— Remarks in a dialogue with Dr. Miwan and Dr. Shigong
First, let us analyze a concept. Mencius’ mother used the cloth she had woven to ask the teacher to educate Mencius. Cloth is a visible object物; the teacher’s instruction is a “matter” or “task事.” Therefore, the term “易事yi shi” (“exchange of tasks/Accomplishments”) can encompass objects as well. Under a market economy, “exchange of tasks/Accomplishments” is a fair trade for both sides.
Wage labor is different. It may be called “易⼒yi li”(“exchange of labor power.”) The employer and the employed are not equal in status. What is traded is not the “task” performed by human labor, but labor-power. The cost of exchanging labor-power is wages, and there is a difference between wages and the value created by the “task” in market exchange. In economic terminology, using the concept of calculus, the difference between the marginal revenue product of labor and the worker’s actual wage rate is called “wage exploitation” by the employer of the worker. I place this under a “secondary differentiation.” (Different from Natural differentiation )
In Mencius’ context, within a natural economy, people and tasks are unified. In a socialized market economy, the separation of people and tasks is the cause of exploitation. The work a person performs may be called substantive labor; the result of that labor, insofar as it appears in a form tradable in the market, may be called objectified labor. Mencius calls this “事shi” (“task/Accomplishments”).
To return the computable wage exploitation—namely, the difference between person (wage) and task (output value)—to each person, so that each worker trades his or her own “task/Accomplishments” in society and the market, is the modern transformation of what Mencius meant by “tong gong yi shi.” To regard “exchange of labor power” as illegal is the substantive definition of a “socialist market economy.”
This is also the modern transformation from self-cultivating peasant, to tenant, to free person. In rights language, this means ownership of labor products, or ownership of virtual labor. The labor side / human-capital side and the capital side are in a cooperative, not employer-employee, relationship.
Modern society abolishes the hidden default rule that “the children of slaves remain slaves,” and slavery therefore dissolves. In the American South, slave states settled the issue through civil war; in the North, Massachusetts abolished slavery by law from birth. Establishing the unity of person and task through “tong gong yi shi” is the same in principle. In the West, “exchange of persons” is slavery;“exchange of labor power” is the wage system and capitalism. But Mencius’ “tong gong yi shi” is socialism, with its classical form in the self-cultivating peasant and its modern transformation in the free person.
A simple example: a company invests 1 million, spends 500,000 on means of production(including 250,000 in fixed assets among the means of production), pays 500,000 in wages, and clears 2 million in market revenue , producing the usual capitalist gross profit of 1 million. If we consider secondary differentiation and wage exploitation, then in fact the capital side contributes 1 million, the labor side 500,000, for 1.5 million of initial cooperative capital and labor. From the 2 million revenue, 1 million returns to the capital side (including the 250,000 fixed assets), 500,000 returns to the labor/human-capital side, leaving 750,000 profit. Of that, the capital side receives two-thirds, or 500,000, and the labor side one-third, or 250,000. This 250,000 difference between person and task—the difference between wages and the value created—is what modern economics calls wage exploitation. A state-owned economy in which central planning funds are provided and 1 million in profit returns to the state is the Soviet model; a system in which all profit returns to capital is the American model. Thus the Soviet model falls into the 墨Mohist path, the American model into the path of 杨Yang Zhu, and the Confucian Middle Way中庸之道 lies here.
From the perspective of Mencius’ philosophy of “exchange of tasks/accomplishments,” today’s market practices such as the Pangdonglai胖东来 model of labor-capital profit sharing are socialist in nature; the difference from ordinary private commercial enterprises lies here. This is what is meant by a “Confucian merchant儒商”; the Great Learning says that when wealth is dispersed, people gather.
The unity of person and task/accomplishments is what the “Outline for a New Orthodoxy of Confucian Learning” calls the “labor theory of consistency LTC.” What I call “our Confucians are self-sufficient” is precisely this Mencius-style philosophy of exchange of tasks/accomoplishment.
This is a very simple modern Confucian solution.
Signed
2026.03.21, Ling shan.
Chinese version posted on May 19, 2026 https://wp.me/po2t3-34z
Postscript
The concepts of Neo-Mencian political economy—“natural differentiation” and
“secondary differentiation”—first took shape between 2001 and 2003, in reference
to “A Confucian Interpretation of Contemporary China’s Path.” In 2004, I used the
term “reject New Yangism and New Mohism距斥新杨墨” as the basis for a new
Confucian orthodoxy and named this system Neo-Mencianism新孟儒学. By 2007, I
incorporated Maoism under the name of a new orthodoxy centered on anti-imperialism and anti-revisionism, using it to explain world history and Chinese
history, distinguishing left and right within Confucianism and the struggle between
aristocrats (Qin-Han-Tang) and landlords (Song-Ming-modern). Later, Party
Congress proposed opposition to the “evil path” (imperialism) and the “old path”
(revisionism), which were also included under this new orthodoxy. I also handled
the relationship between Chinese and Western intellectual lineages, treating Marx
as a descendant of Plato and dividing Confucianism into three periods.
