The person is now working in an electronics factory, rotating shifts from 8 to 8.
Talking about entering the factory to work, it is actually a process that exposes one’s ideological issues. Before this, I had been in a petty bourgeoisie position and was unaware of the life of the proletariat. Coupled with the bad idea of private ownership of knowledge, I always thought I was “superior.” I felt very “remarkable,” but as my understanding deepened, I gradually realized that I should ultimately learn from the masses and follow the mass line, as Chairman Mao said, intellectuals should go to the masses, because knowledge is fundamentally insufficient. After “glancing around” for a few days, I found that whatever I learned before, whether Marxism-Leninism or anything else, was “useless”… I fell into a dilemma. The main reason is that my proletarianization is not thorough enough, and I still cannot “make friends” with the proletariat. At the same time, my petty bourgeoisie思想 is also doing harm; sometimes I even think about going home directly to “rest and recuperate,” returning to my “comfort zone.” On the one hand, this reflects a need for labor reform; on the other hand, it shows nostalgia for petty bourgeoisie status. In practice, I tend to lean more towards closer contact with informal workers. The external reason for this is mainly that the labor intensity is too great for me because I have always lived a decayed life.
Updated irregularly…
How many days have you been working now? Describe to everyone what exactly your job involves and what kind of things you have encountered.
1.20
Some petty bourgeoisie, like students, may voluntarily or involuntarily join the proletariat for various reasons, but this does not mean their thoughts have changed to those of the proletariat. On the contrary, due to existing or still-present material conditions and social connections, their thoughts may become more reactionary, with parasitic decadence vividly manifested at this moment. This group, because of their stubborn desire to maintain their class status, struggles desperately, so among the workers, those active elements try to climb up desperately, becoming scabs or directly achieving class ascension. The passive ones simply “lie flat,” living their days while spreading trash ideas. But no matter what, they are all stumbling blocks on the path of the proletariat’s progress.
Today, I was assigned to do stamping and punching of iron plates. I calculated that I punched 1,200 plates today. I feel very unfair—proletarians work tirelessly on computers from dawn to dusk, yet after a month, they still need to consider buying a computer with the money they earn. The question is, who needs so many computers and what for?
Originally, the lathe was connected in series, but because today the mold model was different, the inverted machine couldn’t be linked, so a few of us were called to punch and pass the plates, effectively replacing the machine’s original function.
In front of me is A, who looks very young but also experienced. My line leader is very stupid, teaching me to use the lathe without being comprehensive, and the inverted machine was stuck for a long time. At first, a lot of plates piled up, and I couldn’t keep up.
Downstream, I have a B who has been here for three months, talks a lot, seems to be a student, and another C who just arrived, a sophomore.
During the early morning punching today, I paid a little attention because standing for a long time and working in an inverted position caused severe lumbar muscle strain, so my speed slowed down. But I thought, after all, wages are unrelated to labor intensity. So I slowly continued punching, and unknowingly, the plates in front of me increased. I mentioned before that A punched the plates and handed them to me to continue, which surprised me—logically, everyone was tired, and the rate should be the same, but why were the plates still coming so fast? Later, I found out that A’s punching speed was very fast, almost ignoring the lives of those downstream, grabbing the plates and punching without fatigue. I couldn’t help but curse him in my heart, like a scab.
Later, I got more and more exhausted, almost to the point of being unable to stand. The easygoing B downstream suddenly started talking strange, saying that we should punch faster and finish early to leave early. “Pah!” “What kind of scab talk is this? Does a proletariat’s 10-minute break compare to a line leader’s 10-minute break? This is pure scab talk, trying to use ‘leaving early’ to deceive people, actually for the line leader scabs to indulge in pleasure.” I thought I shouldn’t say much and continued slowly punching. At this moment, the line leader came over, pointing at the plates on the ground, saying that once we finish these, we can go home. I smiled inwardly, thinking he would report more plates soon. But B was anxious and urged us to hurry up so we could leave after finishing. I didn’t care about this hypocritical attitude, glanced at our line leader, who indeed went to a corner to bring back a batch of plates and added them to the upstream.
