Creation: Marxist Philosophy Group of the Proletarian Liberation Struggle Association
Recently, according to reports from multiple media outlets, students’ union officials at Xinyang High School in Henan Province confiscated classmates’ phones and demanded a high “ransom fee” of 300 yuan per device (for returning the phone) and a “gag fee” (not informing teachers about the phone). A notice on November 11 stated that after preliminary investigation, the school confirmed the situation was true, and four involved student union officials had been expelled from the student union. Further actions will be taken based on the investigation results of public security authorities. However, this is not the first time such bribery and corruption incidents among students have occurred. As early as 2015, media reported that a sixth-grade vice class monitor at an elementary school extorted over 20,000 yuan through institutional violence for profit.[1]
The occurrence of bribery and corruption phenomena on campus has surprised some people; they cannot understand—how could minors, innocent and naive, who have not yet experienced the world, commit acts that only “adults”—that is, in society, workplaces, and officialdom—would do? In fact, schools are not purely “knowledge-learning” sanctuaries free from the toxins of capitalism. On the contrary, they are places where the bourgeoisie “tames” children, adolescents, and young people before they formally enter capitalist society; they are prisons where bourgeois ideas such as laziness, “reading to become officials,” and “the strong prey on the weak” are instilled through brutal means—training obedient servants and future capitalists to serve their interests. As Lenin said, “The young generation of workers and peasants in such schools are not so much educated as they are enslaved by the bourgeoisie”[2]. Therefore, the hierarchical system and hierarchical consciousness, which are products of capitalist society, especially of the petty-bourgeois bureaucratic capitalism, naturally appear in schools. Besides the differences in status between teachers and students and the power teachers hold over students, there are also various internal class distinctions among students—such as family background, academic performance, and the closeness of relationships with teachers (often depending on how servile the student is). Moreover, to better “rule” students, schools and teachers adopt divide-and-conquer tactics based on student hierarchies, establishing “student organizations” such as student unions, empowering a few “upper-class” students with some teacher authority, allowing them to implement their will, and oppressing the rest—thus, student unions under capitalism are not organizations of “self-management,” “self-education,” or “self-service,” but agents of teacher oppression and student enslavement! Due to parasitic practices of dependency, the infusion of bourgeois ideas of doing less work for more pay and exploiting others, and the corruption prevalent among petty-bourgeois bureaucrats, these student officials abuse their limited power to extort money from other students. This constitutes the objective basis for the emergence of bribery and corruption among students in schools.
After this incident was exposed, many media outlets either remained silent or published only vague official articles. Few media commented, and those that did mostly engaged in semantic disputes over “extortion” and “bribery and corruption” to distract attention; even fewer discussed the root causes of the incident, and most of these blamed individual teachers or schools for “dereliction of duty”—“Behind the ‘authoritative’ behavior of a few student officials is the lack of moral and legal education, huge loopholes, and negligence in school management”[3]. Indeed, the widespread moral decline among students is largely due to a lack of proper education, but it is precisely capitalism that causes this educational deficiency. Any attempt to deny the corrupt reality of capitalist society’s influence on the education system or to portray the widespread moral decay of youth as an “extraordinary phenomenon” is futile. The education system under petty-bourgeois reform is leading China’s young generation into a moral abyss, causing them to lose their vitality. However, the oppression of the capitalist education system, the spread of Marxism, and the development of people’s movements will gradually awaken their consciousness of resistance, ultimately uniting students with workers and peasants, sparking revolution in China. And “the Chinese revolution will wipe out the gloom on our youth and make them ‘the sun at 8 or 9 in the morning’ again!”[4]
