capitalism has repeatedly sought outlets for surplus capital and pressure on the profit rate by opening new markets, relocating industries, exporting capital, and reshaping the international division of labor. However, the mechanisms of crisis externalization and temporal deferral on which it relied are now failing, causing crises to flow back from the outside to the inside, from the periphery to the core, and manifesting as political polarization, social fragmentation, and governance paralysis in the form of an "inward explosion." Harvey's theory of the "spatial fix" is essentially a historical mechanism that postpones the concentrated outbreak of contradictions through geographical expansion and spatial reorganization. When this mechanism was effective, core countries could use external surplus gains to provide the material basis for internal class compromise, and could also shape internal identity and integrate political resources through narratives of external order, thereby delaying crises caused by pressure on the profit rate and insufficient demand. After the Cold War, the outward expansion supported by neoliberal globalization provided the conditions for this fix for a considerable period: cheap labor, global supply chains, financial openness, and the dollar system together constituted the institutional channels for crisis externalization.

资本主义在历史上曾反复通过开辟新市场、转移产业、输出资本、重塑国际分工，为过剩资本与利润率压力寻找出路。然而，其依赖的危机外移与时间延宕机制正在失灵，导致危机由外向内、由边缘向核心回流，并以“内向爆破”的方式呈现为政治极化、社会撕裂、治理瘫痪。哈维提出的“空间修复”论，本质上是以地理扩张与空间重组推迟矛盾集中爆发的历史机制。当这一机制有效时，核心国家可以凭借外部超额收益为内部阶级妥协提供物质基础，也可以通过对外秩序叙事塑造内部认同与整合政治资源，延缓利润率压力与需求不足导致的危机。冷战后，以新自由主义全球化为支撑的外向扩张，曾在相当时期内提供了这种修复的条件：廉价劳动力、全球供应链、金融开放、美元体系共同构成了危机外移的制度通道。

However, since the 21st century, especially after 2010, the "spatial fix" has encountered a dual constraint. First, multipolarity and geopolitical conflicts have significantly raised the costs of external expansion; capital spillover and institutional export no longer enjoy the low-friction political conditions of the unipolar era. Second, the restructuring of global industrial chains and the strengthening of security narratives have fragmented cross-border accumulation spaces, making it difficult for capital to continue relying on external markets and institutional dividends of the same scale. With external channels blocked, capitalism, in order to maintain its self-expansion, increasingly relies on internal assetization and financialization: commodifying the public sphere, debtifying the future income of families and individuals, and redistributing social risks institutionally to the working class and other middle- and lower-level groups. This is precisely the contemporary expression of what Harvey calls "accumulation by dispossession": when the space for real profit is squeezed, capital becomes more inclined, through privatization, financial plunder, enclosure of rights, and institutional arrangements, to convert resources originally belonging to the public or the community into assets that can be appropriated by a minority.

然而，进入21世纪尤其是2010年以来，“空间修复”遭遇双重约束。第一，多极化与地缘冲突显著抬高外部扩张成本，资本外溢与制度输出不再像单极时代那样具有低摩擦的政治条件；第二，全球产业链重组与安全叙事强化，使跨境积累空间被切割，资本难以持续依赖同等规模的外部市场与外部制度红利。外部通道受阻后，资本主义为维持自我增殖，更加依赖内部的资产化与金融化，把公共领域商品化，把家庭与个人的未来收入债务化，把社会风险以制度形式再分配给劳动者等中下层群体。这正是哈维所谓“剥夺性积累”的当代表达：当实体利润空间受挤压，资本便更倾向于通过私有化、金融掠夺、权利圈占、制度安排，将原本属于公共或共同体的资源转化为可被少数占有的资产。

This "inward deprivation" does not merely create a gap between rich and poor; more critically, it changes the structure of political conflict. This is because those who are dispossessed no longer face the temporary difficulties of a cyclical recession, but an institutionalization of shrinking channels for upward mobility, degraded public services, and the collapse of a sense of life security. Meanwhile, the beneficiaries are often highly coupled with capital markets, monopoly sectors, and the policy lobbying system. When inequality exhibits a long-term trend of "top capture" and reinforces itself through a mechanism where the rate of return on assets persistently exceeds the growth rate, politics more easily enters a track of legitimacy depletion: while formal democracy still operates, the substantive capacity for policy response declines, thereby inducing "anti-establishment" mobilization, political vetoism, and the normalization of social confrontation. Therefore, the current political tearing in the West is not merely the result of noisy cultural issues; it is more deeply rooted in the involution of the accumulation regime: when capital cannot effectively externalize contradictions, it tends to compress the costs of social reproduction inward, externalizing class contradictions into the public sphere in the form of identity politics, geographical antagonism, and value wars, ultimately eroding the operating conditions of the governance system.

