I had always been a mental laborer, working in a computer-related field after graduating. Over the past two years, I went abroad to study and work, enjoying living conditions far superior to those of ordinary working people. But this kind of life also caused me to become increasingly detached from the people and from the revolution. Therefore, with the help and criticism of comrades around me, I returned to China at the beginning of this year and began participating in manual labor in order to remold myself.
It has now been more than half a year since I returned to China and began participating in labor. At first, I worked in the service industry, at a milk tea shop. Through this experience, I came to understand many things—for example, the situation of ordinary milk tea shop workers; the enslavement and oppression of unskilled milk tea shop workers by the milk tea shop bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy; the petty-production character of milk tea shops and the clear polarization within them; the ugly faces of the bourgeoisie and of labor-aristocracy lackeys such as shop managers; and the true nature of the customers who came to the shop to consume. In the past, although I had heard comrades who worked in milk tea shops describe these conditions, my understanding remained very vague because I was detached from actual labor and class struggle. I knew that shop managers were lackeys of the bourgeoisie, and that the bourgeoisie were vile and disgusting beasts, but only after experiencing it personally could I imagine just how bad the bourgeoisie and its lackeys could truly be. During the Spring Festival, they openly and blatantly violated the law by refusing to pay triple wages. They almost never signed labor contracts or paid social insurance. Shop managers and the bourgeoisie could arbitrarily change employees from full-time to part-time or fire them, using this as a threat. To them, the revisionist Chinese regime’s Labor Law was no more than a piece of wastepaper—and in fact, that is exactly what it is, because the revisionist Chinese regime is their greatest support. It is precisely with the help of this fascist regime that they can act so recklessly.
I also developed a new understanding of the wealthy petty bourgeoisie who came to consume. Previously, when comrades angrily denounced those parasitic customers, I thought that these people were merely consumers and that the main target should still be the bourgeoisie. Only now do I understand that the wealthy petty bourgeoisie who come to consume and enjoy themselves spend the surplus value produced by working people, and that their worldview has also been bourgeoisified. They are therefore part of the exploiters and jointly participate in the oppression of unskilled milk tea shop workers. Developing a clear understanding of classes and class struggle, as well as gradually overcoming my former state of being unaccustomed to physical labor and ignorant of the basic necessities of agriculture, were my greatest gains from working at the milk tea shop.
Throughout this process, I also experienced intense ideological struggle. This was mainly reflected in two questions: whether to continue making use of my knowledge capital and technical capital. On the one hand, I felt that manual labor was exhausting and still found myself reminiscing about the days when I was a mental laborer typing at a keyboard. On the other hand, I wanted to improve my proficiency at work so that I could work more comfortably and take fewer beatings from the shop manager or capitalist. I would even fantasize: If only workers in China could also earn more than 10,000 yuan a month and work five days with two days off. But all these thoughts amounted to seeking a stable life for myself under capitalism, so that I could avoid or minimize exploitation. The inevitable result would therefore be selling out the interests of the entire working class and replacing Marxism with revisionism—just as Lenin said, selling one’s birthright for a bowl of gruel.
The reason this happened was, on the one hand, that I had become detached from revolutionary work and had not genuinely taken the path of proletarianization or established revolutionary goals. On the other hand, the work of milk tea shop employees also has the character of petty production. Labor there is dispersed and isolated, which not only weakens the strength of the workers but also has a major influence on their thinking. In such a life, one can spend every day in air conditioning and drinking milk tea, and even take some pleasure in hardship when busy. Therefore, in July I chose to leave the milk tea shop and went to an auto-parts factory in my area to undergo remolding through labor. I have now been there for more than a month. I will include my experiences from the past month as background in the labor diaries that follow.
