Chinese New Year’s Eve is approaching. While many construction workers are unable to get paid and are坚持罢工 to迎接“年关”, many bourgeois intellectuals have already happily packed their bags and boarded trains and planes to go home for the New Year or travel abroad. According to NetEase News, 【this year’s Spring Festival will have an 8-day consecutive holiday, and if two days of annual leave are taken on January 26 and 27, it will form a 10-day “super long holiday,” which has also led to an increase in the “feeding cats and walking dogs” business.】
However, is it really as bourgeois media claims—that the “long holiday” is the reason why the “feeding cats and walking dogs” business has “heated up”? Is the booming pet industry truly because Xi Jinping’s promotion of a comprehensive well-off life has made people’s lives more “beautiful” and “full”? The answer is no.
In present-day China, one extreme is the accumulation of poverty, disease, and hunger; the other is the accumulation of monopoly and wealth. Even in the “China Statistical Yearbook 2023,” a document that has been beautified before publication, it must be helplessly admit that there are still 940 million people in China belonging to the low-income group with a monthly income below 2000 RMB. Under the rule of the Chinese revisionist group, the Chinese people live extremely苦难的生活, at the bottom of society, with the vast proletariat suffering daily from brutal exploitation by bosses and line leaders, struggling barely to survive on the brink of existence.
Under the impact of the capitalist economic crisis, the bourgeoisie shifts the crisis onto others by drastically lowering wages and creating a reserve army of industry, causing labor markets everywhere to be overcrowded from dawn to dusk. Countless unemployed workers can only survive on steamed buns and cold water. In stark contrast to the extreme hardship of workers’ lives is the debauchery of the bourgeoisie and the aristocratic class. According to the “2024 China Luxury Goods Market Insight Report,” in 2024, Chinese luxury goods consumers are expected to spend 572 billion RMB on luxury goods, a 4% increase from last year, contributing 20%-25% to the global luxury market for five consecutive years.
Besides luxury consumption, China’s outbound tourism market is also “recovering strongly.” In the first half of 2024, China’s outbound tourists reached 60.71 million, a year-on-year increase of 50.4%; overseas consumption amounted to 124 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 57.8%.
The extreme wealth gap between workers and the bourgeoisie is reflected in all aspects of life, including attitudes and ways of dealing with cats and dogs. Ordinary workers, though they may keep cats and dogs for guarding homes or catching mice, would never, and cannot afford to, spend huge sums of money on them, let alone engage in the absurd practice of paying someone to “feed and walk the cats and dogs.” In contrast, the bourgeoisie affectionately call their pets “fur children,” groom and “protect” them, and even hold New Year’s Eve banquets, bringing dishes that many workers can rarely enjoy, onto the pets’ tables: 【258 RMB New Year’s Eve dinner package, including Eight Treasure Duck Rice, Bean Skin Meat Rolls, Steamed Dumplings, and even Buddha Jumps Over the Wall. Besides cats and dogs, some merchants have even推出了“New Year’s Eve dinner” for pet hamsters, including grains and dried fruits they like, as well as frozen meat, dried fruits, and more.】 Chinese media openly admit that, according to the “2025 China Pet Industry White Paper (Consumption Report),” in 2024, the scale of China’s urban (dogs and cats) consumption market grew by 7.5%, reaching 300.2 billion RMB. It can be said that today’s Chinese society is a society of bourgeois extravagance, a society where “dogs and pigs eat human food without knowing restraint,” a society where impoverished workers are squeezed dry and cannot survive.
At this point, some readers may ask: “Ordinary city workers also have to hire someone to raise pets when they go back to their hometowns, so can’t they be called bourgeois just because they hire someone to ‘feed and walk the cats and dogs’?” Indeed, unlike luxury goods which only the bourgeois can afford, the service of “feeding and walking cats and dogs” can be afforded and is also enjoyed by petty bourgeoisie. For many petty bourgeoisie, cats and dogs have become “fur children” part of their families, and it’s understandable to spend a little money for “family members”—but the real problem lies precisely here.
