The point you focus on is a bit strange, isn’t it to look at the content, to see how Lenin argued, the task of intellectuals who have learned Marxism, and why they should actively publicize among workers? It feels like pursuing a literary style is a form of formalism. As far as I know, some people pursue Lenin-style writing because they want to be officials, to mock others harshly, in order to achieve a sense of superiority. I don’t know what your thoughts are.
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You are right to recognize what I’m saying, but Lenin’s rhetorical artistry in his critiques also leaves a reader feeling incredibly gratified and applauding after reading, and I think this isn’t contradictory. I’m not trying to use this as a capital to mock others; if anyone reads Lenin’s writings solely for this reason, they would surely end up muddled and learn nothing. What I’m actually aiming to do is to point out that my own style occasionally drifts away from the masses, lacking a combative critical edge, and instead carries a petty-bourgeois, sour, and weak sense.
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5.4 Parents still fantasize that they can “correct” my thoughts, while I have to endure their counterrevolutionary propaganda in silence, keeping my anger in check. If Iargue, I will fall into meaningless debates with them, each insisting on their own point, wasting almost an entire day as I endure their hysterical harassment. Better to suffer a moment of grievance than longer pain.
They start by talking about relatives and friends, how wonderful college is, and how my mother herself once said she would go to college, and how one should not study with the dregs, a supposedly “inspirational” experience. When I ignore them, they smear people who come from junior colleges and technical schools as degenerate and stupid, and claim that the current proletariat would be traitors to the nation if they returned to the anti-Japanese resistance era (their exact words). Hearing these words makes my blood rush to my head, but I must endure and not fiercely refute their most shameless and unreasonable arguments. They have realized that their control over me is weakening, so they use any means to fabricate nonsense and unleash all their tricks, stupidly trying to change me. But I believe that the dawn of our revolutionary left will come, that this bourgeois rule will not last long, as long as we endure the chaos before daybreak!
Yesterday, the sky over our area was gray and overcast, then a strong wind suddenly blew in, followed by a shower. After a while, the rain stopped and the sun shone brightly. Feeling inspired, I randomly wrote a poem and present it here:
Auburn leaves, poison wind swirls clouds, heavy rain falls to pound the earth flat. A new sun replaces the old day; where in the world is it not sunny?.
Cang Ye’s poisonous wind swirls the clouds, heavy rain falls until the ground sinks. A new sun replaces the old, where in the world is there not a sunny day.
Forgive my bluntness, this poem isn’t political, and it’s rather abstract and hollow. But you can see the toil and the struggle with parents, the resistance to parental autocracy. However, this perspective is from your own position, not from the broader working people, i.e., it’s a petit-bourgeois stance. I think the poet’s mindset in writing this poem also reflects your attitude toward revolution. You could think about it more.
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5.4 Quick Summary Today, after my first read of “What to Do About It,” I found it very challenging since I wasn’t familiar with the related history. I skipped over parts I didn’t understand for now and didn’t summarize much after finishing. Tomorrow I’ll begin a second reading and also take more notes.
I didn’t pay attention to balancing work and rest, which made me space out while reading, lowering both the quality and speed of reading. At the same time, my petite-bourgeois lax mindset still showed up, wanting to finish quickly and treating this as a task—this is something I need to overcome.
I had read a little from the series “Young People’s Self-Education Library,” specifically the basic knowledge of political economy. I’ll put it back on the schedule from today and read it from the beginning.
My own reading speed is very slow. I believe that with an increase in reading quantity and an improvement in reading quality, qualitative changes will eventually arise from quantitative growth, and reading speed will improve.
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How to understand it? You have to read many preparatory articles and grasp the historical background, which may be too difficult for you. At the very least, start with these essays: “Protest of the Social Democrats,” “The Retrenchment Tendency Within the Russian Social Democratic Party,” “A Concurrence with the Advocates of Economism,” and “Where to Begin.” Moreover, reading these books requires careful investigation of the background and each technical term; you need to put in some effort.
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My Current Situation and Future Prospects
Objective lifestyle: a student living a life of ordinary chores without economic independence.
The main contradiction in thinking is between rapidly developing, storming Marxist revolutionary thoughts through theoretical study and ideological struggle, and the petit-bourgeois hedonistic and lax concepts spontaneously arising in my mind from the above lifestyle. When this contradiction translates into reality, I must constantly be vigilant and oppose lazy thoughts. For example, when I see the miserable life of the proletariat, I feel angry on one hand, but on the other hand I shrink back from a future proletarian life. Recently I found these various problems and quickly engaged in ideological struggle, including re-examining my own compromised economic position, recalling Marxist articles I have read, flipping through reading notes, etc., suppressing this ideological development. For the growth of daily erroneous thoughts, one must cut through them decisively and quickly recognize and reject them. This requires a solid foundation of practice and theory, and still far more effort than I currently put in.
So far, strides have been made in fighting against certain ideas, such as: heroic history viewpoint, academic opportunism, male chauvinism (former tendency to judge women by appearance, i.e., bourgeois aesthetic standards), and dependence on electronic opium. These ideas have basically been cleared, but we must not let our guard down; with time there may still be reversals.
Summary: Revolutionary thoughts are growing in leaps and bounds. In accordance with the wave-like development of things, the pace may slow in the future, so we must be prepared to avoid falling into the trap of petty-bourgeois pessimism.