Then I continued slowly punching, with our line leader standing behind me, glaring, trying to coax me: “Just finish punching the three stacks of plates on the table, then you can leave.” But after I finished slowly, the upstream side also brought plates leisurely again, and he said nothing! Just watching the clock, tossing aside the previous promises.
I kept punching slowly, enduring the pain in my waist, feeling that if I was careless, I might fall to the ground and be unable to get up. By 8 o’clock, finally, we finished work. The workers gradually left, and looking at the plates still unpunched on the table, the line leader could only let us go.
C told me during a break that he felt very tired and thought he would leave after a short while. I told him to start looking for a new job now, but he replied: “Wait until my third or fourth year of college to look for one. Anyway, it’s boring now, and I don’t plan to find a job.” He plans to work for two weeks and then leave. I could only say: “That’s fine, at least you can still play for more than 20 days,” and he smiled.
No, the fact that the last sentence can still be played for more than 20 days is too unbelievable. Why doesn’t Qian Renling advise him to still be a laborer, or at least talk to him about the social situation or something.
I said it before, although in the original text it only mentions casually, “Then go start looking for a new job.” But I also told him a lot, telling him to work hard, if he doesn’t want to work in a factory, then find something else. I said a bunch of experiences, and finally he replied, “I’ll look for a job in my third or fourth year of university.” The meaning of this sentence is very clear: his purpose of working part-time is not for anything else, but to make money and pass the time. Because in his third or fourth year, there really isn’t much time to look for a job, and this is implied in his words. Based on my experience, I think talking to him more is actually useless. So I said: there’s still more than 20 days to play. To see what he really means, and he laughed and said yes, yes, we can still play. In fact, repeatedly confirming, he mainly just wants to live parasitically, for pleasure. There are too many people like this, nothing special. He himself did two weeks of temporary work and then ran away, he can’t be kept at all.
Even if he is an exchange student, he shouldn’t collude with him to say these things. When hearing incorrect remarks, one should oppose them. This is not only to oppose his statements but also to express one’s own stance.
Me too.
No, why does Qian Renling say that? Is it because you also want to play?
There are actually few people in China today who truly understand Marxism, and at this time, Qian Renlin should insist on spreading the correct viewpoints.
However, it’s rare for sophomores to enter the factory.
This should probably be explained.
1.27th
Because I stood for a long time continuously for 3 hours, I was exhausted, so I always forgot to clock out after work. After the first time, he said it would be considered absent without leave. After the second time, my line leader straightforwardly marked me as absent without leave. That means no wages, but I only have a photo of clocking in the morning, of course, I can also find someone to testify. When it’s time to pay wages, if they refuse to pay, I plan to defend my rights online through some rights protection platforms.
This is the actual problem I am facing now, and I also have many ideological issues, but I don’t plan to talk about them here.
Our factory line’s name is quite funny, called “Second Dimension Production Line +….”, only 5 people on one line, so there is a shortage of people. As a result, a bizarre situation has arisen: now you have to “queue” to ask for leave from the line leader, one person per day. It’s really speechless… Of course, there are many disgusting trivial matters, but I won’t talk about them here.
Now I am considering whether to stay:
Because I have not fully dropped out of school yet. The school told me to choose between two paths after the semester starts: one is to drop out directly, the other is to take a leave of absence for a year first and then decide whether to continue studying. My relatives think the latter is better, but I am not sure which way to go because I might have a mental decline after returning home during the factory’s holiday. So now I am hesitant.
Because of the mess at school, I will have to go back there at some point, which will delay my work. I am worried that the factory might not approve my leave then.
This is one reason.
The second reason is that I am too exhausted.
