Why are there so many service industry “scammers”?

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I’ve been working in the service industry recently, mainly at a bubble tea shop. In this process I notice a phenomenon: in service industries like bubble tea shops, there are often many scabs,甚至 a店 almost all scabs. These people work frenetically while on the job, and even perform the functions of organizing capitalist production, supervising new staff, directing them, and when someone makes a mistake they swear loudly, saying, “If you can’t do it, don’t do it.”

Moreover, mobility in the service industry is extremely high. Many people leave after a period, then those who stay long-term get promoted to roles like trainer or shift manager, which basically makes them scabs. In fact, in a store, only those who are scabs can stay long-term; if you slightly resist, you are ostracized by the scabs and the store manager, or simply fired.

I discussed this with comrades and found that these scabs live in moral decay, they pursue various pleasures, and to enjoy them they must climb up, get rich, and wealth cannot be created without exploiting the poor. This is their subjective pursuit of an exploitative class status. Another finding is that in service industries like bubble tea shops, the overall mode of production is very different from big industry.

If we say most factories now have achieved large-scale mechanized production with a high composition of capital, bubble tea shops and similar places have a low organic composition and rely heavily on manual labor, remaining at a stage of simple coordination, not even reaching the level of workshop craftsmanship (because workshop craft still has fixed division of labor, while in bubble tea shops the division of labor is rotating rather than fixed). Sometimes one person handles the entire process from preparation to order entry, not even reaching the simple level of coordination.

In this low organic composition and low surplus value production, service industries like bubble tea shops lose concentration and create a strong labor hierarchy. If a person is willing to be a scab and works fast, one person handling orders can create a lot of surplus value for the capitalist, which earns them favor and a chance to climb higher. And because one person can do all the work, the impact of a service industry strike is poor: as long as there is one scab who is willing to work from morning to night, the store can keep operating, not to mention bringing in scabs from other stores.

But in a factory it’s different. A high organic composition reduces differences in people’s labor capacity, so labor hierarchy is not obvious; ultimately it depends on machines, leaving little room to climb up based on labor ability. Some comrades in factories have met old workers who have worked ten or thirty years; in terms of skill, there’s no question, yet they still continue as operators. If someone had worked in a bubble tea shop for ten years, they would have long since climbed somewhere else. And because machines in large-scale industry prevent workers from being familiar with the entire production process, it is hard for capitalists to find substitutes during strikes; even if capitalists can corrupt a few scabs, production would be greatly affected and capital turnover would be delayed.

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It can be said that industrial workers in factories are the true proletariat, after all, “large industry created the modern proletariat,” “industry emancipated workshop workers from feudal relations, they lost their only property, thus becoming wage laborers.” If we truly want to realize proletarianization and undergo labor transformation, we still need to try factory work, to truly engage with workers.

What does everyone think about this?

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This is a manifestation of the decay of imperialism; social labor tends to drift away from actual production and the domains that are beneficial to humanity. This service-sector labor has a free, lax character, is small in scale, has low organizational composition, and large disparities in workers’ skills. In such a field, workers find it hard to unite because the labor hierarchy is relatively pronounced, and the bourgeoisie use bribery to promote scabs, which easily divides the ranks of workers. Because the scale is small, manual labor is used, and there are large differences in productivity, with potential for upward mobility, it is very easy for the bourgeoisie’s running dogs—scabs—to appear in this sector.

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I haven’t worked long as a bubble tea shop attendant, and I haven’t worked at many shops, but I’ve already encountered two people who said they wanted to open a bubble tea shop of their own: one is the current shop’s saboteur (hard worker), and the other is the former manager of a grass jelly tea shop. In fact, I could even have this idea myself. In the past, as a parasitic affluent small bourgeois, I would often buy bubble tea. At that time I felt that this cup, costing around ten or twenty yuan, was a bit expensive but still “worth it.” When I first started working at a bubble tea shop, I found that these things only involved tea, sugar, creamer (even if using real milk, the cost isn’t much), and almost free ice because in the past I ran small-scale production and engaged in speculative trades, valuing “profit” highly. At that time, in this kind of free-wheeling job, my mindset wasn’t transformed much, so I developed the personal entrepreneurial idea of “opening a bubble tea shop.” Today, after seeing the typhoon post, combining it with what I previously learned in political economy, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of the vanguard role of industrial workers, and I will go to factories to labor and reform.

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I now understand Kasahara, from Tokihiko Kobayashi’s “Party Life”, and why the protagonist’s “I” says Kasahara’s thoughts in a coffee shop would be problematic.

