Originally published at: 阳氏愚氓犹可训，修为鬼蜮必成灾 – 曙光
Yang’s Foolishness Can Still Be Taught, Cultivating Demons and Monsters Will Surely Bring Disaster
Editorial Board of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Proletariat
Editorial Board of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Proletariat
In 1945, the report “Decision on Several Historical Issues” passed at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party pointed out that the petty bourgeoisie “being a transitional class, has two sides: on its good, revolutionary side, most of its masses can accept the influence of the proletariat politically, organizationally, and ideologically, and are capable of uniting and struggling for democratic revolution now, and in the future may walk together with the proletariat towards socialism; on its bad, backward side, it not only has various weaknesses different from the proletariat, but also, when losing proletarian leadership, often turns to accept the influence of the bourgeoisie and even the big bourgeoisie, becoming their captives.” The comrades of the petty bourgeoisie must undergo a transformation to become revolutionary intellectuals, which involves proletarianizing their thoughts and accepting the leadership of the proletarian party within the united front. If they do not combine with the workers and peasants, but instead try to distance themselves from them, they will ultimately achieve nothing. Yang’s peace is such a petty bourgeois intellectual with good intentions but detached from revolutionary practice, neglecting ideological struggle, and gradually drifting away from the proletariat in both theory and practice. His behavior illustrates why small bourgeois intellectuals who want to contribute to the revolution need to accept the leadership of the proletarian party, return to the correct line, and engage in continuous ideological struggle to become active socialist allies.
Yang’s peace is a well-known figure on the internet since the 2020s, with significant influence among all self-proclaimed “leftists.” This is not only because Yang’s parents long resided in China and contributed to the Chinese revolution, but also because Yang has not become a mere “friend of the Chinese people” appearing only in various reformist official interviews. Instead, he has opened accounts online, personally explaining various principles, commenting on current affairs, and interacting with viewers. In the past, Yang was attacked and insulted by bourgeois and right-wing petty bourgeois forces for openly opposing discrimination against Black people, condemning narrow nationalism that hates all Japanese, opposing bourgeois patriarchy, and so on. But evidence shows that although Yang may have made mistakes or even serious errors, his opponents’ errors are often greater. Under Yang’s persistent efforts, every debate ends with his victory, further expanding his influence, making him one of the most respected figures in the “leftist” circle. Now, a similar situation repeats—opposing patriarchal ideas in the incident of JD.com inviting Yang Li as a spokesperson (details of this incident are not explained here), facing attacks and insults from many self-proclaimed “leftists” and “Marxists” who fiercely support male oppression of women. As before, Yang remains steadfast in his position, patiently—perhaps overly leniently—discussing whether “male oppression of women” is a universal social phenomenon. [Yang’s Peace 24#259 Reply to Anti-Feminist Netizens] This episode is Yang’s response to the opposition in the previous two videos.
In this video, Yang adopts a method combining survey questions and point-by-point rebuttals. Specifically, he first reads out some harsh comments against him word by word, so viewers can understand their content, then asks viewers to support or oppose (e.g., type 1 for agree, 0 for disagree) his views via bullet comments. Before or after that, Yang patiently explains most comments, demonstrating how they prove his correctness and that the opponents are wrong. For example, he mentions a very explicit opposition: the person believes that the reason women oppress men today is because women have the ability to spend money, while men spend money on women but do not get the so-called “sexual value,” “emotional value,” and “fertility value,” thus turning to “self-consumption,” which is a “progressive phenomenon.” Yang asks viewers to type 1 or 0 to support or oppose, then points out that these “values” treat marriage as a transaction, a form of legal prostitution, as if couples should not marry out of genuine love. Afterward, Yang moves on to the next issue. Regardless of his own views, his biggest difference from the lazy and arrogant leftist faction is that Yang can seriously discuss different opinions humbly, rather than resorting to insults and dismissiveness. From this, “Political insults often conceal the insulter’s lack of ideological principles, helplessness, weakness, and annoyance” [1]. This sentence is very suitable for those leftists opposing Yang, but Yang himself is a socialist comrade with principles, willing to admit his mistakes. Previously, some people seized on Yang’s mistakes to insult him wantonly. For such people, we can only give this evaluation: “Eagles sometimes fly lower than chickens, but chickens can never fly as high as eagles.” [2]. Those who try to elevate themselves by attacking Yang are either already in the garbage heap of history or will soon join it—this is their deserved fate.
