Day 1 2025.4.24
Premise: That bureaucratic bourgeoisie’s child (hereinafter referred to as C, the initial of his surname in pinyin) saw me looking at the chat record images from People’s Square this morning and asked me some questions.
Dialogue:
C: What is this? What are you looking at?
Me: I’m looking at some discussions about women’s liberation.
C: Be more specific.
Me: It’s about discussing the oppression of a female student by bourgeois patriarchy and how to help her.
C: Bourgeois patriarchy? I don’t quite understand.
Me: You can understand it this way: in a society with private ownership, women are subjected to monarchal power, that is, the government’s propaganda, exploitation of the proletariat, and use of repression machinery (this may not be entirely accurate, please correct me if I’m wrong), patriarchal power, which comes from feudal patriarchs’ oppression, and husband’s power, oppression from the husband. The so-called bourgeois patriarchy can be understood as the general term for the above (not necessarily accurate, please correct me).
C: Okay, then what about the bride price that women receive? Isn’t that women receiving from men?
Me: Uh, in bourgeois society, or more broadly, in private ownership society, children are the private property of feudal patriarchs, especially females. The girl’s parents give the girl to the boy’s side, and later cannot benefit from the girl, and they have spent a lot of money raising the girl. Naturally, they want to receive a bride price equivalent to the above expenses. You can understand that in the evil private ownership society, women are a commodity circulating between the girl’s and boy’s parents. The boy’s parents buy the girl with the bride price, and the bride price is the cost for the girl’s parents to raise the woman who has been commodified and objectified by them. This is completely reactionary, treating people as commodities.
C: What about women who cheat to get bride price?
Me: Your statement is wrong. Women do not benefit from the bride price; the real beneficiaries are the girl’s parents. The so-called cheating bride price is just women being forced by feudal patriarchs as tools.
C: Okay.
Me: I’m asking you a few questions. Do you think the social system is unfair but haven’t connected specific social injustices and the system, ownership?
C: Probably yes.
Me: In the future, when you see injustice, relate it more to ownership, and read more books; it will help you.
C: Okay, got it.
2025.4.24.2
Later, I found a website for him, which showed a global chart of women’s income. I showed it to him, and then we had the following conversation:
Me: See? The more imperialist a country is, the lower the income of women, and the heavier the patriarchal oppression they face.
C: China’s is indeed quite low, but why is Japan’s also so low?
Me: Japanese women also face heavy patriarchal oppression; even the government officially supports forcing women into prostitution and oppressing them. There was an interview on Bilibili with an oppressed prostitute, and the comment section was full of disgusting, creepy men fantasizing.
C: Don’t you watch that too?
Me: Don’t lump me together with the other petty bourgeoisie at school. Engels said: Prostitution only degrades the unfortunate women who become victims, and even then, they are far from as degraded as commonly imagined. On the contrary, it corrupts the character of all men.
¿Tú tampoco eres un pequeño burgués en proceso de transformación ideológica? Decir eso suena un poco superior, ¿verdad? ¿No deberías analizar en detalle cómo la pornografía japonesa oprime a las mujeres y hacer que él no sea tan indiferente?
The key point is that the petty bourgeoisie in our school belongs to the petty bourgeois right-wing faction, which is the kind that needs to be suppressed and isolated.
Haven’t told him yet, I’ll talk to him at school tomorrow to see how he reacts.
Against the heavens, what he said he also watches probably refers to something related to pornography, art, or something else. If that’s the case, then isn’t this double standard? You watch without issue, don’t criticize yourself, but others’ viewing is fine. If you do this, others won’t believe what you say; they’ll only think you’re just like those so-called leftists online—both are hypocrites, all talk about righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, and benevolence, but are full of men stealing women and women prostituting themselves. In this way, promoting theories of women’s liberation won’t make others believe either.
