Creation: Proletarian Liberation Struggle Association Historical Materialism Group
On November 8th, to commemorate the “Outstanding Alumni” Huang Baomei, who graduated from Donghua University in 1960, a play of the same name—“Huang Baomei”—was performed at Donghua University. In the play, playwright Zhang Ying depicts Huang Baomei as a person who starts from the bottom, becomes a model through her “hard work” and technical research, and after the “Spring Wind of Reform” blows in, leads the entire textile industry toward success, aiming to promote the so-called “Labor Model Spirit” through such an inspirational figure. But what does Huang Baomei’s so-called success actually mean? What is the essence of the so-called Labor Model Spirit?
“Regarding what constitutes an outstanding person, the views of different classes are fundamentally different.”[1] To the bourgeoisie, Huang Baomei is a “courageous fighter” who deserves praise; but to the proletariat, Huang Baomei is a dog worker serving the capitalists, a degenerate traitor who has transformed into a capitalist, and should be despised. Let us see what kind of person Huang Baomei really is!
Huang Baomei comes from a proletarian family, and her life was not wealthy. She suffered from a young age, working as a child laborer to support her family from the age of thirteen. She was discriminated against, insulted, and beaten by supervisors in a Japanese-funded yarn factory, tormented by the capitalist employment system. In the factory’s spinning room, she worked for twelve hours straight, not allowed to speak, with no rest, and even eating was not permitted to stop her work; if she took a short break, she would be scolded or beaten by the supervisor. However, Huang Baomei did not develop a hatred for the old society’s blood and tears, nor did she cultivate a rebellious spirit with iron will. The whip could not produce revolutionaries. Because Huang Baomei believed in a set of slave philosophy from a young age, she not only did not join other workers in rebellion, but instead worked hard in employment, ultimately benefiting the capitalists. Huang Baomei’s slave philosophy is rooted in the private ownership concept of petty bourgeoisie. Coming from a poor peasant family, she did not abandon the narrow view of only caring for her own family, but instead maintained this perspective. Therefore, she always thought about earning money and was afraid of not earning enough. When she first arrived at the factory, she told her father, “I know earning money is not easy, I have to suffer.” Since then, Huang Baomei used this “suffering” to deceive herself, walking further and further down the road of “suffering”—accepting humiliation and enduring capitalist exploitation. Huang Baomei was eager to learn—to become a qualified wage slave. She learned quickly; after three months in the factory, she reached the level of a skilled worker. But the foreman still paid her as a child worker (half of a skilled worker’s wages). As a result, Huang Baomei said, “If you don’t suffer, the money won’t come flying by itself.” The foreman was very difficult on her; one day, he assigned her to fix a broken machine. However, Huang Baomei did not resist; she thought: to face the challenge, she must improve her operational skills, “speed up the spinning head, speed up the coarse yarn winding, and speed up the巡回步伐.” The exploitation by Japanese imperialism was brutal. During her first night shift, exhausted physically and mentally, she leaned on the machine for a few minutes, which caught the foreman’s attention, and he beat her viciously. As a result, during subsequent night shifts, Huang Baomei chose not to oppose the foreman but instead forced herself to stay awake, walking back and forth in the spinning hall, trying not to let her hands idle[2].
In this way, Huang Baomei only saw the difficulty of earning money, the meager wages, and could not see the hardships of the entire class, nor the possibility of overthrowing capitalist social injustice at its root. She remained numb in the cage of wage labor; when the cage shrank, she curled up even more. But slaves inevitably develop into工贼 (factory traitors). When Huang Baomei worked in the Japanese-funded yarn factory, it was during the vigorous Anti-Japanese War. But Huang Baomei was almost indifferent to this; she even said that after being involved in a workers’ demonstration, during the rest period, she was more interested in learning how to improve her操作技术 (operating skills) than understanding the struggle situation. Workers in the Japanese-funded yarn factory suffered oppression and humiliation, and Huang Baomei’s close colleagues also endured suffering. Once, she vented some grievances, but Huang Baomei only said, “A bit苦点累点 (hard and tiring) is better than starving.”[3] Huang Baomei’s worldview thus gradually shifted from the workers’ side to the capitalists’ side.