Of course, it should also be noted that although Yang’s overall contribution is greater than his faults, he is not a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist—at least not yet, despite claiming to be. Based on his worldview, Yang remains at the level of a socialist comrade, more specifically, at the level of petty bourgeois intellectuals. Sometimes he discusses Marxist theories, but he does not implement their principles. This is most evident in his weak attitude towards opponents. Marx, when discussing dialectics, pointed out that “Dialectics, in its rational form, causes the anger and terror of the bourgeoisie and their boastful spokespeople, because dialectics, in its affirmation of existing things, also contains… an understanding of their inevitable demise… Dialectics does not worship anything; in essence, it is critical and revolutionary.” [3]. Marxist philosophy is a struggle philosophy; it demands unrelenting fight against bourgeois viewpoints, exposing their essence. This involves revealing the class nature of various erroneous opinions and the class interests of the opponents, pointing out that defending such narrow interests is reactionary—regardless of the opponent’s mental state. However, although Yang can refute various erroneous arguments on some issues, he always fails to reveal their true nature, often trying to reconcile contradictions from all sides, which is why he remains somewhat entangled with the left. For example, in the aforementioned video, Yang exposes some comments containing patriarchal ideas but does not reveal their class nature, instead treating them as merely promoting oppression of women. He considers them as just “discussions” or “debates” over seemingly insignificant issues. From this, although Yang often talks about “internal contradictions among the people,” he cannot understand that these contradictions are also class contradictions, which can only be resolved through thorough struggle. He fails to distinguish between petty bourgeois individuals with patriarchal ideas and malicious perverts. As a result, Yang’s leniency opens the door for Confucian patriarchal reactionaries to mask their misdeeds with “good intentions,” allowing them to hide after failed attacks without losing face. Although Yang hopes to spread correct views such as “patriarchal society oppresses women,” he often cannot have a significant effect.
The weakness Yang shows in debates, or the incompleteness of his views, stems from his petty bourgeois worldview. Although he accepts Marxism, he has not undergone long and arduous ideological struggles to thoroughly transform his worldview. Therefore, he cannot analyze social phenomena scientifically. Because the class nature and scientific nature of Marxism are unified and inseparable, mastering class analysis methods requires standing firm on the class standpoint, which Yang fails to do. For example, in this video, Yang opposes domestic violence, believing that it is mainly husbands oppressing wives, representing male oppression of women and women’s oppression. But he then arbitrarily calls family conflicts “internal contradictions among the people,” treating internal contradictions as something beyond class, effectively negating contradictions altogether, as if domestic violence is merely a deception by capitalists to mislead men, who have no selfish motives. This turns domestic violence from malicious oppression into unintentional mistakes. This view, attributing social phenomena solely to accidental factors, is a typical idealist view of history. How is this different from Kautsky’s claim at the Second International Paris Congress that the “Ministers’ Faction” is merely having “strategic disagreements” with social democracy? To be fair, Yang’s weakness and compromise in many aspects make calling his views “centrist” not an exaggeration.
Yang’s serious shortcomings are inseparable from his practice. Chairman Mao pointed out that “People’s understanding cannot depart from practice” [5], and also said that “People’s correct thoughts can only come from social practice, including the three types of practice: social production struggle, class struggle, and scientific experiments.” [6]. Although Yang’s parents participated in socialist practice and he himself lived in socialist China for a long time, his later life was spent in capitalist America and revisionist China. Yang has long since detached from revolutionary practice, indulging in studying bourgeois universities, learning bourgeois vulgar theories, and serving as a high-paid professor of bourgeois vulgar economics in bourgeois academic institutions. Even if Yang finally recognizes his past mistakes, their negative influence on his thinking remains. Moreover, he still refuses to engage with the working and peasant masses directly, merely sitting in front of a computer, indulging in chatting with “superclass” netizens. Thus, although Yang can understand current affairs through the internet and communicate with his favorite “netizens,” he cannot truly experience China’s social reality without engaging in the three major practices, nor deeply understand the essence of things. This is why Yang can oppose patriarchal ideas but fail to understand their class essence, reducing various forms of domestic violence—some extremely heinous—to so-called “internal contradictions among the people.”