In the imperialist society of the Chinese revisionist regime, “gangsters and bandits run rampant, drug abuse and alcoholism are widespread, newspapers, magazines, movies promote淫 and theft, and social风气 is腐烂.” [1] Under the influence of bourgeois ideology and culture, petty bourgeoisie are also increasingly腐朽. They see no fiery class struggle under such influence, only caring about their own small world, willing to spend大量金钱, wasting it on various so-called “emotional value” [2] “services,” and doing their best for their “fur children.”
Many petty bourgeoisie are also immersed in various kinds of精神鸦片, unable to extricate themselves, believing that all温情 in the world has already been replaced by冷酷的金钱关系 under capitalism, and that the relationships between people [3] have long been reduced to ruthless scheming and争名夺利. Therefore, they can only treat cats and dogs as precious精神慰藉 in capitalist society, even declaring “I prefer dealing with dogs rather than humans.” But in fact, this is just a way for the petty bourgeoisie under imperialism to deceive themselves, closing their eyes to the harm that capitalism inflicts on the人民群众 (including the petty bourgeoisie themselves), still living numb in a capitalist society.
Such behavior is no different from further spreading bourgeois ideology, strengthening its influence in society— in other words, deepening the shackles on the working people and petty bourgeois intellectuals themselves. In the era of imperialism, small producers are doomed to go bankrupt; this kind of blindness to reality only allows the bourgeoisie to continue their arrogance and exploitation, and the workers to be further exploited and oppressed.
Generally, Marxism does not oppose raising cats and dogs; cats and dogs do not inherently possess any class attributes. However, how to raise cats and dogs, and for what purpose, will inevitably bear the mark of class. Social existence determines social consciousness. If petty bourgeoisie intellectuals continue to imitate the bourgeoisie in a clumsy manner, spending vast sums on raising cats and dogs, even to the point of sharing the same table and bed, and stubbornly uphold this lifestyle, it will further develop their bourgeois worldview and ultimately lead to彻底倒向资产阶级 [4].
Heaven and earth, humans are the most intelligent, the creators, the workers, the peasants, and soldiers. [5] Humans are social animals, the sum of all social relations, capable of engaging in the three major struggles, creating and transforming the world. These precious developmental capabilities are attributes that cats and dogs do not possess. The petty bourgeoisie who want to彻底摆脱勾心斗角与争名夺利的人际关系, passionately embrace the most公正无私 and sincere proletariat, and wish to no longer have bosses domineering over them or官僚横行 in rural areas, can only achieve this by投入社会主义革命,彻底推翻资产阶级.
Yet, the bourgeoisie continues to dominate in capitalist society, and the intellectuals沉沦 in it, pouring their feelings into pets’ “fur children.” Drop the cats and dogs in your arms, open your eyes and look at the oppressed working people around the world!
Reference news link: 春节“超长假期”上门“喂猫遛狗”升温 有兼职者10多天能收入近万元|狗狗|宠物店|宠物狗|宠物猫_网易订阅
[1] Fenghuo Flame, “The Road of China’s Future Revolution.”
[2] This is the vulgarity of bourgeois political economy.
[3] In fact, it is among the property-owning classes.
[4] A person’s倒向资产阶级 in their worldview will manifest in many ways; treating cats and dogs is just one aspect. Not elaborated here.
[5] The “Three Character Classic of Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers.”
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I checked, and this kind of service generally costs nearly a hundred yuan or even more per session, far above the wages of the proletariat. This kind of service and the bourgeoisie’s concept of pet-keeping are backed by a created decayed industrial chain. Now, industries like pet hospitals and pet food are able to charge high prices and extract surplus value precisely because of this.
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The rich indulge in wine and meat, while there are frozen bones on the streets. The middle-class society is also quite bizarre—people can’t even get enough to eat, yet cats and dogs are enjoying New Year’s dinners.
