As early as April of last year, with the help of comrades on the forum, I left my old family and university. During this nearly year-long period, although I participated in wage labor, I was not able to truly transform my thoughts through labor. Changes in my thinking during labor often came spontaneously. On one hand, this was due to the strict discipline of the Chinese revisionist labor system, which led to my frequent dismissals, leaving me without stable work for a period of time, often only working for twenty or thirty days, and once even only half a day before having to find a new job. On the other hand, it was because I had developed a mindset detached from the people in my previous comfortable life—only seeking personal enjoyment and opportunistic studies, avoiding social interactions, and stubbornly wanting to live such a personal life, only managing my small nest. Therefore, even after participating in labor, I did not actively communicate with or understand the lives of other workers, let alone indoctrinate them with Marxist political ideas.
Fortunately, guided by the correct line of the forum, after each unemployment I fought against the capitalist lackeys, almost always successfully reclaiming my wages and striking down their arrogance. Through these struggles, I also saw the ugly faces of these reactionaries—they spend all day in air-conditioned comfort doing the easiest work for the most money. If you try to recover a few dozen or ten or so yuan when settling wages, or simply demand the wages be paid on the same day, you will face brazen rejection, often leading to fierce conflicts or even physical confrontations. In these struggles, I began to understand what “life is a struggle” means, as the ending song of the documentary American Harland County states: “For every dime they give us, a battle must be fought.”
The last time I demanded my wages at a milk tea shop, I found the delivery station and became a Meituan dedicated delivery rider, ending my period of frequent unemployment. Due to the pure piece-rate wage system of the delivery work, the minimal capital and training costs for the station manager, and because I joined a station in a first-tier Chinese city with high order volume, the labor discipline there was much more relaxed. Even if conflicts with the station manager occasionally occurred, I wouldn’t lose my job. I have been working at this station for about half a year now, making it the longest I have worked since participating in labor.
The special nature of delivery work allows me to broadly contact people from all social classes and strata—from the bourgeoisie and wealthy petty bourgeoisie living in upscale communities to workers living in old, dilapidated subdivided houses; from mental workers in office buildings to small business owners, managers, and clerks in various shops. However, because I had long been only concerned with my personal life, although I had contact with many people, there was little meaningful communication. The purpose of creating this post today is to re-embark on the “Four Combinations” path proposed by Comrade October Beacon in the Guide to Ideological Struggle: “combine society, combine the people, combine practice, combine labor,” to provide some emotional motivation for comrades in the forum who cannot yet immediately participate in labor reform and social contact. It aims to encourage them to be more brave and resolute in fighting against reactionary families and academic institutions, and also serve as an external factor to motivate me to think more during work, preventing me from merely being a spontaneous, muddle-headed worker living aimlessly.
【Since today is my day off, this post will be officially updated starting tomorrow】