On the other hand, Yang’s long-term detachment from revolutionary practice means he lacks the correct source of understanding and motivation to learn revolutionary theory. He has published some reflections on the “Communist Manifesto” and “Chairman Mao’s Annotations and Talks on ,” but he resists systematic theoretical study and refuses to conduct detailed, comprehensive investigations into various issues, often revealing his ignorance. For example, regarding the Yang Li incident, Yang remains stuck in vague bourgeois concepts like “male power” and “female power,” lacking understanding of the incident itself—perhaps even avoiding it—and lacking scientific understanding of women’s liberation. This evasion and misuse of bourgeois concepts give attackers an opportunity to counterattack and promote patriarchal ideas.
Ultimately, all of Yang’s mistaken ideas stem from a lifestyle detached from the people and practice, a capitalist fog that leads a revolutionary internationalist’s descendants astray.
Please Yang’s Peace look at the big-character posters posted by his parents; this clearly shows the root of opportunist ideas and deeply opposes his descendants becoming revisionists:
Why are foreigners working at the heart of the world revolution pushed onto the revisionist path???
Who is the devil or ghost instructing such treatment for foreigners? Foreigners working in China, regardless of their class or attitude towards revolution, are subjected to this “five no’s, two yes’s” treatment.
— A big-character poster from foreign experts to the State Council Foreign Experts Bureau
Five No’s:
1. No physical labor;
2. No ideological remolding;
3. No opportunity to contact workers and peasants;
4. No class struggle;
5. No production struggle.
Two Yes’s:
1. Very high living待遇;
2. Specialization in all aspects.
What kind of思想 controls such待遇?
This is not Mao Zedong Thought!
This is Khrushchev思想!
This is revisionist思想!
This is exploiters’思想!
What are the purposes and results of such待遇?
1. Preventing revolutionary foreigners from truly mastering Mao Zedong Thought, only allowing them to mouth slogans.
2. Causing revolutionary foreigners’ revolutionary will to decline, slipping onto the revisionist道路.
3. Hindering foreign children in China from growing into strong revolutionaries.
4. Isolating revolutionary foreigners from their Chinese class brothers, damaging their class feelings, and undermining proletarian internationalism.
We believe this is not an isolated issue but a principled matter concerning the world revolution. We resolutely oppose this待遇.
We are determined to become truly strong revolutionaries!
We are determined to be staunch anti-revisionist fighters!
To carry forward the struggle against U.S. imperialism to the end, we are determined to exercise and test ourselves!
Our descendants must become strong and reliable successors of the revolution, and must never become revisionists!
Therefore, we demand:
1. Treat us as class brothers, not as bourgeois experts;
2. Allow and encourage us to participate in physical labor;
3. Help us undergo ideological remolding;
4. Allow and encourage us to closely unite with workers and peasants;
5. Allow and encourage us to participate in the three major revolutionary movements;
6. Our children and Chinese children should receive the same待遇 and strict要求;
7.待遇 and treatment should be the same as Chinese workers of the same level;
8. Abolish special待遇.
Only in this way can we become revolutionaries as Chairman Mao要求.
Long live the great proletarian cultural revolution!
Long live the great unity of the world’s people!
Long live the mighty and invincible Mao Zedong Thought!
The great leader of the Chinese people, the world proletariat, and the oppressed peoples and nations
Long live Comrade Mao Zedong! Long live forever!