2025.4.25
Today I had a conversation with C and discovered the erroneous side of his thinking. As a member of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, he has never understood the suffering of the proletariat, nor does he comprehend the proletariat. Moreover, he has tendencies to exploit the proletariat and fails to realize that it is necessary to overthrow the Chinese government through violent revolution to liberate the vast Chinese people. The details are as follows:
C: Let me tell you, plumbers are making a lot of money now, 500 yuan for cleaning a pipe.
Me: Really? That sounds unbelievable.
C: It’s for one cleaning, not per day.
Me: How much do you want them to earn? Cleaning pipes is dirty work. Even charging 500 yuan without being exploited by the bourgeoisie is still too little. Also, is this 500 yuan for a plumber you recently hired at your home?
C: Yes, so what?
Me: I see. Your plumber is not like ordinary plumbers; he belongs to the worker aristocracy, meaning workers who exploit other ordinary workers and thus receive higher wages from the bourgeoisie. I was wondering why the Chinese bourgeoisie is so generous to workers. You must understand that ordinary Chinese workers may not even earn this much in a month, while this group serving the bureaucratic bourgeoisie gets more money by assisting in exploiting ordinary workers. You cannot equate the worker aristocracy with the proletariat; that is completely wrong. All the proletariat in China live in extreme poverty, which you do not know about.
C: Then why don’t you do something about it? Become the chairman and reform?
Me: What you said is wrong. You have not realized the importance of violent revolution. In a class society, violence inevitably exists and is divided into two types: one is the violence of the exploiting class against the proletariat for exploitation and suppression; the other is the violence of the proletariat in class struggle to counter suppression. These two types of violence always exist. Moreover, your statement is a completely reformist and erroneous line. Revolution is not a dinner party; it cannot be resolved peacefully.
C: So will everything be fine after the revolution?
Me: No. Socialism is a long stage of transition to communism. During this stage, due to the residual forces of the bourgeoisie and the new bourgeoisie within the party, there will inevitably be sabotage of the revolution and attempts to reverse progress. Therefore, class struggle must continue. Abandoning class struggle only benefits one group of people: the exploiters. The great leader Chairman Mao, when criticizing the party’s biggest unrepentant capitalist roader Deng Xiaoping’s rightist reversal trend, pointed out: “In 1949, the main contradiction in the country was proposed as the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Thirteen years later, the issue of class struggle was raised again, and the situation began to improve. What was the Cultural Revolution for? It was class struggle. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping talked about the theory that class struggle had ended, but it had not ended; they wanted to protect their gang of traitors and dead party members.” This also proves that ending class struggle only benefits the capitalist roaders.
C: I don’t quite understand. What exactly drives the revolution? What is the root cause?
Me: Contradictions. Contradictions always exist within things and are the fundamental cause of development. The great leader Chairman Mao once taught us: “Social change mainly results from the development of internal social contradictions, that is, contradictions between productive forces and production relations, contradictions between classes, contradictions between old and new. The development of these contradictions promotes social progress and the replacement of old society by new society.”
C: How do you know so much?
Me: That’s why you should read more books. Let me see if I can find something suitable for you to get started.
Then I went looking for a while and found that the “Various Scandals of Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Wang Guangmei, and Bo Yibo” is quite good. What do you all think? Can this be used to help him get started with Marxist-Leninist theory?
Marxism-Leninism is divided into three parts. First, one should study dialectical materialism. Using this as an introduction may not be very appropriate. Showing him the ugly behavior of counter-revolutionaries is definitely fine. I recommend you let him read “On Contradiction” and “On Practice”. I think these two explain the essence of dialectical materialism clearly.
Your awareness is not as high as his, what are you here for?
Not necessarily. The “On Contradiction” and “On Practice” essays do not have a fixed foundation and are also quite tiring to read because their content is extremely rich. Even the speaker themselves finds it difficult to explain clearly without a high level of theoretical quality. Moreover, after reading them, because the other party has been in a parasitic state for a long time and lacks corresponding practical experience, they don’t know exactly how to apply it and also forget it quickly.