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Indeed, through practical work at a bubble tea shop I understood why industrial workers are the most advanced: bubble tea shops are mostly manual labor with a low degree of organizational structure and a small production scale. Shops that don’t have very high sales often only need one or two skilled workers to maintain operations. Moreover, bubble tea shops are largely like small-scale artisanal production, where one skilled worker must master all positions and consider how to arrange different processes for higher efficiency. This is unlike large factories where machines are used to level workers’ labor capacity, creating a strong labor hierarchy and thus exacerbating the inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. Add to this that the bubble tea industry is also a luxury goods sector; customers who frequently drink bubble tea are either the upper-middle class with money and leisure or students living off loans, so shop staff are easily influenced by the decaying bourgeois culture. This influence worsens the already lax and unstructured labor environment of bubble tea shops.

In contrast, industrial workers facing machines are more alike; one or two people cannot significantly affect the production process, and relations among workers become more egalitarian. After the Industrial Revolution, the bourgeoisie used large-scale machinery to bring women and children into factories to drive down wages. But conversely, the advent of machines also reduced the differences in people’s labor capabilities, undermining the labor hierarchy.

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I feel there is another aspect of the reason, so I’ll talk about my own feelings here.
I’m in Mi Xue Gan, as everyone knows Mi Xue is actually a franchise, that is, small shops under large companies.
The large companies are monopolies, and in practice they also heavily exploit each shop.
For example, milk base powder, or what honeydew melon ice cream powder, each pack 1kg costs only about 70, 80, or even less, at most not more than a hundred yuan, but selling to the shop manager, that is, the wholesale, reaches 200, 300, or even 150 in price.
For example, the ice cream machine, the price is very expensive, higher than normal. And many things must be purchased from the company; if you don’t stock, you can’t make it. This is not what we usually think; the price of raw materials can be considered a monopoly price, which for shop managers—these small-bourgeoisie—is actually a kind of exploitation.
Moreover, in many catering places, rent, water, electricity are relatively expensive. Engels said in The Housing Question that housing issues harm not only the proletariat but also the petty bourgeoisie. In fact, for those running milk tea shops—the petty bourgeoisie—they are also on the brink of bankruptcy. At this moment, they then have a need for wage slaves, because such people can work hard for them and can help them manage. And they themselves have only to pay the price of employing one person.
The second point is the entertainment in milk tea shops or other catering places, that is, they play music. For example, Mi Xue might sing “You love me, I love you”….
The music may never stop day and night; at this time, in the shop they must listen to bourgeoisie entertainment day and night, and in fact this also provides soil for the employees of the milk tea shops to indulge in pleasure. This entertainment is not to relieve fatigue, but to be “happier to be exploited,” to divert class struggle, or to attract customers.

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Is Qian Ren Zero too out of this world, the franchise shop owners aren’t bourgeois, or are they henchmen of the capitalists, how do they become small-bourgeois? They buy at high prices from the company, which isn’t being exploited, but the redistribution of surplus value within the exploiting class. A shop owner like this lives by exploiting the shop staff, not by their own labor; what is he being exploited for.

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Everyone is finding ways to oppress workers to make money, how could they be small-bourgeois. Many milk-tea shops have structure where capitalists run the shop, possibly spanning several milk-tea brands, then hire shop managers as pawns to together exploit workers.

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The shop manager who manages workers for capitalists has already participated in exploitative labor, so of course they are no longer petite bourgeoisie.
Petite bourgeoisie. For example, self-farming peasants, artisan masters, the lower educated class—students, primary and secondary school teachers, junior clerks, petty administrators, junior lawyers, small traders, etc.—all belong to this category. (Analysis of China’s various social classes)
The petite bourgeoisie consists of people engaged in small-scale production who live on their own labor, or the lower educated class who are not closely tied to the capitalist class. These people, because they do not engage in exploitative activities and are under the oppression of the capitalist class, risk bankruptcy, so except for the right-wing among them who can rise, they will be dissatisfied with capitalist society.
Like shop managers in milk tea shops, who are closely tied to capitalists and act as their running dogs, engaging in exploitative activities—they indeed work in the shop, but this labor is only a necessary supplement to their exploitation—then they receive surplus value from the capitalists. Shop managers are real members of the bourgeoisie. If the shop is their own, of course they are petite bourgeoisie; if the shop is owned by capitalists and they are hired as shop managers, they are entirely dependent on the bourgeoisie and cannot be considered petite bourgeoisie.
Things like shop managers having to spend more on purchasing, or the shop renting from landlords, etc., are merely questions of how surplus value is distributed among the exploited class; if one says they are also oppressed just because surplus value is taken away through exploitation, that would acknowledge the legitimacy of owning surplus value, and if so, then most of the bourgeoisie would also be counted as “petite bourgeoisie.”

