Editor’s note: Before going abroad, I often saw endless debates within the country about the living conditions in other countries. The liberals promote going abroad to work for “human rights” and higher wages, while the pinks (pink-haired youth) shout daily that working abroad will lead to discrimination, high prices, and so on. The Zhongxiu government is actively preventing the domestic working masses from understanding foreign situations, fostering many literary vagabonds and hooligans to stir up trouble, and strongly portraying foreign countries as hell. Some relatively backward thinkers also hold illusions about foreign labor conditions, believing that foreign countries are labor paradises, with unions helping workers fight against capitalists, high wages ensuring living standards, and so forth.
In fact, before going abroad for work, I basically shared these thoughts. Due to long-term living as a student in exile, rarely participating in social struggles, I was often afraid of struggle and feared confrontation. Moreover, in the parasitic and opportunistic academic life, I developed a very reactionary “intellectual dignity” view, believing that fighting and making a fuss was undignified, and that losing a struggle would cause one to lose face. Therefore, I held unrealistic fantasies about foreign labor conditions, labor bureaus, unions, etc., once thinking that erupting conflicts could be exploited to take over everything. But later, the class struggle on construction sites also profoundly educated me: “There has never been a savior, nor rely on fairy emperors.” In this reactionary era of capitalist restoration, dreaming of relying on yellow unions and bourgeois state machinery to fight, and fantasizing that the labor conditions achieved by the older generation of workers through spontaneous struggle could help me avoid struggle, is completely impossible. The only way out is to learn Marxism, consciously fight against the bourgeoisie and its running dogs—that principle applies both domestically and internationally.
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Support, must support
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Looking forward to the update
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I previously encountered a coworker in the factory who wanted to go abroad to work and repeatedly persuaded me to go as well. I argued that going abroad is nothing more than enjoying the成果 of the international working class’s struggle. China’s working conditions are extremely harsh, but ultimately, it depends on us to fight and liberate ourselves. However, I have indeed lacked understanding of the situation of foreign workers, making it difficult to persuade him with reason and evidence. Looking forward to updates
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