Furthermore, his approach is not wrong. He uses the other party’s interest in the route struggle and Cultural Revolution history to guide them to actively learn theory, and then further applies the theory to the practice of transforming thought.
Besides, the association already has the Marxist outline, and after the chapter on dialectics, it is equivalent to specifically explaining “On Contradiction” and “On Practice.” The fact that you can say this sentence at least proves that you not only haven’t read your own reading post, but also haven’t glanced at the theoretical foundation.
There’s no need to respond so harshly. Although many of his words are indeed quite outrageous, replying under this post isn’t really a big deal. You can’t say that people aren’t even allowed to say this.
I think your learning sequence has serious problems. The recommended essential readings are all books hundreds of pages long. Right from the start, you ask a beginner like me to read such massive books, yet you don’t suggest first reading the essence of dialectical materialism summarized by Chairman Mao, which was specifically written for Chinese readers. Chairman Mao’s writing is very accessible and comprehensive. After thinking carefully for two days, I feel I have basically grasped the essence of the “On Contradiction”.
Is it possible that the reason for having these thick books of several hundred pages is precisely to help people understand and grasp the theoretical foundations as much as possible? Isn’t Li Da, the author of the outline, Chinese? Wasn’t his purpose in writing this book to popularize Mao Zedong Thought and turn it into an ideological weapon for the masses? He even sacrificed his life under the persecution of reactionaries to compile that Marxist outline, which you regard as dry and lengthy! There are specific forum posts about this; you can take your time to read them.
Moreover, even if we take a step back, we have never forced anyone to finish reading these books. On the contrary, it was you who created a reading notes thread to join the forum. But since you say you have already finished reading Chairman Mao’s “On Contradiction” and “On Practice,” why not revive your zombie reading thread and let everyone see your understanding?
Isn’t it possible that a few hundred pages is not considered a very large book, and that these books are actually general knowledge, meant to give you a basic understanding of the entire philosophical system, political economy system, and the historical development context? Of course, reading “On Contradiction” and “On Practice” is fine; these two are classic Marxist works. But before reading these classics, you also need to have a basic understanding of Marxist philosophy. Without this understanding, you might not even be clear about some of the terms and premises inside (Chairman Mao’s books are easy to understand and not difficult to grasp, but if you have a philosophical foundation first, you can get more out of them, which is much better than reading these two first). Moreover, the outline of dialectical materialism also discusses the content of Chairman Mao’s “On Contradiction” and “On Practice.” Please do not make rash judgments.
Well, this is just based on my personal experience. Actually, I have always been quite interested in philosophical concepts. I find the theory of contradiction and the theory of practice quite straightforward. On the contrary, many philosophical concepts in the Marxist philosophy outline that I had encountered before and was not very concerned about were less helpful.
Marxist-Leninist mentors separated complex theories that could be written in dozens of pages and wrote them in such a simple way with so many pages. If you give up just by seeing the number of pages in the book, then why are you even reading Marxism-Leninism?
If you don’t look at these philosophical concepts, you’ll be at a loss when you read the works of other mentors, and you won’t be able to refute many erroneous philosophical views (including many of your own incorrect views).
I don’t think it’s necessary to be so aggressive. On this topic, Woodlee’s attitude seems okay; it’s not the kind of deliberate confrontation where they insist on being stubborn.
Indeed, he often interprets many Marxist concepts from an existentialist perspective without realizing it.
You are right. However, I have reservations about the order of learning because we need to focus on the main contradiction. For a beginner studying Marxism-Leninism, the first thing to clarify is the framework of Marxism-Leninism, not to look at some messy philosophical concepts. What we need to do is focus on dialectical materialism, not argue with others over philosophical terminology. You learn to swim by swimming, and you learn to struggle by struggling. I think looking at some cases where Chairman Mao warmly applied dialectical materialism in practice (such as “On Protracted War”) is very effective in grasping the essence of dialectical materialism!