Happiness is not in the “Golden Age” of the last century, nor in the “Peach Blossom Land” of childhood, but in the liberation movement of the workers!
Recently, the bourgeois media NetEase News published an exclusive report titled “140,000 Chinese Young People Do Not Want to Live in the 21st Century.” In this report, the bourgeois media extensively promote sentimental feelings of nostalgia and melancholy, as if standing at the forefront as representatives of the broad petty bourgeoisie, lamenting sorrowfully: “The most intense New Year’s flavor only exists in childhood Spring Festival.”
In the era of imperialism, the inevitable bankruptcy of petty bourgeoisie is an undeniable fact. For the petty bourgeoisie, a time when they are stained with a “class flavor,” with no hope of wealth and prosperity, and unable to pay off mortgages and car loans, is undoubtedly the source of all their suffering. How can they escape this pain? Tens of thousands of petty bourgeoisie have given their answer—they may not be able to return to childhood, but they can pretend to live in the past.
In the Douban group “Pretending to Live in 1980-2000,” nearly 140,000 people pretend to live in 1980-2000. In their view, the decades after the reform and opening-up are times of opportunity and family reunion, a “golden age” that gave them the “chance to reclaim everything that belonged to me.” These petty bourgeoisie, oppressed and nearly bankrupt by the reality of the capitalist system, believe that if time could be turned back, everything would be better. Because at that time, there was “genuine human warmth and hope for the future,” and expectations for a better life.
But what is the essence of such expectations? Can these expectations truly be realized? In fact, it is quite normal for petty bourgeoisie (and even some bourgeoisie) to have such thoughts of returning to the past; this precisely reflects the fate of the property-owning class continuously facing bankruptcy under capitalism. Hundreds of years ago, countless small producers were driven mad by capitalism and the socialized large-scale industrial production system, constantly longing to return to pastoral idylls. The fate of today’s small producers is consistent with theirs. The only difference is that in the era of imperialism, the possibility of speculation or climbing onto the bourgeois throne has completely disappeared; petty bourgeoisie have entirely cut off the possibility of becoming rich through “effort” and “struggle,” leaving only the hope of waiting for the “unjust” bankruptcy to come.
In this group, different people have different reasons for wanting to return to the past. Some say they miss the “golden” childhood; others want to reunite with family; some openly state that returning to that era would allow them to make a fortune. But regardless of the reason, the underlying essence is the same: to relive (or create for the future) a parasitic life that only involves enjoyment, not labor[1]. The essence of this parasitic life is actually to detach from labor and enjoy the fruits of others’ labor—living as the exploitative class. Humans are the sum of all social relations, and children and able-bodied adults cannot be equated. Many bankrupt petty bourgeoisie’s so-called “return to childhood” and “reunion with family” are merely decorated expressions of their desire to live the life of the exploiting class. As they themselves reveal, if they could go back to the past, they would pursue “the fragrant taro candies that I can show off for a lifetime,” Sony’s “Walkman,” arcades, dance halls, BB pagers, and the “big brother” mobile phones—“fashion items” that at that time only belonged to “wealthy families.” Besides these, other “daydreams” such as “hurry to invest in Ma Huateng, waiting to take off at the right moment”; “going to Guangdong’s ‘border town’ Shenzhen to start a business”; “buy a house early, bottom out the real estate market”—are even more nakedly expressions of petty bourgeoisie’s wishful thinking to speculate and become the bourgeoisie, living a life of effortless wealth and surplus value—these extreme cravings for wealth and surplus value need no further analysis. All of these fully demonstrate the support of these small producers for the capitalist system—this brutal system of exploitation and oppression.
As “The Road to Future Revolution in China” points out, “The petty bourgeoisie is a class between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; its upper layer is closer to the bourgeoisie, and its lower layer is closer to the proletariat. Although petty bourgeoisie ideology differs from bourgeois ideology, overall, it still belongs to the private property ideology of capitalism. Because petty bourgeoisie engage in dispersed, small-scale, individual labor, based on this kind of labor, they develop habits of focusing on their narrow lives and possessions. When facing issues, they naturally prioritize their personal interests. Therefore, the ideological foundation of petty bourgeoisie is individualism.”[2] The bankrupt petty bourgeoisie supports capitalism, and the current popular anarchism, reformism, and Western Marxism are reflections of this ideology. The petty bourgeoisie does not oppose private ownership, nor does it oppose the oppression of people by people, nor the painful, “class flavor” capitalist system, but only hates being the oppressed and resenting their failure to succeed in speculation and become the bourgeoisie. Such narrow-minded thinking stems from the petty bourgeoisie’s narrow practice. This kind of thinking underpins capitalist rule and ideology; holding such views will never lead to liberation or happiness.