After liberation, Huang Baomei carried her old ideas into the new society. In the old society, being a slave was hard for half a year with little reward. Some might think that in the new society, everything would change; that working hard and diligently in the socialist era was not wrong; or that working hard and enjoying the benefits of socialism would naturally make her abandon her old ideas. However, the reality of class struggle is not so naive. Chairman Mao said, “Any reactionary thing, if you don’t fight it, it won’t fall. It’s like sweeping the floor—if the broom doesn’t reach, the dust won’t disappear by itself.”[4] Huang Baomei’s reactionary ideas, because they were not subjected to intense ideological struggle, persisted into the new society and even served as the foundation for the revisionist bourgeoisie to implement the restoration of capitalism. In the past, she focused on “money first” at the Japanese yarn factory; after liberation, she also pursued “profit first” in state-owned factories, following the footsteps of traitors, spies, and工贼 (factory traitors) like Liu Shaoqi within the Party. Socialist newspapers once described her as: "But due to the毒害 (poison) of the ‘class struggle extinction theory’ propagated by traitors, spies, and工贼 (factory traitors) Liu Shaoqi, she mistakenly believed that as long as she blocked the车 (car),接 (connect) the head, she was a good Party member. She relaxed her ideological transformation, spent more time on children and personal matters, and paid less attention to national affairs."[5]奴才 (slave) inevitably develops into工贼 (factory traitor). Even in socialist society, because she did not engage in “politics first” or ideological and路线斗争 (line struggle), Huang Baomei did not realize whether she was blocking the走资派 (revisionists) or the造反派 (rebels). The narrow vision brought by奴才哲学 (slave philosophy) only allowed her to see接头 (connections), family affairs, and little political or class struggle. In the end, she sold her strength to the conspiracy of the revisionists’ “profit挂 (profit obsession)” and the restoration of wage labor. To maintain her life and ideological “坛坛罐罐” (small pots and jars), Huang Baomei betrayed the interests of the working class and ultimately became a工贼 (factory traitor) in socialist society. Therefore, she showed no interest in the Cultural Revolution or in launching attacks against the bourgeoisie in economic, political, and ideological fields, and even resisted it. She once said, “I don’t understand what you mean by路线 (line)… The leaders at all levels treat me like family, I can’t go against my conscience, I can’t tell right from wrong, and just talk nonsense!”[6] After the Cultural Revolution, she often felt “lost face, collapsed, speechless, unable to straighten her waist”[7], treating the political rescue of workers and masses as a trick to humiliate her, and “frequently losing her temper.”[8] Until she underwent class education and somewhat repented, she remained wavering on the wrong路线 (line) of the revisionists.
However, not long after, the revisionist faction in the Party usurped the leadership of socialist China, transforming socialism into bureaucrat-monopoly capitalism. Huang Baomei not only failed to be alert or resist but also busily engaged in the affairs of the Nantong Cotton Spinning Factory after the reform and opening-up, serving the new capitalists wholeheartedly and running errands for them. Slave思想 (thought) is consistent with工贼 (factory traitor)思想 (thought); both defend capitalism (wage labor system). Due to narrow vision, they regard it as the root of survival (earning money)—capitalists think and do the same. Capitalists also defend capitalism (wage labor system), claiming that only following capitalist order can avoid suffering and gain happiness. “Listening to capitalists’ words will keep you from being punished; working hard will earn you money”[9], and奴才 (slave),工贼 (factory traitor), and资本家 (capitalist) form a “trinity,” jointly maintaining this order and opposing those who do not obey it. Not long after running around for capitalists, Huang Baomei established her own “Labor Model Company” in 1994[^11], profiting from exploiting surplus value of young workers to fill her own pockets, which were once filled with the “labor models” of the past. At this point, Huang Baomei perhaps hoped to find someone like herself who would “support the family” and be willing to “suffer and work hard” to earn money! Moreover, Huang Baomei has always been a mouthpiece for the reactionary regime of the “Chinese Revisionists,” spreading the so-called “Party stories” for them, completely degenerated into a running dog of the revisionists, and a pile of shameful human excrement.
Why does the current revisionist regime now promote Huang Baomei and hype the so-called Labor Model Spirit? We can find the answer in Huang Baomei’s life story. Born into poverty, she became rich through “personal struggle,” fitting the revisionist propaganda that young people should strive to speculate and pursue bourgeois life; Huang Baomei “loyal to the Communist Party,” actively campaigning for the revisionists even into her nineties, fitting the propaganda of “loyalty to the Party,” and not opposing the revisionist rule; Huang Baomei “seriously responsible for her work,” only caring about production, not路线 (line), fitting the revisionist propaganda of “diligent work and努力奋斗 (hard work),” and being a good奴才 (slave) for the bourgeoisie. Clearly, the so-called Labor Model Spirit promoted by the revisionist authorities is not a socialist revolutionary spirit but a bourgeois spirit, a reactionary spirit, and奴才 (slave) spirit. The true labor model under socialism is someone who is both红 (red) and专 (specialized), enthusiastic about斗争事业 (struggle), actively engaged in technological革新 (innovation), and a revolutionary先锋 (pioneer), not like Huang Baomei, who blindly obeys the bourgeoisie, shows little concern for revolutionary cause, and is only a工贼 (factory traitor)奴才 (slave). To be a real labor model, one must pursue revolutionary spirit, not fake “labor models”; pursue revolutionary labor spirit, not reactionary bourgeois spirit.
“Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism” (trial lecture), Wuhan University Philosophy Department, 1973 ↩︎
Xu Ming: “Biography of Huang Baomei” ↩︎
Same as above ↩︎
Mao Zedong, “On the Situation After the Victory of the Anti-Imperialist War and Our Line,” Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 1, 1967 ↩︎
“How the East Wind Blows Into the Doors and Windows,” Selected Philosophical Essays of Shanghai Workers, Volume 1. The original text omitted Huang Baomei’s name, but the content indicates it is her. ↩︎
“How the East Wind Blows Into the Doors and Windows,” Selected Philosophical Essays of Shanghai Workers, Volume 1. ↩︎
Same as above ↩︎
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