The modern transformation from a self-cultivating peasant collective⾃耕农联合体
to a free-person collective⾃由⼈联合体, in Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis
form, or what might be called a modern Well-field system井⽥制, is a relatively
recent matter, roughly around 2014. Gan Yang’s publicly published “unify three
traditions通三统” appeared in 2005; I criticized him in 2007 for neglecting Mao
Zedong and Deng Xiaoping’s active inheritance of the Three Worlds Theory. Neo-
Mencianism connects inner sagehood and outer kingship: inner sagehood follows
Confucius, outer kingship follows the Chairman. Mencius is the bridge, hence the
name Neo-Mencianism.
The Left and Right of Confucianism in Song Dynasty
“Ordinary officials look at immediate affairs; Confucians plan for the distant
future.”
1.The smaller aim is to suppress and seize the property of monopolistic
and merged estates in order to ease the burden on the lower people; the
larger aim is to restore the ancient well-field system so that the people all
receive its benefits. This is the left wing of Confucianism in Song dynasty.
2. If one takes land from the rich and gives it to the landless, the rich will not
submit, and disorder will surely arise. The rich are the foundation of the
prefectures and counties and are relied upon by both above and below.
The rich support the small people for the Son of Heaven and also supply
what is needed above; although they take substantial profits to enlarge
their own estates, if one considers their labor, the balance is roughly
appropriate. This is the right wing of Confucianism in Song dynasty.
by Ye Shi <JinJuan·minshi>叶适 <进卷· ⺠事下>
Appendix: Outline of a New Orthodoxy for Confucian Learning
The “From Yao to Mao” new orthodoxy of Confucianism is also the discourse of
“holding fast to the mean, distinguishing Huaxia from the barbarians, rejecting
Yang and Mo, opposing Buddhism and Daoism, and resisting imperialism/
revisionism” (the “evil path” and the “old path”). This is Confucian doctrinal
speech, and it also addresses civilizational development and humanity’s future.“From Yao to Mao” is a phrase used by Western historians for Chinese history.
Neo-Mencianism / Mao Confucianism⽑儒 criticizes the Soviet model as falling into
Mohism and the American model as falling into Yang Zhu’s doctrine. This is
Mencius’ rejection of Yang and Mo as expressed in political Confucianism, that is,
the middle way of opposing imperialism and revisionism.
From the standpoint of traditional classical Confucian political order, this is the
modern transformation from a self-cultivating peasant collective to a free-person
collective (self-cultivating peasant → tenant → free person). In world history, it is
also the social ideal of eliminating exploitation under market-economy conditions
(slave → wage laborer → free person). The self-cultivating peasant is the classical
form of the free person. The bourgeois revolution negates this. The free-person
collective is the negation of the negation, so it appears similar to the self-
cultivating peasant collective. This is also the internal logic behind the
resemblance between “the tiller shall have the land” and Marxism.
The self-cultivating peasant collective has two divergent paths: leftward toward
state power control, and rightward toward capital control. These correspond to the
Soviet model (historically analogous to Wang Mang’s reforms) and the American
model. Neo-Mencianism / Mao Confucianism is not a defensive regional discourse;
this is why I revise Mr. Jiang Qing’s definition of the legitimacy of “earth” in the
threefold legitimacy framework. (See “A Confucian Polity of Heaven, Earth, and
Humanity,” where Heaven has its pattern, Earth/the all-under-heaven has its
pattern, and Humanity has its pattern.)
If one speaks of contract theory, Mao and the people have a contract to eliminate
exploitation, and this is also where the legitimacy of the People’s Republic lies.
After anti-imperialism and anti-revisionism, Mao no longer had Western
philosophical scholarship to rely on, and thus returned to the distinction between
kingship and hegemony, returning to Confucian political philosophy. The “three
worlds” theory of China, imperialism and revisionism帝修中三个世界论, derived
from the East Wind / West Wind two-world theory东⻛⻄⻛两个世界论, is the
modern version of Mencius’ three-world theory of Confucians, Mohists, and
Yangists (“the Way of Yang and Mo does not cease; the Way of Confucius does not
appear”), and Deng inherited this theory.
Neo-Mencianism—“inner sagehood follows the Master, outer kingship follows the
Chairman”—is what is being unified here: the inner and the outer, through the
Labor theory of consistency, in order to complete the modern transformation from
the traditional self-cultivating peasant collective to the free-person collective,
taking one’s stand in the center of all-under-heaven⽴中于天下.
