Since the last forum exposed the reactionary essence of Buqing Mountain, now Buqing Mountain, which claims to be a “collective economy,” has once again revealed its capitalist nature. In a recent video about lychee sales, Buqing Mountain clearly told people that it operates undoubtedly according to the economic laws of capitalism, and its internal structure fully exhibits all the class distinctions that capitalist enterprises should have.
1. Buqing Mountain’s “Variable Capital”
1. Buqing Mountain’s “Variable Capital”
Although Buqing Mountain uses terms like “constant capital” and “variable capital,” which unconsciously admit that they are capitalist enterprises, and that their money, means of production, and commodities are of capitalist nature, this becomes even more evident in actual economic accounting.
Buqing Mountain’s wages are piecework wages, with an average annual yield of 15,000 jin of lychee, and 2 yuan is deducted from the price per jin as wages for workers. Among them, physical laborers involved in planting lychee receive 1.2 yuan out of the 2 yuan, which is split among three people at 0.4 yuan per jin, while those responsible for commercial circulation earn 0.8 yuan, split between two people at 0.4 yuan each. Based on annual production, this translates to a monthly wage. That is, physical laborers earn 6,000 yuan per month, and commercial workers also earn 6,000 yuan per month.
At first glance, this seems fine, but in reality, it especially exposes Buqing Mountain’s capitalist nature. In an agricultural environment like Buqing Mountain, which lacks modern machinery and relies mainly on manual labor, producing only 15,000 jin of lychee annually with just three people responsible for planting and miscellaneous tasks—managing 18.5 acres of lychee orchard (each person needs to care for about 7 acres!)—receiving only 6,000 yuan monthly is a shocking exploitation. Meanwhile, the commercial clerks responsible for sales, who do much less physical labor, still earn nearly the same or even slightly more (according to Buqing Mountain, their wages are slightly higher in actual situations), highlighting how exaggerated the mental-physical labor gap is.
2. Buqing Mountain’s “Constant Capital”
2. Buqing Mountain’s “Constant Capital”
In Buqing Mountain’s “constant capital,” besides the expenditure on purchasing various tools and raw materials, there is suddenly an addition: land rent. In Buqing Mountain’s ledger, the rent paid for land used to grow lychee trees has become part of the “constant capital.” In fact, according to Marxist political economy, land rent is not “constant capital” at all, but a special form of surplus value transformation. Both land rent and capitalist profits originate from the exploitation of workers. Marx pointed out that land rent “always exceeds the balance of profits, that is, the part of the commodity value itself composed of surplus value (surplus labor).”[1] Similarly, the rent paid by Buqing Mountain to landowners, which is derived from the surplus value created by the physical labor of the lychee planters, is not “constant capital” but another proof of Buqing Mountain’s exploitation of workers.
Why does Buqing Mountain include land rent as “constant capital”? Besides their ignorance of political economy, it should also be seen as an attempt—conscious or unconscious—to evade the capitalist nature of their so-called “collective farm.” On one hand, if land rent is not included in “constant capital” but in “profit,” then Buqing Mountain’s claim of “cost price” is immediately invalidated. The authorities like Haixing, who hold power over Buqing Mountain, clearly reveal that they are not as they claim to be non-employers; instead, they collude with landowners, exploiting the workers just like typical capitalist enterprises. The surplus value they exploit from workers is thus far greater than the 0.5 yuan they claim, given that Buqing Mountain produces 15,000 jin of lychee annually, with rent totaling 7,272 yuan, averaging 0.48 yuan of land rent per jin, plus 0.5 yuan profit, totaling 0.98 yuan per jin. On the other hand, this also exposes that Haixing and others at Buqing Mountain think like capitalists, dividing the value of commodities into production costs (k) and profits (p), rather than Marx’s division into constant capital (c), variable capital (v), and surplus value (m). “The things that the capitalist spends on in production and the things consumed in the process of producing commodities are undoubtedly two completely different quantities.”[2] In their view, regardless of who the land rent is paid to, as long as it is profit lost by them, it is all counted as part of costs. This undoubtedly reflects Buqing Mountain’s bourgeois greed.
3. Haixing’s Anti-People Face
3. Haixing’s Anti-People Face
The most obvious capitalist trait of Buqing Mountain is reflected in Haixing’s reply in the comment section under this video. Someone expressed surprise at Buqing Mountain’s self-proclaimed lychee price with only 0.5 yuan profit, and naively asked whether they could break even if unexpected events occurred. Haixing responded that after the video was posted, the courier fee increased by six mao per jin—that is, Buqing Mountain’s 0.5 yuan profit was completely swallowed by the transportation company, and an additional 1 mao per jin was lost to cover production costs. Of course, if such losses continue, Buqing Mountain will inevitably go bankrupt. Haixing then, with a capitalist tone, replied: “But although the profit is gone, wages can still be cut.”?! Haixing’s wolfish words expose his anti-people face, proving that the management of Buqing Mountain, represented by Haixing, is no different from ordinary capitalists—an bourgeoisie that claims to be “collectively owned” but actually engages in capitalist exploitation. Buqing Mountain, which claims to be socialist, is merely a capitalist enterprise engaged in capitalist activities under the guise of socialism.
Whether profit or politics is the priority, whether the enterprise serves the broad workers or a small group of capitalists, is a fundamental issue of right and wrong, relating to the very nature of the enterprise. But on this issue, Haixing clearly reveals his class nature. When encountering difficulties, he does not consider the workers first but prioritizes profits, willing to sacrifice workers’ wages for the company’s profit—this fully demonstrates that Buqing Mountain, like other capitalist enterprises, is governed by capitalist economic laws, operates according to capitalist principles, and objectively serves bourgeois interests rather than proletarian interests. It is not about whether Haixing or other managers can profit from it, but a simple fact: Buqing Mountain, claiming to be collectively owned by workers, exists at the cost of sacrificing workers’ welfare. Workers sacrificing their own interests for their own interests—how contradictory!
