I had been satisfied with the old lifestyle, indulging in sexual immorality, and looking down on theoretical study and the struggle of ideas with the old life; the illustration accompanying the first diary entry was very similar to my state, and I had remained complacent and unambitious about it.
Until today, after reading Jerzynski’s The Prison Diary and Letters, I felt that life could no longer continue in the old way. The old life should be thrown into the trash, and a new life should be built through struggle. Therefore I start this post as the beginning of a new life.
Besides writing some views on current news, I can write more about my daily ideological struggles and critique erroneous thoughts.
In the past, many revolutionary predecessors would also write about how they studied Marxism to overcome erroneous thoughts. Just like Lei Feng would reflect that he cannot only advance himself, but only by helping comrades advance together is true progress. Jin Xunhua bled while working, but the hands of the peasants and workers do not shed blood. He would reflect on his long-time separation from labor.
“When we achieve results, we should attribute them to our great Party; when things are not done well, we should look for the reasons within ourselves.”
Attachments:
Prison Diary and Letters Jerzynski (1).pdf (18.3 MB)
How the Iron Was Made.pdf (8.5 MB)
Today I didn’t study much theory, mainly reviewing previous notes, organizing the “three essences” of materialist dialectics (contradiction in unity, affirmation and negation, quantitative change leading to qualitative change) and thinking about the three attitudes toward theory.
In revolutionary struggle, when facing difficulties, one goes to study theory to solve problems; after setbacks, one studies theory; only at a critical moment does one remember to study theory.
The first attitude is the Marxist learning attitude; the second (the “perplexed yet study it” attitude) is to push through laziness toward theory, turning toward Marxism; the third is the pragmatic learning attitude, not valuing theory in everyday life, treating revolutionary theory as intellectual capital or a stumbling block to personal gain, and only thinking of using it at a crisis moment, but having a distorted class stance makes it impossible to truly master revolutionary theory, inevitably leading to the failure of the struggle, and after losing heart, one wishes to escape reality and shake hands with bourgeois opium.
I talked with a female classmate for a bit and discussed the death of Zhang Xuefeng. She thinks Zhang is a hypocritical teacher who sells fake courses, saying his classes are for money, also ridiculing him for being “poor and anxious but pretentious” (the family is relatively “impoverished” yet has a pompous attitude; the rich ones lick up like dogs). She thinks his death was caused by someone moving the cake (?). She also jokingly mentioned a junior high classmate who was lured away to another place and semi-forced into marriage, saying this is the “harm of online dating.”
I told her that the news of Aunt Mei’s arrest is very likely fake and explained some doubts (not even a single mosaic image of Zhang). She agreed with me.
Previously in their class, a boy copied someone’s answers during an exam and scored higher than her. She reported him to Laojiu, but Lao Jiu gave the boy a lighter punishment under the pretext of “keeping harmony in all things” (a warning, no cleaning punishment).