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Many bourgeois see pet-keeping as part of their luxurious and enjoyable life, spending a fortune on raising cats and dogs to satisfy their vanity of showing off wealth. Many petty bourgeois regard pet-keeping as a form of entertainment in pursuit of a comfortable life. Workers raise dogs to guard the home and protect the yard, and cats to catch mice and safeguard grain, but now, except in backward rural areas, it seems that pet-keeping has lost these functions. The article states that Marxists do not oppose this behavior of raising pets, but does spending time and money unnecessarily on raising “fur children” that only eat, drink, urinate, and defecate, with no practical purpose, contribute to the pursuit of a leisurely life and the loss of revolutionary ideals? I used to be quite conflicted about this because I also love raising cats and dogs, worried that doing so would “violate principles,” but after reading, I understood that the most important thing is to avoid over-focusing on playing with cats and teasing dogs, enjoying a life detached from class struggle, and forgetting revolutionary ideals. We should stick to ideological struggle and treat the revolutionary cause as our main focus. Raising pets should at most be considered a normal leisure activity in life. These two attitudes are fundamentally different. Fenghuo once said: For revolutionaries, revolution is their life. We should not only care excessively about our current comfortable life but also, as mentioned in the text, look more at the suffering and hardship of the working people and not forget revolutionary ideals.
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It reminds me of an animated film made in the Soviet Union decades ago, which told the story of a capitalist who, after death, was replaced by his dog, living a luxurious life. Now, decades later, capitalism in this regard has really not changed at all. Pets are also objects; objects do not have social attributes or social status. The status and relationships of pets are often determined by the social status of their owners. Marx once revealed that in capitalist society, wherever there are relationships between objects or between objects and people, there are underlying relationships between people. Cats and dogs can enjoy the New Year’s dinner, but humans cannot. In reality, these cats and dogs do not rely on themselves but depend on their owners to eat, which reflects the exploitation of the impoverished proletariat by the bourgeoisie or the aristocratic workers, and also reflects their extravagant lifestyles.
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Behind the management of such objects and substances, what is reflected is the relationship between people. Animals like cats and dogs have been directly serving the productive lives of laboring people since domestication in primitive society; for example, dogs can guard homes and assist in hunting, while cats help eliminate mice and protect grain stores. Since entering the feudal society, laboring people still kept animals to serve their direct needs for life and production, but the exploiting classes kept various strange animals as pets, such as lions, tigers, and elephants, also because they unconditionally possessed the labor of others to afford these animals. The same applies to capitalist society: the bourgeoisie and wealthy petty bourgeoisie buy various expensive products to keep pets with the sweat and blood of exploited laborers, and even spending large sums on pets has become a way for them to prove their wealth. Previously, on Bilibili, I saw a video titled “Marx eating T-bone steak,” below which was a video of a poor little girl who could only eat potatoes. Truly, “the rich smell of wine and meat, while the cold bones of the homeless lie on the road.”
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It is exactly like that. Even if a person catches a cold or gets sick, the cost of seeing a doctor, medication, and examinations is only a few hundred, but pet cats and dogs can cost thousands or even more, which is completely abnormal. If any veterinary station (different from a pet hospital, a veterinary station serves actual productive labor) charged such high fees, it would definitely be unable to operate. This shows that these pet hospitals can continuously siphon off surplus value at such high prices, which, aside from monopolistic factors, is also related to the declining moral and spiritual state of the petty bourgeoisie.
Indeed. Cats and dogs do not have class distinctions, but humans do. For example, Wang Sicong’s dog can fly on airplanes, while in China, 1 billion people never fly in their lifetime, yet he still mocks them by saying “There are still fools who haven’t flown.” Mark eats T-bone steak, but children in mountainous areas can only eat potatoes. Clearly, this shows that the bourgeois cats and dogs are embodiments of the bourgeoisie itself.
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In the news about Mark eating steak, I remember a netizen’s comment was very insightful. They said they felt upset when seeing a dog eating steak, but a child in the mountains can only eat potatoes. However, they also felt they had no right to criticize Mark for eating steak because the money to buy the steak was paid by Mark’s owner himself. He spent his own money, so who has the qualification to criticize? This actually deeply reveals the root cause of such unfortunate events — the very nature of private ownership! Under private ownership, all exploitation, injustice, and oppression are considered reasonable. As long as private ownership is not abolished, the working masses will never be liberated!
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Indeed, these absurd phenomena also reveal the brutal oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. Even if money is spent on animals without consciousness, it does not solve the basic needs of the proletariat
The interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are fundamentally opposed.
Previously, Bilibili was very popular for videos about giving cats king crabs to eat, giving cats shark fins, and letting cats enjoy luxury. These small bourgeoisie spend so much money on cats and dogs, calling them family—what kind of feelings are they actually expressing?