Moreover, Engels pointed out long ago that “personal management of industry inevitably results in private ownership.”[3] Regardless of the subjective intentions of Haixing or other managers, their relationship with the rest of Buqing Mountain’s workers is an ongoing class contradiction between bourgeoisie and proletariat. They are personifications of Buqing Mountain’s capital. They “are merely persons in the economic sphere, bearing specific class relations and interests… No matter how detached they may be subjectively from these relations, in social terms they are always products of these relations.”[4] Whether they are extravagant bourgeois exploiting workers or “clean-handed” capitalists investing all income beyond necessary living expenses into management, it is irrelevant to political economy because surplus value is ultimately appropriated without compensation by them. Their exploitation of workers is an undeniable fact. Haixing and his clownish associates can only, like their social reformist predecessors, become a laughingstock, condemned to history as revisionists and opportunists, sinking into the garbage heap.
4. Social Reformism Cannot Work
4. Social Reformism Cannot Work
At this point, Buqing Mountain’s opportunistic essence of advocating for “collective ownership” of “collective farms” and “collective enterprises” has been fully exposed. But the reason why this social reformist route must inevitably fail has profound historical roots.
The key flaw of Buqing Mountain’s social reformist approach is that it does not recognize that the transition between different social formations cannot be achieved peacefully, but only through violent revolution that shatters old production relations and develops and consolidates new social relations through revolutionary authority.
In capitalist society, socialist production relations cannot spontaneously emerge from capitalist economy but can only be established through socialist revolution, which destroys the old capitalist state apparatus and transforms the old relations through state power. The economic laws of capitalism, driven by the pursuit of surplus value, are laws of private ownership and highly developed commodity economy. As a result, all capitalists, on one hand, seek to expand production and seize markets to chase surplus value, and on the other hand, declare ownership of the means of production to unilaterally appropriate surplus value, monopolizing the means of production—thus implementing bourgeois ownership of the means of production. The socialization of production and private ownership of means of production form a contradiction, which in turn gives rise to two closely related contradictions: because surplus value is the source of survival and continuous development of capitalist enterprises, capitalists pursue surplus value without limit, leading to an infinite expansion trend of capitalist production. However, since surplus value comes from workers, the more they exploit, the more the market for consumer goods shrinks. To dominate markets and defeat competitors, each capitalist makes production plans for their enterprise, making production highly planned for private profit. But since these plans serve individual capitalists’ pursuit of surplus value and do not consider the overall social needs, the more planned the production of individual enterprises, the more severe the anarchy of the social production becomes. Facing these contradictions, each capitalist must extract as much surplus value as possible to sustain their enterprise, expand production, and increase competitiveness, thus avoiding bankruptcy. The entire capitalist society relies on greedily siphoning surplus value from workers to survive. This economic law, driven by the pursuit of surplus value, is what Marx called the law of surplus value. The law functions because each capitalist, driven by private greed and competitive pressure, must exploit workers to live luxuriously and maintain their capital, which is an inevitable historical necessity under certain economic laws. Wealth accumulation, without exploiting the poor, is impossible; any absurd plan like Buqing Mountain’s must choose: either attempt to fulfill the “socialist” promises and quickly go bankrupt, or immediately demonstrate loyalty to capitalism by following the law of surplus value, prioritizing profit over workers’ welfare. Unless a major social upheaval overturns capitalism entirely, destroying all relations and superstructure, this situation will persist.
Therefore, social reformist schemes like Buqing Mountain, which oppose violent revolution and deny the necessity of socialist revolution, advocating for survival within capitalism and developing so-called “collective ownership” enterprises without touching existing relations, are inevitably utopian. In practice, they deceive workers, divert the workers’ movement from socialism, and become victims of opportunism and revisionism. As Lenin pointed out, “Opportunityism precisely denies the existence of class struggle, that is, it denies that during the transition from capitalism to communism, there is class struggle in overthrowing the bourgeoisie and completely eliminating bourgeois relations.”[5] Social reformism only blinds workers and dulls their fighting spirit but cannot fundamentally change their situation. The case of Buqing Mountain once again proves that the road of social reformism is a dead end. The liberation of the proletariat has no shortcuts; only through violent revolution to overthrow capitalism, seize state power, and use the state to bring capitalist enterprises under national ownership to establish a nationwide socialist economy can true liberation be achieved. Engels pointed out that “Violence… is the tool of social movements to open their own path and destroy rigid, dying political forms.”[6] In today’s decadent social imperialist China, only through violent revolution to overthrow the reactionary rule of the Chinese revisionists and establish a proletarian dictatorship can the entire proletariat be fundamentally liberated, freed from capitalist slavery, and truly become the masters of China again.
Marx: “Das Kapital,” Volume 3, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 25, first Chinese edition, People’s Publishing House, 1974. ↩︎
Same as above. ↩︎
Engels: “Principles of Communism,” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 1, first Chinese edition, People’s Publishing House, 1972. ↩︎
Marx: “Das Kapital,” Volume 1, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 23, first Chinese edition, People’s Publishing House, 1972. ↩︎
Lenin: “The State and Revolution,” Selected Works of Lenin, Volume 3, second Chinese edition, People’s Publishing House, 1972. ↩︎
Engels: “Anti-Dühring,” Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 27, first Chinese edition, People’s Publishing House, 1972. ↩︎