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I feel that most milk tea shops have daily sales that can be handled by one person, and most milk tea shops are franchises; it’s basically a bunch of small workshops using one name.

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In fact, in a milk-tea shop the production is on-demand, meaning the product is made after the customer orders. This makes it so that one or two people can work, albeit slowly, and still meet orders. It’s just a matter of making customers wait a bit longer, and this is something that wealthier, idle, petty-bourgeois customers are happy to do for this amount of time. A typical 8-person shop can actually be sustained long-term with just 4 people, and with 2 people it can be sustained in the short term.

But in a factory, losing half of the staff truly reduces output by half. If collaboration is high, it could reduce even more, which inevitably slows down the turnover of capital and makes this harder for the capitalists to accept.

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The construction site I’m at is similar, with no fixed division of labor; the foreman assigns tasks and you do them, one day this process, another day that process.

But the formation of labor stratification may differ from milk tea shops. Milk tea shops may be due to being highly profitable from the start, so there is no need to invest fixed capital to add more machines, whereas in construction workers are cheap, so with a low degree of organization and a lot of manual labor, capitalists can use labor stratification to differentiate workers. I’ve been at it for several months and am still treated like an apprentice.

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I’m not sure; on a construction site wouldn’t there be a specific division of labor by trades and coordinated work?

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There will be this situation within a single trade/task.

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Industrial and service sectors exhibit severe differentiation in labor levels, which serves to divide workers by capitalists and manufacture conflicts among workers to ease class struggle. Taking the automotive service industry as an example, automotive service is generally divided into two main departments: pre-sales and after-sales. Pre-sales mainly involve sales and finance; sales are divided into apprentices (usually new graduates with no experience in a career switch), general sales (with sales experience), and top sales (highly experienced, with a track record as a top seller in previous car 4S stores).

Wage grade differentiation is severe. In order to compete for top-seller status, there is crazy internal competition and opposing tensions. (Between general sales and top sales, top sales primarily aim to sell more cars than general sales, with a guaranteed salary for several months.)

Apprentices mainly rely on making a vow, the lowest-ranked being eliminated; if they fail to complete tasks, they are let go.

To survive, trust between people is almost non-existent; people are no longer people.

Industrial factories, large machinery production, assembly line-driven, low barriers to entry, favoring young people. Recent graduates, vocational secondary school graduates, high school and middle school students, basically all comers are accepted, the foreman’s favorite. (Few social experiences, easy to manage, low wage costs, motivated.) Here is where workers are most easily oppressed, with too many competitors (those filtered out by education or major in other jobs). As for other factories that unemployed people of certain ages cannot enter, this is the last stop (if you can’t get in here, you can only do logistics or delivery).

Manufacturing factories for disabled persons are generally undesirable, but they are also potential competitors.

Factories can freely lower wages: for permanent workers, daily wages; for piece-rate workers, unit prices; for hourly workers, hourly wages. In economic downturns, these are standard operations. Even during expansion, wages hardly change, at most some welfare benefits increase.

Other factories with some entry barriers usually have educational requirements, or need specialized matching skills. For example, I used to work at a thermal power plant that required a high school education. Below high school, you can only go through back channels (connections are strong) (factory leadership).

Here, labor hierarchy generally polarizes into two extremes: general workers in the plant and technical engineers, logistics clerks, and the leadership decision-makers. Relatively speaking, among general workers there seems to be no difference on the surface, only job types differ—electrical and mechanical workers, boiler workers, coal truck drivers. Depending on working conditions, the basic monthly wages differ by at most about 200 yuan.

But factory assessments are very numerous; performance-based pay is highly differentiated, with opportunists often earning more than the diligent. Add to this the unfair distribution system, and conflicts among workers are numerous.

Looking back now, a considerable part of capitalist factory systems is used to differentiate workers, manufacture conflicts among workers, thereby masking the fundamental contradictions between workers and capitalists.

If students want to enter factories and reform themselves through labor, they must prepare for long-term ideological struggle, productive struggle, and the struggle of body and will; theory, in the end, remains theory, and practice provides deeper insight. Today I understand and can read some theories, but in facing many real problems, I’m not sure what I would choose. For example, the issue of revolutionary sacrifice, the harsh conditions of revolution, and the missteps in the revolutionary process—these can only be tested through revolutionary struggle.

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My store manager was promoted in less than a year and a half, and I estimate that after another period of time he’ll be promoted to supervisor or something. Compared to factory work, the social class position changes much faster here. I think this may also be related to the milk tea shop having a lower organizational structure, allowing rapid expansion of stores, whereas factories have higher organizational structures with large sunk costs and relatively less change in scale. Workers stay in the same post for a long time, and those who handle execution and bottlenecks—the number of such workers—generally don’t change much.

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