Concept and connotation
The word involution comes from "Agricultural involution" written by American anthropologist Gilte. According to Gilte's definition, "involution" refers to the phenomenon that a social or cultural model stagnates or cannot be transformed into another advanced model after reaching a certain form at a certain stage. Huang Zongzhi used the concept of involution in the study of China's economic development and social changes in his book Small Peasant Families and Rural Development in the Yangtze River Delta. He called the growth without development "involution", and obtained the way of total output growth by investing a lot of labor on limited land, that is, the way of diminishing marginal benefits.
Huang Zongzhi believes that since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, under the pressure of population, the small-scale peasant economy in China has gradually become a "survival economy". For centuries, the commercialization of rural economy in China is not the "bud of capitalism", but the survival choice of poor small farmers. Commercialization has not broken the management system of small farmers, but has further strengthened this system. He thinks it is necessary to distinguish the commercialization of agriculture for centuries. The market behavior of paying rent to landlords who are not in the village in cash or in kind can be called "exploitation-driven commercialization", the market behavior of paying direct costs of production and maintenance can be called "survival-driven commercialization", and the market behavior of selling surplus agricultural products to obtain profits to meet rent, production costs and consumption needs can be called "profit-driven commercialization". Huang Zongzhi's research and domestic scholars' research show that "exploitation-driven commercialization" is the main form of agricultural commercialization in North China and the Yangtze River Delta. This kind of commercialization "is a rational behavior for survival, not a rational behavior for profit maximization." When Huang Zongzhi used this concept to study the agricultural economic and social changes in China, he expanded the connotation of this concept and made it more explanatory to the research object, instead of making "the meaning of involution complicated and vague, causing some more tangled problems"
Prasenjit duara put forward the concept of involution of state power in Culture, Power and State-North China 1900- 1949. He thinks that in his works, the concept of involution does not completely conform to Gilte's definition, and he just borrows this word, revealing the phenomenon that has deviated from its original meaning. The main similarities between "involution of political power" and agricultural involution are: there is no actual growth (that is, the benefits are not improved); The regeneration and maintenance of fixed methods (such as profitable national brokers). The difference is that the system of normalization and rationalization often conflicts with the involution force; Dysfunction and degeneration occur simultaneously. In the 20th century, the state power did not increase its fiscal revenue by improving its own efficiency, but by expanding its extension-adding institutions and increasing taxes. As a result, the growth of national fiscal revenue is accompanied by the growth of corruption and bribery of "for-profit brokers", which is a manifestation of the involution of state power in fiscal revenue, indicating that China's efforts to modernize state power have failed since the 20th century.