Night shifts are strictly from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., but day shifts are different; sometimes I can leave early, and meals are more in line with normal life. But working on a rotating shift every half month, honestly, I am not sure if I can handle it because I might currently have very high energy, so I don’t notice the harm to my body (now I feel my face is also haggard), but I feel I can’t endure that terrible life anymore. In short, whether I stay or leave, it’s fine with me, but I want to be a bit more relaxed.
So I plan to work in the catering industry, like delivering takeout, making milk tea, etc.
But I am reluctant to leave because the environment here is too good for proletarianization, it couldn’t be better. It provides direct firsthand material for studying certain issues related to the proletariat. Here, I will make a summary of my integration work in advance:
Overall, it is a failure, reflected in:
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The proletarianization is not thorough; the character “private” (私) cannot be changed, and it is often not easy to notice, feeling “very reasonable.” In other words, the selfishness that drives me is still acting up, but I find it hard to realize.
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It’s difficult to interact with real workers; I won’t talk about the objective factors here, mainly because my integration time was too short. The second is that my selfishness is too heavy; proletarians can tell at a glance that I am a “scholar” (this is not something I deliberately did, it’s just my guess), so they are also lazy to interact with me.
But there are still many lessons and experiences. I will write a report on this later.
It’s better if you just drop out directly. Studying this school will only fill your mind with decayed garbage. People from your major come out to become white coat demons. There have been many such news lately.
I would like to raise a point here, which I personally think is very important.
Today Fenghuo said: “…without…proletarians will regard themselves as petty bourgeois (?).”
I roughly remember it this way, I am very sure he said “regard as petty bourgeois,” but I am not sure if the subject was “proletarians.”
I personally think this statement can be rephrased, which is the most headache-inducing issue I’ve encountered so far:
Proletarians tend to have petty bourgeois tendencies.
Currently, in my understanding, this issue is heavily distorted by various opportunisms. Leftist opportunists might say: “Workers, although they cannot become capitalists by owning a house of their own, will still lose their proletarian nature because of it, becoming obedient servants who pose no threat to the bourgeoisie, completely soaked in the spirit of slavery.” This is a distorted interpretation of Engels’ “Housing Question” by Maoist and post-Maoist groups; the first half of the sentence is indeed Engels’ meaning — he said that workers owning a small house worth a thousand talers cannot be called proletarians. But he did not say this would turn them into slaves (which is a horrifying statement!). Some workers have indeed become bourgeoisie, but applying this to all workers who own small houses seems to suggest: We should make them give up their small houses, give up a thousand talers, and live a desperately poor life, so that capitalists can exploit workers heavily, because this would prevent them from losing their proletarian status and help the revolution. This is a conclusion only a lunatic could reach.
Right-wing opportunists or mediocrities believe that proletarians who cannot afford a computer (I remember a comrade on the forum said this) are very “revolutionary,” and thus they draw quite absurd conclusions.
It seems that proletarians saving money can buy houses, small cars, or whatever. But the problem is, because they have cars and houses, they are no longer proletarians, but semi-proletarians or petty bourgeoisie. This is a terrible, uncontrollable development. Because it weakens their revolutionary spirit. What to do?
Some comrades’ parents are also workers, but when they have children, they become “Confucian,” desperately encouraging their children to speculate to escape the plight of being proletarians, aiming for “class ascension.” Why is this happening?
Welcome comrades to discuss.
I actually don’t quite understand the sentences you mentioned above; they seem overly complicated and flowery.
There are no proletarians who can buy houses or small cars. Those who can buy them are not proletarians in the first place.
Just to say, factory workers also come from the petty bourgeoisie. How can we say they are all proletarians? Moreover, the true “plight” of the proletariat is wage slavery, which can only be overcome through proletarian revolution. So what you’re talking about is not really the “plight of the proletariat”; this so-called plight is just the petty bourgeoisie’s “dilemma” of wanting to climb up and fearing bankruptcy. Isn’t that the “dilemma” of the petty bourgeoisie?
It can’t be said that simply, dividing classes is not based on whether one has a house or a car, or how much savings one has. The proletariat is a class that has no means of production and is forced to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in exchange for wages, not necessarily that they cannot buy a house or a car (of course, most people are burdened with mortgage and car loans).