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I can somewhat understand why foreign bourgeois families regard their pets as their own close relatives, and this idea has already taken root and blossomed among our country’s bourgeoisie. Because they would rather hold onto their money and throw it to cats and dogs than help the proletariat live a good life. Short-term aid might be possible, but long-term support would inevitably touch their fundamental interests, thus rejecting the proletariat from afar. In capitalist society, relationships between people are merely bonds of interest, and those originally tender feelings can only be displayed when people treat private property.
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Even temporary aid is extremely rare, and generally it is the kind of charity, poverty alleviation, or measures to ease class contradictions that are done for appearances — ultimately for their own interests.
That’s how it is; tender feelings are just emotions for their own self-interest.
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Some petty bourgeoisie also treat pets as their closest relatives, but ultimately this is a reflection of the petty bourgeoisie’s own ideology. Because the petty bourgeoisie itself is a class that is always on the brink of bankruptcy and demise, they tend to hold animistic views towards those “pitiful and helpless” pets, projecting their impending class downfall onto the animals. Therefore, many petty bourgeoisie who pity cats and dogs are actually pitying themselves. This also teaches us a truth: if the petty bourgeoisie wants to no longer be lonely and truly live like a human, clinging tightly to cats and dogs is useless; in the end, they can only “die with hatred” in such a life. Only by joining the revolutionary ranks, the proletariat, and the Communist Party, transforming themselves and transforming the world, is there hope.
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This kind of spending a lot of money on pets has been around for a long time, even during the socialist period, there was an example.
Ye ××, wife of Professor Feng ×× of the Department of Chemistry at Peking University, and her husband received a high salary of nearly 400 yuan. She has not been working for many years, staying at home to raise a large yellow cat, to have “spiritual sustenance,” making many clothes and blankets for the cat, mats, buying snacks, and preparing fish and meat for the cat. During temporary difficult times, teaching assistants queued up to buy fish for their cats.
When going out to give lectures, with no one at home, teaching assistants were asked to feed the cats.
This Feng ××, under the pretext of giving lectures at Shandong University, took Ye ×× to Qingdao and Hangzhou for recuperation. They stayed in Hangzhou for more than four months, in the most luxurious hotels, with daily meal expenses of 10 yuan, and insisted that Zhejiang University reimburse over 500 yuan for meals. Due to violating financial regulations, during the “Five Antis” campaign, Zhejiang University, through the Ministry of Higher Education, criticized and educated Feng. Lu Ping, upon learning of this, casually said: “Zhou Yu fights Huang Gai, one willing to fight, one willing to suffer.” He simply ignored it.
A monthly high salary of 400 yuan, already several times that of an ordinary worker, equivalent to the income level of central leaders. It shows how decadent the lives of these spiritually empty people are.
Another example:
Traitors disguised as scholars infiltrating the Party, rogue Feng Ding, strongly promoting bourgeois pacifism and opposing proletarian revolution. He said: “If happiness refers to a normal life, then there is peace, no war, good food, beautiful clothes, spacious and clean living, harmonious love among spouses, parents, and children, which is undoubtedly right and what we all pray for.”
Under the guidance of this fully bourgeois life philosophy, he lived a decadent bourgeois life. His family kept parrots for many years, taking photos with the parrots, taking nude portraits, with several albums filled with low-level, vulgar, and obscene images.
Once his wife went out, and one of the parrots died. Feng Ding immediately wrote a condolence letter to his wife, saying: “A very unfortunate thing has happened at home, don’t be sad, don’t grieve…”
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The so-called charity and poverty alleviation are either for “stability maintenance” or for tax avoidance; ultimately, they are actions taken by the bourgeoisie for their own class interests.
Regarding the origin of “spending a lot of money on pets,” that is my subjective view.
Bourgeois behavior always exceeds people’s understanding…
Sometimes I wonder, can they be broadly summarized as “actions for利益”? But if I pursue this line of questioning, it will touch on “speculating about people’s subjective intentions,” and such thinking often leads to no conclusion.
I was also shocked by the level of extravagance and wastefulness of the bourgeoisie when I saw it before.
There are no abstract interests, only the interests of specific individuals, and the interests of a particular person are often a reflection of class interests. The bourgeoisie certainly acts for its own interests; for their own benefit, they are willing to sell even the hangman’s noose that kills them.