What makes many people laugh and cry is that some post-2000 students and “newcomers” who have never experienced the so-called “golden age” also have ripples of nostalgia for the life of the 80s and 90s. Confronted with this painful history of blood and tears of workers and peasants, they call it a “no chicken babies, no ‘996,’ passing the civil service exam is not the only way out, people don’t often use phones, the fish in the river and stars in the sky are what summer looks like” Peach Blossom Land. Many bourgeois media cannot explain this, only attributing it to these young students and minor employees “nostalgic for the more classic literary and artistic works of the past,” which is clearly contrary to facts. In fact, the reason why so-called “post-2000s” nostalgically recall the “golden” 80s and 90s is merely a reflection of the political economy law that petty bourgeoisie in the era of imperialism will inevitably go bankrupt.
First, let’s look at what kind of people the “post-2000s” [2] are from the most fundamental class standpoint: The “post-2000s” are the young generation born in China’s third decade after the bourgeoisie’s restoration of capitalism. Most are students, now facing the prospects of graduation; some born around the millennium have already begun to step into capitalist society, maintaining parasitic lives by “taking postgraduate exams or civil service exams”; or have already been working in companies and factories, realizing through daily labor that their lives are difficult or heading toward bankruptcy, losing hope for promotion and wealth. Fundamentally, the “post-2000s” reflect the most tangible and vivid traits of petty bourgeoisie under imperialism: behind them, a comfortable life supported by others, carefree and indifferent to the hardships of life, is gradually slipping away; in front of them, the “devouring” beast of capitalism, which “eats people without leaving bones,” is about to drag them into the abyss of “eternal damnation” in wage labor—most tragically, they are powerless to resist, only watching as this monster devours them. In response, they choose the path of “least resistance” to oppose capitalism: closing their eyes to reality, making no substantial opposition to the capitalist system!
From this, it can be seen that the nostalgia for the 80s and 90s is merely a longing for the possibility of speculation and wealth, for the “small production” era like Peach Blossom Land. The idea of returning to an era of “no big capital, only small production” essentially demands living a personal happy life while retaining private property. But as Lenin pointed out, “Small production is constantly, daily, spontaneously producing capitalism and the bourgeoisie.”[4] The development of the capitalist system will inevitably lead countless small producers to bankruptcy and cause them to transition from the stage of free capitalism to imperialism. Nostalgically longing to return to the earlier, oppressive stage of the system to escape its current oppression is a complete misdirection—absurd and futile. Moreover, was the 80s and 90s really a “golden age” without “chicken babies” and “996”? The blood and tears of millions of laid-off or even suicided state-owned enterprise workers, countless peasants forced to sell everything due to the privatization, workers and students slaughtered by tanks, rifles, and machine guns, and the homeless who ultimately perished in the detention centers and police stations of the “middle school”—these are enough to refute the fabricated, biased, and extremely shameless bourgeois and petty bourgeois upper-class fantasies.
“The petty bourgeoisie is a class surviving in the cracks of capitalism, wavering between the two opposing classes,”[5] and “the petty bourgeoisie must transform itself to become a useful class for revolution.” Like all intermediate classes and strata in history, they face two paths: one is to stand with the exploiting class, living a meaningless life of mediocrity, debauchery, and shame; the other is through ideological struggle and labor reform, to become part of the working class, join the proletariat, become revolutionary Marxists, play their role in the proletarian revolution, and fight for it for a lifetime. The chairman of the German Communist Party once told German workers wanting to go to “Peach Blossom Land” America: “Happiness is not in America; happiness must be fought for in Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Munich, and all of Germany.” This same sentence applies today to the petty bourgeoisie still dreaming of living in the past: “Happiness is not in the past; happiness must be fought for now, in factories, in the workers’ movement, and throughout China!” Abandon the illusory and toxic flowers of the glorious past and the chains of reality, open your eyes to the world, look at China, and fight to create a new world without exploitation!
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Notes:
[1] In capitalist society, students as a class that does not produce, are essentially supported by their families. They are oppressed by the capitalist system and bourgeois universities, but at the same time, they do not labor, directly or indirectly possessing the labor成果 of others (here referring to the labor成果 supported by their parents). Therefore, students’ class position and worldview can be considered petty bourgeoisie. However, the main focus of this article is not on this; for a detailed discussion of students’ nature, see the article “Zhongwei Revolution” by the association.
[2] Flame, “The Future Path of Revolution in China”
[3] First, it must be clarified that the concept of “post-2000s” is a crude, super-class division based on grouping people of different ages into the same class, which is unscientific. Under this division, children of the petty bourgeoisie, children of proletarians who dropped out early to work, and children of the bourgeoisie are all classified as one—this is inaccurate. It should be noted that in the bourgeoisie’s terminology, “post-2000s” mainly refers to students born into petty bourgeoisie and new intellectual laborers.
[4] Lenin, “Left-Wing” Childishness in the Communist Movement
[5] Flame, “The Future Path of Revolution in China”