2.7 Day Summary
Spent 19 days in the factory, I resigned the day before yesterday.
Overall, this attempt at融工 (Rónggōng) was quite a failure.
Actually, after entering the factory, there were many issues. But I could never find the main contradiction, which led to the final failure. And this main contradiction was neither a struggle against capitalists nor anything else, but the problem of proletarianization.
Below, I try to analyze the reasons for the failure:
- Before going, I basically took a bunch of problems with me, and these issues kept revealing themselves during my work, such as entertainment problems. At first, after work, I was exhausted and just watched short videos or talked with ds about love, but later I realized this and replaced it with revolutionary literature and art. However, this change only happened a few days before resignation.
For example, the outbreak of petit-bourgeois illness, manifested as viewing problems from a petit-bourgeois standpoint, which is hard to realize oneself. Often only after doing it do you realize, “post-awareness.” For instance, regarding “social etiquette,” I was indifferent to the workers in the dormitory—“mind your own business, don’t care about others.” There was a worker of about my age who was very warm to me, but I often ignored him and was cold toward him. I also disliked his hygiene habits (in fact, the workers’ dormitory was very clean, much cleaner than the dorms in bourgeois universities, which are basically garbage dumps). Of course, there are many more issues I haven’t yet realized. - Insufficient application of Marxism
Originally, I didn’t understand this stuff well; I studied it superficially. Before working, because I had plenty of time, I studied diligently. But after starting work, I became busy and gave up主动学习 (active learning), relying entirely on passive学习 (learning) through reading groups. This caused a significant obstacle.
What I now realize is that I made a big mistake in class analysis.
Since high school, I have used class analysis, but it was a very childish, very simple class analysis. This actually exposed my pragmatic attitude towards class analysis. I always thought that the line leaders and team leaders, or the正组长 (main team leaders), were all on the same side, all bourgeois running dogs, and then classified them as petit-bourgeois, and believed that among us, we were either proletarians or semi-proletarians (excluding student workers). In fact, this is a metaphysical attitude because later I found out that, in fact, line leaders and team leaders have contradictions among themselves, hierarchical contradictions, and internal contradictions within levels. Besides these people, even within the proletariat, there are contradictions—some are more资 (well-off), some less so. Some flatter superiors, others do not. This was something I hadn’t considered before.
Now I want to discuss the issue of wage demands. This has already been criticized by同志 (comrade)烽火 (Fenghuo). The original text is as follows:
Actually, I need to explain the background here. We signed a contract with the factory, which states that wages are paid around the 10th. Yesterday, I asked my line leader, and he also said the 10th. I thought: since we all say, “Labor law is a scrap of paper.” I think that ignoring labor law has become the norm for enterprises. I asked several coworkers about the pay date, and they all said “that’s how it is.” I didn’t realize the importance of wage demands. I thought: “Anyway, I have evidence in hand, so I’m not afraid they will deduct.” In fact, this is a petit-bourgeois view. But now I feel quite conflicted.
Writing this, I feel I am still a rather “arrogant” person, urging a line of people to fight the line leader, the line leader gets benefits, and I also get benefits… I really don’t know what to say. Sorry to those fellow workers of my age who listen to me…
What does dating DS mean?
It may refer to DeepSeek.
Regarding the experience of struggle, I am like Qian Renling, not deeply knowledgeable and knowing very little. I just looked at some posts on the forum where comrades share their experiences of demanding wages. Can the comrades on the forum talk more about this issue? But I also think that comrades analyze based on specific situations and therefore adopt different strategies, so I feel unsure how to ask questions appropriately. How should we understand, learn, and apply the law?
After reading Qian Renling’s sharing, I thought of myself. Two years ago, I also wanted to “integrate into the workforce,” and I didn’t care about wages because I only understood an abstract “labor reform,” which is like doing “charity” for the bourgeoisie.