这一“内向性剥夺”并不只制造贫富差距，更关键的是改变了政治冲突的结构。这是因为，被剥夺者面对的已不是周期性衰退中的暂时困境，而是上升通道收缩、公共服务退化与生活安全感崩塌的制度化；而获益者则往往与资本市场、垄断部门与政策游说体系高度耦合。当不平等在长期趋势上呈现“顶层捕获”，并通过资产回报率持续高于增长率的机制自我强化，政治便更容易进入合法性耗散的轨道：在形式民主仍然运转的情况下，实质性的政策响应能力下降，进而诱发“反建制”动员、政治否决化与社会对抗常态化。因此，当前西方的政治撕裂并非仅是文化议题的喧嚣所致，而更深地根植于积累体制内卷化：当资本无法有效向外转嫁矛盾，就更倾向于向内压缩社会再生产成本，把阶级矛盾以身份政治、地理对立、价值战争的形式外化到公共领域，最终侵蚀治理体系的运转条件。

From the historical perspective of the world system, this process also explains why "self-diagnosis" has become urgent in the mainstream media of core countries: when the crisis no longer occurs on the "periphery" but directly manifests as budget deadlocks, declining public service capacity, the normalization of protest movements, and the decline of state capacity in core countries, elite discourse must produce a narrative capable of naming the crisis in order to maintain interpretive authority and the imagination of order. The reason "polycrisis" has gained traction in public discussion is precisely that it points to a reality: various shocks amplify each other through the coupling relationships of finance, industry, the state, and public opinion, making institutional repairs increasingly difficult to achieve on a single dimension.

从世界体系的历史视角看，这一过程也解释了“自我诊断”何以在核心国家的主流媒体中变得迫切：当危机不再发生在“外围”，而是直接表现为核心国家的预算僵局、公共服务能力下降、抗议运动常态化、国家能力衰退时，精英话语必须生产一种能够命名危机的叙事，以维持解释权与秩序想象。“多重危机”之所以在公共讨论中获得传播力，正因为其指向一个现实：各类冲击通过金融、产业、国家及舆论的耦合关系相互放大，使制度修补越来越难以在单一维度奏效。

(III) The Exhaustion of Legitimacy and Meaning: The Expansion of Instrumental Rationality and the Collapse of Hegemonic Consensus

（三）合法性与意义的枯竭：工具理性的扩张与霸权共识的瓦解

Even if one acknowledges the structural constraints of economic and systemic conditions, one must still answer: why, under conditions where institutional procedures still function and technical governance becomes ever more refined, do feelings of "decline," "hopelessness," and "civilizational fatigue" still spread widely? From Max Weber's perspective, modern capitalism, driven by formal rationality and instrumental rationality, constructs a highly efficient institutional machine. But this machine traps individuals in an "iron cage," subjecting the lifeworld to the logic of institutions, thereby triggering a poverty of meaning and a hollowing out of values. When this rationalization is further intensified in digital governance and algorithmic management, social coordination increasingly relies on quantifiable indicators, risk models, and technical discipline, and public life more easily degenerates into "performance, competition, and elimination." When economic growth stagnates and class mobility is blocked, the exchange relationship promised by instrumental rationality—"efficiency in exchange for prosperity"—cannot be delivered, and the crisis of meaning erupts from a latent state into an overt explosion.

即便承认经济与体系条件的结构性约束，但仍须回答：为何在制度程序依然运转、技术治理愈发精密的条件下，“衰落感”“无望感”“文明疲惫”仍普遍扩散？在马克斯·韦伯的视域中，现代资本主义在形式理性与工具理性的推动下建构起高效率的制度机器，但这种机器会把个体困入“铁笼”，使生活世界被制度逻辑支配，进而引发意义的贫困与价值的空心化。当这种理性化在数字治理与算法管理中进一步强化，社会协调就越来越依赖可量化指标、风险模型、技术规训，公共生活就更容易退化为“绩效、竞争、淘汰”；而当经济增长停滞、阶层流动受阻，工具理性许诺的“以效率换繁荣”的交换关系无法兑现时，意义危机便从潜伏状态转为显性爆发。

From the perspective of Habermas’s “legitimation crisis” and “colonization of the lifeworld,” late capitalist states, in order to stabilize the economic system, often need to expand the intervention of the administrative and technical systems into society. However, when system rationality intrudes into domains that should be sustained by communicative rationality and value consensus, social integration encounters difficulties, and legitimacy is forced to rely on increasingly fragile performance justifications and symbolic operations. When the supply of public services declines, distributional injustice intensifies, and political consultation degenerates into a veto game, the trust contract between the state and society suffers irreversible erosion. In the mediated and platform-based structure of public opinion, this erosion is further amplified by algorithms into sustained emotional polarization, eroding the space for rational public discussion and making value conflicts more difficult to translate into institutional compromises.

