In July 2024, while interning at a company in Shanghai, a university student named Zhu disassembled an express parcel containing a watch. By mistake, he did not open the inflatable protective packaging containing the watch head, and instead threw it straight into the trash. When he discovered that the package contained only the bracelet and not the watch head, he immediately reported it to the company — only two minutes had passed. But Zhang, the person in charge sitting in the office downstairs, merely told Zhu to write a “no watch head” label and stick it on the package, and the company’s work chat group had no response from any superior for two full days and no measures were taken. As it turned out, after discovering that the watch was worth 65,000 yuan, the company urgently reviewed the surveillance footage and found that the unopened inflatable packaging had been thrown into the trash. They then went to the dump to rummage for it, but in the end they still could not find the watch head. After compensating the owner at the original price, the company immediately turned around and filed a lawsuit, demanding that the intern make full compensation. The watch head of this Rolex was worth 65,000 yuan, while this intern earned only 180 yuan a day; full compensation would be equivalent to all of his daily wages for 361 days. In the end, the court, citing Article 1191 of the so-called Civil Code, held that Zhu had fulfilled his duty of careful inspection, but had neglected to disassemble the protective packaging before discarding the parcel, constituting a serious operational negligence; the company, after receiving the report, had taken no measures at all and also bore serious fault, and therefore ordered Zhu to compensate the company 13,000 yuan. Although this was not full compensation, the more than ten thousand yuan was still equivalent to 72 days of his wages.
Is this kind of compensation, which is practically astronomical for a worker, really reasonable or not? According to the logic of the Chinese courts, it does seem to be the case: both the worker and the company were at fault, so both should compensate. But China is a capitalist country, and the courts certainly serve the bourgeoisie; this has already been proven by countless unequal rulings against the rich and the poor, and by harsh trials of the poor accused of crimes. Therefore, when we look at this issue, we cannot adopt the logic of the Chinese courts.
In the lost-watch incident, were both the worker and the company at fault? That claim is completely unequal to the worker. After the incident, Zhu had already taken every remedial step he was capable of — once he discovered the problem, he reported it immediately. Besides reporting it, what else could he do? Zhu was only an intern, selling his labor power to the company. On the one hand, he could not manage the company’s equipment, such as checking the surveillance footage; on the other hand, he did not know how the company would handle the matter. But Zhang and other managers in the company were able to check the footage and knew exactly how to deal with such an emergency — after all, they were the actual owners of the company. Yet for a full two days, from online to offline, they did not take a single remedial measure. Looking at the whole process of the lost-watch incident, although Zhu was negligent and threw the watch head into the trash, after he reported it the loss could still have been reversed. As for whether it could be reviewed, whether the cameras could be checked, whether the packaging could be recovered, and whether the trash could be intercepted, these were no longer things an individual intern could decide; they were decided by Zhang and the other bourgeois who actually held managerial power over the enterprise. But they did nothing for two days, which is what caused the watch head to be lost. Should we really demand that Zhu, this intern, overstep his authority and direct Zhang and the other bourgeois who actually control the company? Since Zhu had already done his best to remedy the situation after discovering that the watch head was missing, and since it was precisely the company’s inaction that ultimately made it impossible to recover the watch head, why should Zhu be made to bear the faults committed by the bourgeois who manage the enterprise and compensate the company with more than ten thousand yuan? The court says the worker and the company each had fault, but it does not mention at all how the two sides took remedial measures in this incident; it does not mention at all that the worker had already done his best to remedy the problem, and that it was because the company knew there was no watch head but did nothing that the watch head was lost. By crudely “punishing both sides equally,” it ruled that the worker must compensate for the loss. This is completely unreasonable.
