Previously, with the help of the association, I left a full-time mental labor job and began teleworking (delivering takeout) as a form of labor reform. At first, through struggles with stupid customers and some restaurant managers, I did shrink the gap between mind and body, no longer completely detached from the people like before. However, the disadvantages of delivering takeout gradually surfaced as my labor skills became more proficient and delivering meals more smoothly. Although the job of a delivery worker is physical labor, on the one hand it is a solitary, uncooperative, small-production-like occupation, so a significant portion of delivery workers are indeed poor or bankrupt petit bourgeois; on the other hand, as a crowdsourced delivery worker, there are almost no coworkers and almost no labor discipline, with highly自由 on/off work. This kind of solo work ultimately fosters liberal and individualist ideas, which in turn hinder ideological transformation.
Therefore, at the beginning of the year, with help from other comrades, I finally joined a certain chain fast-food restaurant and became a back-of-house employee. During this period I mainly worked at this fast-food place, engaged in conflicts and struggles with several restaurant managers and labor contractors, and had various exchanges with other employees about work, life, and labor. The following discusses what happened recently after working at this fast-food restaurant for a period and talking with coworkers.
In a class-based society, there is no super-class sense of “justice” or “morality.”
Bourgeois “justice” is to defend the exploitative order, while proletarian justice is to overthrow the exploited and oppressed order, and the liberation of all humanity will ultimately liberate oneself as well.
Small-scale “stealing” or petty theft often bears the mark of bourgeois individualism, aiming for personal gain rather than the complete liberation of the class. Such behavior can easily evolve into bandit-like ideas, inducing people to illusion of “getting something for nothing,” thereby weakening revolutionary will.
Our goal is not to “steal” a few pieces of bread from the capitalists, but to completely destroy the social soil that produces exploitation.
But food is something that workers themselves create; the bourgeoisie, by private ownership of the means of production, gains possession over the labor products created by the laboring people.
In factories it is the possession of various industrial products; in restaurants, of course, the possession of various dishes and food.
These things are clearly created by the workers themselves, yet the workers cannot eat at all. They can only eat the scraps provided by the restaurant, while letting the restaurant’s bourgeois owner profit, is that reasonable?
I feel that stealing is right, that we should steal. During the later stages of World War II in Japan, many workers shirked work, and many workers even smuggled things from Imperial Japanese factories back home. When workers steal the capitalists’ things, they are reclaiming their own rightful labor成果; only when the bourgeoisie is still very powerful and workers are not organized, does this small-scale resistance manifest as “stealing,” whereas in truth the bourgeoisie are the greatest thieves, openly robbing the proletariat’s labor成果 from the hands of the proletariat.
I support workers’ hatred of capitalists, but we must engage in ideological struggle against this mode of struggle: “stealing is right.”
“Stealing” is a reflection of individualism: this small-scale, isolated behavior is often motivated by personal interest rather than the liberation of the class as a whole. It has the bourgeois-liberal and rogue proletarian character of “a little work, a lot of pay, taking advantage of small gains,” and essentially is a passive acceptance of the bourgeois reactionary worldview.
A soft blade that weakens revolutionary will: this behavior easily creates the illusion of getting something for nothing, easily leads workers to indulge in minor material compensation, thus losing the revolutionary will to organize on a large scale to seize power through armed revolution and to violently destroy the state apparatus. It keeps workers in the spontaneous state of the “free-standing class” rather than elevating them to the consciously historic mission of the “self-as-class.”
This logic of stealing essentially still admits the private property of things.
Do not steal, it is too blind; go fight, go seize the factories.
Be open and honorable, do not engage in conspiracies or tricks.
This is exactly a condescending way of speaking. The way workers sneak food is because, in a capitalist society, workers use self-motivated acts as a means to struggle against capitalism. The reason workers steal bites is that, on one hand, they harbor hostility toward capitalism, and on the other hand, their sense of struggle hasn’t risen to a certain level, so they resort to this method. And this isn’t stealing at all, it’s taking back what originally belongs to the workers. What does it mean, is taking back your own things from thieves and robbers some kind of individualistic behavior? Isn’t this a natural and rightful thing?! Many workers who steal bites often cover for each other, for example in some restaurants, the back kitchen workers routinely sneak bites of leftovers that customers barely touched, and they help each other; this is by no means individualism, but a form of workers’ collective solidarity. When I was working at McDonald’s before, on the first day an old woman voluntarily helped me secretly grab a portion of fries for me to steal—what kind of individualism is that? Do you really look down on the proletariat that much?
What other small-scale, isolated actions are there? And where does this conclusion come from again? What is considered small-scale, what is considered isolated behavior? Shouldn’t workers’ small-scale resistance be supported? And what group is the isolated worker who dares to destroy capitalist private ownership to reclaim surplus value? As for what you call personal interest, what does that mean? Does a worker stealing food harm workers other than the capitalists? Is this not a self-harming, detrimental act? Saying this, even a single worker demanding back pay is for personal interest, and a workers’ strike is for personal interest as well.
Moreover, what do you mean by the color of petty bourgeoisie and the rogue proletariat? The rogue proletariat is often economically not owning the means of production and, through various reactionary activities, as a source of income, such as prostitutes, beggars, swindlers, robbers, etc. The petty bourgeoisie, on the other hand, sustains themselves through their small crafts, small skills, and ownership of certain means of production; they are their own capitalists, earning profits from themselves. Neither of these two lifestyles is linked to stealing or eating secretly.
I point out the limitations of stealing not to stand on a moral high ground to blame my coworkers, but to tell them: this isn’t enough!
Capitalists and scabs are also most happy to see workers steal, happy to see workers陷入 such trivial, personal violations.
In this way they can use “rioting and disorderly conduct,” “theft” and other fascist-dividing tools to criminalize workers, severely, thereby concealing the real class contradiction.