In the future, the primary goal is to escape my parents’ shadow as much as possible and as quickly as possible, and to plunge into productive practice. The only thing I feel uncertain about is that unemployment in China is currently serious, and finding work is relatively difficult. Whether as industrial workers or service workers, the work is high-intensity and can harm the body, which I must be prepared for. There are so many workers in China who, because of poor working environments, develop occupational diseases (though many of these can be avoided). Life and death are on the line, while I have the will to dedicate myself to revolution—what is there to care about? Do I naturally have to escape these, while the broad masses of the proletariat live a life of exploitation and misery? If I do not enter hell, who will? Only by entering hell can one truly, in the end, unleash ten thousand banners to cut down Yanluo!
“Our road is so broad, our future so glorious; we dedicate ourselves to this magnificent cause, with boundless happiness and supreme glory.” Let the old family living in reactionary quagmire go on talking to itself, who cares about your shelter! Let the whole world bourgeoisie tremble with fear—your very first word written in history from birth is “perish”!
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Cultivating positive ideas is good, but I’m not very clear how these thoughts were expressed in the past and how they fought. And what about the line “a hundred thousand banners slaying Yan Luo” — this is a dark poem. In this poem, Chen Yi appears to have revolutionary ideals and an image of a Marxist who fought for the liberation of New China, but in fact it is just his self-glorification. The line “this going to the spring terrace to recruit old troops” shows that he treated the revolutionary army as his private army; he himself was a warlord-turned-rightist. There are disclosures about him on forums that you can check.
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About the heroic history view. In the past it was mainly manifested as thinking history is all about some hero’s “wise leadership” and “saving the situation.” I also somewhat despised peasant uprisings, considering them superstitious. Back then, under the influence of external propaganda, I didn’t study Marxism seriously and didn’t master the correct analytical method. Later, after learning Marxist analysis, I quickly defeated these fallacies.
About academic opportunism. Before understanding Marxism, I was dissatisfied with exam-oriented education and did some resistance, such as refusing to do assignments. But at that time I still harbored fantasies, hoping to pursue personal happiness through my own efforts. After contacting Marxism, I determined the goal of integrating into the proletariat in the future, realized the opportunistic nature of academic performance, and quickly discarded the superstition about grades.
There was a time when I judged women mostly by appearance: if they looked good, I treated them well; if not, I treated them poorly. Later I realized that appearance is not something I determine, and it shouldn’t be the standard for evaluation, but I still secretly fall into judging people by looks. After encountering Marxism, I realized that, first, my so-called aesthetic standard is bourgeois; second, judging people by appearance is objectifying women, which is male chauvinism. I don’t have many remedies, so I can only mentally strive to level my attitudes toward looking at women and looking at men, and constantly remind myself to pay attention.
I have many other questions, and I can only avoid them in this constant way; this is due to my student-like economic status, so I am very eager to merge into the proletariat, which is the fundamental solution.
Regarding Chen Yi, when you said that, I thought, indeed this poem is a dark poem. And I actually saw this poem in the school textbook, it seems reading requires more thinking.
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5.5 Summary in Brief Today I prioritized reading the most interesting entries from Part of the Philosophical Dictionary. Following Comrade Fenghuo’s suggestion, to understand the historical background of The Way to Do It, I pulled out two chapters from The Youth Self-Study Series: A Brief History of International Communist Movement — “The Birth of Leninism” and “Lenin’s Struggle to Establish a New Type of Marxist Party,” and I’m reading them. Next, I plan to start reading The Protest Letter from Social Democrats.
Tomorrow I start school again, and I plan to record some of the school’s key matters.
5.6 Early in the morning my mother did a surprise check, pulled out the Lu Xun anthology and Lu Xun miscellaneous essays from my schoolbag, but I kept a backup and hid Volume 3 of the Mao Zedong Selected Works which wasn’t discovered. At school I read the preface and postscript to Rural Investigation, Transforming Our Study, Rectifying the Party’s Style, Opposing the Eight-Legged Essay, and Speech at the Yan’an Literary and Art Symposium.
In history class, taking advantage of the title on the卷子 (exam paper), I shared with my friends what I had learned from the reading club, mainly promoting the view of Confucianism versus Legalism and then, using questions that appeared in the “model answers,” pushed Marxism again (for example, questions asking for the causes of historical events where the answers invariably had no distinction between primary and secondary causes, internal and external causes, thereby promoting dialectical materialism, etc.).
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Today at the book club we talked about current affairs and politics, but I know almost nothing about it. I want to learn, but I don’t know where to start. So I want to ask everyone: where should I go to learn about current affairs?
You can check news online, such as foreign sources like The New York Times, France 24, Deutsche Welle, etc. Those that don’t require a VPN include Gongao Small Newspapers, Lianhe Zaobao, NetEase News, and the like. Among NetEase News, there are quite a few live people, and some comment sections even have righteous public voices speaking up. However, for analyses on current events, you can first look at political comments on forums to see how people are analyzing things. Also, there are systematic discussions about global affairs on Zhongwei Ge (Zhongge) or related platforms; you can take a look.
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These past two days I’ve been catching up on the second exam, and yesterday I was so exhausted I just fell asleep and didn’t read at all. The school stubbornly scheduled four out of five exams all within yesterday, with only 15 minutes between each exam. Excluding collecting and returning papers, there’s only about 5 minutes left. Running to the far-away bathroom and water room, and as soon as I got back they started handing out papers. Lunch break was also greatly shortened—eating rushed, lying on the desk to nap, and soon I had to hurry to the exam room again. Fortunately I made it through. For these two days I’ve been reading a book about peasant uprisings in the Cultural Revolution period. It’s not long, only recounts a few familiar uprisings. The causes, process, and results aren’t described in great detail. If I were reading normally, just this book wouldn’t be enough to fill me up, but on the way to and from school it’s a pretty decent quick meal.
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