Americans: Yang Zao, Shi Ke, Han Chun, Tang Anti-Imperialist (An Tangshan)
August 29, 1966, in Beijing
Unlike Yang’s Peace, Marxists’ attitude towards women’s liberation is straightforward. Marxists have always believed that oppressors cannot be liberated, and only by liberating all humanity can the proletariat finally free itself. “The earliest class antagonism in history developed simultaneously with conflicts between spouses under individual marriage, and the earliest class oppression was also simultaneously the oppression of women by men.” [7] Since entering class society, to “ensure the chastity of wives and thus the paternity of children” [8], and to uphold the private system that reduces women to household slaves, women have suffered systematic oppression from all aspects of the patriarchal social system. Oppression of women has always had a class nature, so women’s liberation is a form of the oppressed people’s class struggle. As for equating the husband’s oppression of his wife within the family as “internal contradictions among the people,” it exposes Yang’s Peace’s serious problem of ignorance and incompetence. (Isn’t Yang’s irresponsible spreading of confused ideas a kind of harmful behavior?) Engels said: “In the family, the husband is the capitalist, and the wife is equivalent to the proletariat.” [9] In bourgeois families, the husband’s oppression of the wife is driven by maintaining his narrowest and most selfish interests—whether to turn his wife into a slave satisfying his lust, to use her as a labor force at his command, or to make her a tool for bearing children and continuing the family line—often accompanied by verbal abuse, physical violence, and even murder. Women have been beaten by their husbands up to 16 times, forced to live with fecal bags for the rest of their lives; women who escape domestic violence are often trapped by the “divorce cooling-off period” in the revisionist system, unable to escape and enduring long-term abuse; some women finally divorce successfully but are stalked and murdered by their husbands. (Please support women’s liberation—look more at social realities!) Such brutal oppression, which is unscrupulous and ruthless, clearly shows that in capitalist society, many family conflicts—especially conflicts within bourgeois families between husbands and wives—are not “internal contradictions among the people,” but a life-and-death enemy confrontation.
.In proletarian families, due to the influence of bourgeois思想, it is also possible for phenomena where the husband oppresses the wife to occur. In most cases, these contradictions, although not reaching the level of enemy and us contradictions, are merely contradictions within the people, such as the widespread existence of male chauvinism that looks down on women, and traditional ideas like "men outside, women inside." However, these are also reflections of bourgeois思想 within the people, and therefore fundamentally possess the nature of class contradictions. If such contradictions are not handled properly or if the male in a position of oppression insists on maintaining errors, they can develop into enemy and us contradictions. Believing that issues are internal contradictions among the people and thus avoiding sharp criticism, adopting a conciliatory attitude towards those who make mistakes, simply declaring these statements as wrong without in-depth analysis of their essence—this is not the attitude of Marxists, but the attitude of weak petty bourgeoisie. Such handling is the so-called method of wrongly handling contradictions among the people, and also the method of superficial peace and superstition. It not only fails to make the other side accept their mistakes, but also prevents them from recognizing the seriousness of their errors, from realizing that their actions are acts of oppression against women, thus causing them to go further and further down the wrong path.
As for using this conciliatory approach to deal with enemy and us contradictions, it is even more extremely wrong, because any mercy towards enemies means cruelty to comrades. If we face enemies who oppress women with a conciliatory attitude and claim that their domestic violence is merely a "contradiction within the people," then we will lose the support of nearly half of China's population and hinder their path to revolution. This can only cause pain to allies and joy to enemies. Moreover, mild criticism cannot expose the reactionary face of the enemy; it will only downgrade the issue of stance to a matter of understanding, and downgrade the filthy patriarchal ideas to a temporary misunderstanding of women's issues, thus allowing patriarchal oppressors to retreat unscathed, continue to operate under the guise of "good people who made mistakes," and avoid exposure in broad daylight. Marxists have always advocated "It is better to pursue the remaining strength to exhaust the enemy, than to seek fame by learning from the tyrant" [10], and we must "vigorously beat the drowning dog," thoroughly expose the true face of patriarchal oppressors, criticize and condemn them, prevent them from further deception, raise the ideological consciousness of the masses, and enable them to consciously oppose all kinds of ugly phenomena of oppressing women, thereby somewhat improving the current situation of women in capitalist society, and ultimately achieve the complete liberation of women through social revolution.