So, compensation for the lost watch is entirely unreasonable, but why did the court still determine that intern Zhu had to “compensate”? It can only be because of what the court claimed in its judgment: “Zhu was responsible for complete disassembly and counting, and failed to fulfill the duty of careful inspection.” Put another way, this means he did not obey the company’s labor discipline. So the result of the court’s ruling — Zhu “compensating” the company 13,000 yuan — is not compensation at all; it is simply a disguised fine imposed on a worker for not obeying labor discipline! Although China’s written laws prohibit companies from fining employees, claiming that “fines are in nature administrative penalties,” when faced with this lost-watch incident, they still find a pretext, twist the facts, and demand a fine from the worker in the form of compensation. In the past, factory owners could directly say: “You made a mistake, so I’m docking your money.” Today’s Chinese bourgeoisie merely changes the wording: “You caused a loss, so you have to compensate.”
Yet the labor discipline of capitalism is, in essence, the bourgeoisie’s discipline of rule over the proletariat. Capitalists of course want workers to be as accurate, fast, and obedient as machines — without negligence, without mistakes, and without any slip caused by fatigue, nervousness, or unfamiliarity. This is especially true in China, a capitalist country, where the bourgeoisie does everything possible to lengthen working hours and increase labor intensity. But workers’ wages are extremely low; they do not get proper rest each day, let alone university students coming out for internships who may well be participating in wage labor for the first time. So some accidental negligence in the process is inevitable. However, as Lenin said in “An Explanation of the Factory Workers’ Fines Law,” “The purpose of fines is not to compensate for losses, but to establish discipline — that is, to make workers obey the factory owner, to force workers to carry out the factory owner’s orders, to listen to the factory owner at work… The amount of the fine is not determined by the size of the loss, but by the degree of the worker’s carelessness: the more careless the work, the more disobedient to the factory owner, the more defiant of the factory owner’s demands, the heavier the fine.” Because intern Zhu did not follow labor discipline, did not “carefully inspect” but instead carelessly checked the parcel and threw away the watch head, he was sentenced by the court to pay what amounted to 72 days’ wages in “compensation.” That is the truth of this ruling. The court was not at all trying to reasonably assign responsibility for the lost watch head; it was trying to maintain the capitalist system in which workers must obey management and must obey the bourgeoisie, which is why it ruled that the worker must also “compensate.”
In this case, the company used the state machine to carry out a disguised fine, but in factories and enterprises where capital is more abundant and bourgeois power is stronger, the law banning fines becomes a scrap of paper. From requiring a deposit upon joining the company, to refusing to refund it if one does not work the required length of time, to imposing huge fines for damaging machines or parts in the factory, and even to some extremely savage monopoly-capitalist factories fining workers simply for smoking outside the designated area… in capitalist society, fines can never truly be eliminated. The working class has no means of production; in order to survive, it can only sell its labor power to the bourgeoisie, or else face unemployment and a life plunged into extreme hardship. This determines that workers are not free people and can only be forced to accept the barbaric labor discipline set by the bourgeoisie. This is the fundamental reason why the bourgeoisie can fine workers under all sorts of pretexts. On the surface, workers and the bourgeoisie are equal; sometimes they can even sit in the same courtroom and litigate about “compensation.” But in reality, because the bourgeoisie controls the means of production and workers do not, they are actually unequal. That is why the bourgeoisie can use economic coercion — under capitalism, workers must sell their labor power in order to live — to fine workers. So fines imposed on workers are entirely a product of the capitalist system.
Today’s Chinese bourgeoisie has never given up fining workers. It may not directly wield the whip of “fines,” but it can lash workers in the name of “compensation”; it may not openly admit that enterprises have the power to punish, but it can use the courts to help capitalists fine workers. So in the face of such a ruling, the working class must see clearly: so-called “partial compensation” is not the bourgeoisie’s leniency toward workers, but the maintenance of bourgeois enslavement of workers; so-called “allocation of responsibility” is merely a pretext for a fine. In the past, capitalists lashed workers with fines; today, the Chinese bourgeoisie whips workers with “compensation.” But Chinese workers have long learned in class struggle that government officials and business owners have long been colluding with each other, and that even if something is written plainly in the law, they will not enforce it unless absolutely forced to do so. Once workers understand this, they will also see that they have only one way to defend themselves: unite to oppose the bourgeoisie and oppose this reactionary government that serves bourgeois interests.