There is also a saying that stealing is a reward without labor—what logic is behind that? When workers have not formed a certain organized scale, not been guided by a certain political ideology, and not united, they will autonomously adopt this form of resistance. Obviously it is the workers who created these foods, yet eating them becomes “unearned” and it’s the fault of which class? These foods themselves are the fruits of workers’ labor; they deserve to eat them. It’s just that under capitalist society they are forced to steal and eat these foods.
This is pure nonsense. If you demand wages and stir trouble, won’t the capitalists label you as creating trouble? The Alliance Leader once organized workers to fight, and the Nazis casually slapped a pocket crime on him and that was it. If you fear the bourgeois labour discipline and Nazi law, you shouldn’t fight, and then it’s impossible to unite the working class, impossible to raise workers’ ideological consciousness. The working class develops precisely through struggle.
Is it possible that the way to strengthen the workers’ movement is to simply watch their spontaneous struggles and stand by silently, shouting, isn’t this enough? When workers see you so incapable even of participating in such small-scale resistance, when you boast loudly yet won’t participate in such small-scale actions, they won’t believe what you say.
And neither the work-shy nor the capitalists are happy to see workers steal a bite to eat; it is precisely because the capitalists and the work-shy do not want workers to steal that labor discipline and fines are established.
Just as their attitude toward slacking off.
If we say it like this, wouldn’t it also be wrong to secretly hide away and evade the exploitation of capitalism through labor?
And what would stealing be considered if not gang disturbing order? It doesn’t even reach the standards for filing. Not to mention that Nazi laws themselves are irrational; for workers to reclaim their own labor products in a capitalist society is illegal.
And what you say about not stealing but fighting, that is even more complete empty talk.
Those who are not willing to support even small struggles, spontaneous struggles, will they have the courage, the ability, and the awakening to participate in the political struggle between workers and the bourgeoisie and in the open economic struggle?
The logic you propose—“since capitalists and the petty-bourgeois are obsessed with stealing and slacking off, these behaviors should be considered just, and opposing them is hence superior”—is a very typical viewpoint with anarchist and petty-bourgeois spontaneous characteristics.
What Marxism opposes is not workers “doing less work,” but opposing those isolated, individualistic, self-indulging escapist ways of avoidance.
If a worker’s “slacking off” is solely to squeeze out two more minutes of short videos or a little more rest, without regard to the lives and well-being of other comrades, essentially this still reflects bourgeois individualist thinking.
Capitalists and the petty-bourgeois indeed hate workers’ “slacking” and “stealing,” but what they hate even more is workers stopping to “slack” and “steal,” and instead organizing strikes, seizing property, and arming themselves to seize power.
This is completely nonsense. You talk only about the purpose, not about the movement. You even said at one point that capitalists want workers to steal food, then in the next line say capitalists don’t want workers to steal food.
And from your statements, you’re clearly assuming that workers stealing food is selfish and for their own gain, that workers stealing food is only good for themselves, and that workers stealing food harms others.
What’s more, you imply that workers slacking off is for debauchery.
These are extremely disgusting arguments, and they basically treat workers as brainless petty bourgeois selfish ghosts who could utter such things.
Workers aren’t as backward as you think. Many workers actively teach new arrivals how to slack off, how to steal food, and even spontaneously tell other workers that they should steal and slack off, and that they shouldn’t work themselves to the bone.
You, on the other hand, portray workers as some despicable, shameless, selfish ghosts, opposing a non-existent enemy.
Do you really understand workers? During Japan’s fascist rule, Japanese workers often opposed the imperialist regime through acts of shirking and stealing, and to a large extent influenced Japan’s military-industrial production. It’s come to you that workers’ shirking means going to debauchery, so workers should not be encouraged to shirk; workers stealing is for their own good, so they should not be encouraged to steal. They do not support small-scale workers’ struggles, do not encourage or participate in spontaneous forms of worker struggle, but instead abstractly talk about raising themselves to a self-proclaimed class. This is precisely a kind of petty-bourgeois buzzword, and such buzzwords are what today’s Chinese petty bourgeoisie love to preach. Because they do not want to be workers, do not want to exert effort and trouble to transform themselves into workers, do not want to participate in the struggles of the working class, only want to command from afar and have the workers listen to them, that is why they hold these positions.
And even if workers slack off for pleasure, the main contradiction and the main aspect of this issue is not workers’ indulgence, but the workers fighting against the bourgeoisie for their livelihood and class interests. Under the oppression of capitalist society, workers cannot generate Marxist thought through spontaneity, so they resort to this spontaneous form of struggle. This spontaneous approach reveals the workers’ class’s dissatisfaction with capitalism, yet feeling powerless, they must oppose capitalism through this method.
So the fundamental problem is that you label workers’ spontaneous protests, you think that stealing food is for oneself, simply parasitism, selfish and profit-driven. Laziness means indulging in erotic pleasures and playing games.
Ask yourself, who exactly looks at the workers’ struggle in this way? Isn’t it the bourgeoisie!
Isn’t it the bourgeoisie who shouts that workers stealing food is despicable and shameless, a crime, theft, and freeloading?! Isn’t it the bourgeoisie who cries that workers idle at work are lazy?!
And I also want to know why stealing and idleness are anarchist acts. I can’t remember which article discussed this, but Engels expressed deep sympathy for child laborers who were forced to steal bread from bakeries because they had no food.
You say that, presumably, this is also a kind of selfishness, a kind of getting something for nothing, a kind of individualistic behavior for oneself alone, right?
The scattered resistance of workers is progress, it is reasonable; to unite workers one should join them and make them realize that the struggle cannot stop at this point. If even their spontaneous actions are not supported, it will be impossible to unite the workers.
