In some of my previous replies on the forum to Comrade Hongyi’s posts about historical questions, I expressed viciously anti-worker and anti-peasant bourgeois reactionary views. Hongyi asked in the post why, only one or two years after the Chinese revisionists’ restoration, so many hooligans and sc
But comrade, I still want to ask you something. This critical article says that the army that took part in suppressing the 1989 incident also participated in this war against Vietnam, and that is a separate matter from the army being composed of workers and peasants. What does that mean? I feel that this formulation seems to be insisting on an erroneous point of view. In other words, “Even though the army is composed of workers and peasants, it can still take part in suppressing [the incident].”
You have also acknowledged the fact that everyone pointed out: the troops involved in the invasion and suppression were not composed of sons of workers and peasants. I looked into it, and those who took part at the time were capitalist roaders in the army, backward elements, and the children of bureaucrats, social hooligans and scum, and delinquent youths who had recently been recruited.
What I mean is that, in that statement, I was changing the subject by conflating two different things. Other people were asking whether I had evidence that the soldiers in the army that carried out the June Fourth crackdown were workers and peasants who had been corrupted by their participation in the war of aggression against Vietnam. But I didn’t answer that question directly. Instead, I dodged it and talked about something else, saying that the soldiers who had taken part in the crackdown had participated in the war against Vietnam. The point is that I was conflating two different things: I made a baseless claim, and when people asked me to provide evidence, I brought up something else to change the subject. Making such claims without evidence is obviously wrong; it’s indeed not possible to say that the army that carried out the June Fourth crackdown was composed of workers and peasants.
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Comrade, from now on you must resolutely carry out ideological reform and stop posting this kind of reactionary bourgeois-idealist garbage.
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By the time of the 1989 crackdown on the June Fourth protests, the military had already undergone so many purges that it could hardly still have been the people’s army made up of workers and peasants. Even if this army had once been the people’s army during the socialist period, it had little connection with the military after the restoration of the old order.
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The purges in 1979 were already so severe. How many revolutionaries will still be left in another ten years?
I think Comrade Random Characters has stayed out of society for a long time, not participated in society’s large-scale productive labor, and barely even visited the forum to engage with new people and new things. (For example, Comrade Random Characters didn’t seem to pay any attention to the so-called “Primary Cooperative” event at People’s Square.) Confined to a little nest in the base area, even with a group of revolutionary comrades by their side, they have been unable to escape being trapped in this small world, and have developed an ideological style characterized by mutual aid and individualism. A person’s process of becoming proletarian is the process of becoming collectivized; it must be carried out continuously through collective practice. One’s own familiar little circle and comfortable comfort zone do not constitute a collective. They are a small group, a disguised extension of individualism—in other words, mutual aid. A collective must constantly have new things join it: new people, new criticisms, new awareness, new practices, and so on.
I myself have had similar thoughts before. I was afraid that new people joining the forum, whom I did not know and with whom I could not establish a lofty image or the authoritative reputation of representing what was correct, would undermine me. I was afraid that interacting with newcomers would expose my own problems and lead to them being revealed and criticized by people who “didn’t know their place.” I was afraid that talented newcomers would steal my opportunities to stand out, and so on. In short, I was afraid that the circle I was familiar with and had done well in would be disrupted and abolished, and that my former reputation and status would no longer be secure. This means falling into the mire of individualism. Unless one reflects deeply, expresses class repentance, and resolves to struggle resolutely, one can no longer make progress and will become a reactionary, decayed remnant of the old order.
Comrade Random Characters’ current situation is very similar: they do not participate in social labor, immerse themselves in their personal life, and avoid the movement of new things within the collective, staying in a comfortable and easy little nest. As a result, they have developed a mindset that rejects new things—in this case, new criticism. So I think Comrade Random Characters needs to “turn back before it is too late” and quickly return to the collective life and discussions of the association and the forum. Once you have witnessed the wisdom of the masses, you will not develop the idea that knowledge is private property; once you have participated in collective practice, you will not reject the collective’s criticism.
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