There is a saying by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom revolutionary leader Hong Xiuquan, which is very suitable for us to use to persuade Yang Heping: "Who dares to stand against the devil? Only by reforming oneself quickly can one avoid wrongdoing. Only when one changes after mistakes can there be no mistakes, and I now earnestly admonish." [11] As a Chinese Marxist revolutionary organization, we hereby criticize Yang Heping with a comradely attitude, hoping that Yang Heping can recognize the errors in his worldview in a timely manner, accept ideological transformation, and become a "standing" Marxist.
Finally, it must be said that Yang Heping's performance and that of his capitalist opponents inevitably remind people of Chairman Mao's poem: "Monks are foolish and can be taught, demons are ghosts and will surely cause disasters." [12] Yang Heping, who lost the leadership of the Communist Party after the capitalist restoration and took a detour on his own, is understandable, because we cannot expect fellow travelers to have the ability to recognize their own direction. This also shows that Yang Heping need not and should not call himself a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, because he clearly has not reached the level that this identity requires. On the other hand, those vicious opponents of Yang Heping, such as the unclarified elements in the left circle, are nothing but reactionaries. If they are not thoroughly criticized, these reactionaries will recklessly cause even worse influence. History has given true revolutionaries the task of organizing: unite revolutionaries like Yang Heping, win over the masses who do not yet understand Marxism, and isolate various opportunistic reactionaries. The future is bright, and the road is tortuous. One day, China's "Golden Monkey" will wave its mighty staff and rise fiercely, sweeping away all demons and monsters like Antoziu, and achieving true revolutionary unity.
- Lenin: "The Political Significance of Abuse," in "Collected Works of Lenin," Volume 20, People's Publishing House, 1958. ↑
- Lenin: "A Short Critique of Politicians," in "Collected Works of Lenin," Volume 33, People's Publishing House, 1957. ↑
- Marx: "Das Kapital," Volume 1, People's Publishing House, 1975. ↑
- Alexander Eden Milleran (1859-1943), originally belonged to the French bourgeois radical faction. He infiltrated the socialist movement in the early 1890s. Joined the French reactionary government in 1899, served as Minister of Commerce. Milleran entered the cabinet, exposing his bourgeois politician nature, which Lenin denounced as "practical Bernsteinism." Expelled from the Socialist Party in 1904, later served as Minister of Public Works, Minister of the Army, Prime Minister, and President of France. ↑
- Mao Zedong: "On Practice," in "Selected Works of Mao Zedong," Volume 1, 1967. ↑
- Mao Zedong: "Where Do Correct Ideas Come From," in "Selected Works of Mao Zedong (Type A)," People's Publishing House, 1966. ↑
- Engels: "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State," in "Selected Works of Marx and Engels," Volume 4, People's Publishing House, 1972. ↑
- Same as above. ↑
- Same as above. . ↑
- Mao Zedong: "Seven Poems · People's Liberation Army Occupies Nanjing." ↑
- Hong Xiuquan: "Original Way to Save the World." Bourgeois思想像魔鬼一样从四面八方渗透进来，一不小心就被资产阶级思想腐蚀、俘虏了，没有经过思想斗争，又有谁可以坚决抵制错误思想，在错误思想的包围面前“挺立”呢？不过以前的错误是没有科学的世界观导致的，现在需要抓紧思想改造，使自己成为一个马克思主义新人。过去虽然有过错误，但改正了之后，才能做一个不再轻易犯错的坚定分子。正是要使广大没有自觉改造自身世界观的同志们明白这个道理，我们才要孜孜不倦地去进行这种说服教育啊。 ↑
- Mao Zedong: "Seven Poems · Three Bats White Bone Spirit · He Guo." ↑
- "Antoziu" refers to the most harmful opportunist factions today: anarchism, Trotskyism, Western Marxism, and modern revisionism. ↑