在哈贝马斯“合法化危机”与“生活世界殖民”视域中，晚期资本主义国家为稳定经济体系，往往需要扩大行政与技术系统对社会的介入，但当系统理性入侵本应由沟通理性与价值共识维系的领域，社会整合就会遭遇困境，合法性被迫依赖越来越脆弱的绩效证明与象征操作。当公共服务供给下降、分配不公加剧、政治协商退化为否决游戏时，国家与社会之间的信任契约就会出现不可逆的耗损。而在媒介化与平台化的舆论结构中，这种耗损又会被算法放大为持续的情绪极化，使公共理性讨论空间被侵蚀，价值冲突更难被转化为制度妥协。

Going further, the concentrated manifestation of the crisis at the ideological level is the disintegration of hegemonic consensus. Hegemony in Gramsci’s sense is not merely coercion but depends on the “voluntary consent” of the ruled to the order, on a value narrative capable of universalizing particular class interests. The narrative of the “end of history” after the Cold War once performed this function for a considerable period: depicting the combination of the market and democracy as the ultimate form of human politics, thereby providing moral legitimacy and historical inevitability for neoliberal globalization. However, when the promises of growth and democracy fail, elite discourse finds it difficult to continue describing the existing order as the realization of universal interests; on the contrary, it increasingly needs to maintain its interpretive authority through “crisis naming” and “institutional self-reflection,” which also exposes the decline of its capacity for consensus production.

更进一步，危机在意识形态层面的集中表现，是霸权共识的瓦解。葛兰西意义上的霸权并不只是强制，更依赖于被统治者对秩序的“自愿同意”，依赖于一种能够把特定阶级利益普遍化的价值叙事。冷战后“历史终结论”的叙事曾在相当时期内承担这种功能：把市场与民主的结合描绘为人类政治的终极形态，从而为新自由主义全球化提供了道德合法性与历史必然性。然而，当增长承诺与民主承诺失效，精英话语就难以继续把既有秩序描述为普遍利益的实现；相反，它越来越需要通过“危机命名”“制度自省”维持解释权，这也暴露出其共识生产能力的衰退。

Therefore, the so-called “culture war” is not a mere conflict of ideas but an alternative mobilization after the failure of the meaning-production mechanism: in a society dominated by instrumental rationality and where the lifeworld is squeezed, identity, morality, and historical narratives become more easily mobilizable resources; against the backdrop of degraded social security and entrenched class stratification, the moral imagination of “meritocracy” also more easily reverses into a widespread sense of humiliation and abandonment, thereby providing an emotional foundation for anti-establishment politics. When institutions can no longer offer predictable paths for improvement, politics tends to slide toward symbolic confrontation and the division between friend and enemy. Thus, the proliferation of “self-diagnosis” constitutes part of the crisis: it is both a description of reality and an acknowledgment of the disintegration of legitimacy, signaling that the old mode of ideological integration is failing while a new integrative mechanism has yet to take shape.

因此，所谓“文化战争”并非单纯的观念之争，而是意义生产机制失灵后的替代性动员：在工具理性主导且生活世界被挤压的社会中，身份、道德、历史叙事更容易成为可被动员的资源；在社会保障退化与阶层固化的背景下，“优绩主义”的道德想象也更容易反转为普遍的羞辱感与被遗弃感，从而为反建制政治提供情感基础。当制度不再能提供可预期的改善路径，政治便容易滑向象征性对抗与敌我划分。由此，“自我诊断”的扩散就构成危机的一部分：既是对现实的描述，也是对合法性崩解的承认，标志着旧的意识形态整合方式正在失效，而新的整合机制尚未形成。

About the author: Chen Huiyuan, doctoral student at the School of Marxism, Xi’an University of Technology, and assistant researcher at the Institute of Excellence Engineers, Sichuan University.

作者简介：陈慧媛，西安理工大学马克思主义学院博士生，四川大学卓越工程师学院助理研究员。