Recently, it has been the Spring Festival, and I guess most people on the forum have gone back to their hometowns to visit relatives and celebrate the New Year. I want to ask if anyone has encountered anything meaningful or worth discussing during the New Year holiday. Feel free to share below. After all, I was disgusted by my relatives when I went home for the New Year. Most of my relatives are heavily influenced by bourgeois ideas, constantly talking about auspicious words like “Congratulations on getting rich.” When they see me, they talk about “getting into a good university” (since I am a senior in high school), urging me to work hard and invest in my studies. Usually, we also discuss our respective schemes for profit, like how to exploit surplus value, run factories to make money, or speculate on stocks. The atmosphere is really nauseating. Is your Spring Festival like this too?
Me too. I wasn’t saying in the square that my parents are getting divorced, then my mom and my sister (all three children with the mother) “earnestly” told me to focus on my studies… to try to get into high school.
There are some petty-bourgeois relatives who, when communicating with young people like me, are really overbearing and don’t take the younger generation seriously. They say things like “This world is about exploiting people to make money; you need to learn skills outside, so that one day others will have to submit to your oppression.” Those words directly slapped me in the face. I argued with him, and in the end, he couldn’t win the argument, so he just showed a sour face during the New Year.
I found that the social circle of petty bourgeois families inevitably cannot escape the petty bourgeois circle. On one hand, they secretly criticize the proletariat as “lazy,” while on the other hand, they discuss the right and wrong of the village’s bourgeoisie.
He first said, “In this society, only by exploiting talent can one get rich,” then he added, “You take a salary, selling your labor to him, it’s your willing, since it’s your willing, then it’s voluntary for you to be exploited.” Finally, he said, “If you don’t want to be exploited, you can accumulate wealth yourself and become a boss.” Because he is from the school of small producers gradually becoming wealthy, he firmly believes in his own ideas and even wants to tell me about them.
But he didn’t expect: young people are not used to him, and directly gave him a stern look.
I directly said, “Most of us have no money or machines, we can only work as laborers to make a living. We accept this life not voluntarily but because we have no choice. We are forced into employment, and it’s definitely not voluntary. We also do not willingly accept this oppression. And don’t take this selfish behavior as right.”
In the end, he really had no more words, and could only point to the car bought by his civil servant son and say to me, “Don’t mention other things, if you come back next year driving your own car, that’s real skill.”
However, unfortunately, we do not think that “driving your own car back is a skill.”
We are precisely aiming to eliminate such ideas
You might encounter some relatives and friends who are not very taboo about discussing politics, and you’ll find that Zhongxiu (Chinese Communist Party) has actually already angered the people. Almost all of my relatives are dissatisfied with Zhongxiu, saying that the pandemic is fake, and some are even shifting towards liberalism.
Indeed, many of my relatives around me have already developed a vague understanding of the ugly face of Zhongxiu.
Sigh, my relatives and family all sing praises for Zhongxiu.
But such vague understanding without the guidance of Marxism is easily led astray by liberalism, and then used as a tool by bourgeois liberals, because currently the name of Marxism has not been promoted, and it is tarnished by the reputation of the morally corrupt and unlearned leftist circle. The visibility of liberalism is quite high, so it is still necessary to strengthen propaganda among the masses.
Your family members’ social statuses are different, right? They are both petty bourgeois who can maintain their class status and feudal patriarchs, just right for the middle-class Confucianism promoted by the Chinese Revolution.
Yes, everyone in the family follows the teachings of Confucianism.
The left circle problem is very troublesome; they tarnished the names of Mao, Marx, and Lenin. Now when we go to promote, it’s hard not to be biased by the masses (for example, words like ‘Throne of Fengkuang’).
You can’t say that, because ultimately it is content that determines form. The Left Circle is a revisionist that fights against the red flag with a red flag, but in the world there are truly revolutionary revolutionaries. Ultimately, the masses’ eyes are sharp; the masses do not judge a political party by who claims what, but by what the party has actually done for the people.
It depends on the people; if it is mostly upper-middle class and capitalists, it will definitely be a praise for the middle repair, but if it is mostly lower middle class and proletariat, it won’t be like that.
Classic marriage pressure: not getting married quickly is considered too selfish; on one hand, they outwardly agree that parents do not seek compensation, but on the other hand, they say children should know gratitude.
Of course, the products I invest in myself require returns
I learned that a relative said: “I have two daughters in my family, so I don’t need to work; only those with two sons need to work hard to make money.” He openly treated his daughters as commodities. He also claimed that Chinese culture is the best in the world and there’s no need to learn foreign cultures. Learning Marxism like Chairman Mao is a once-in-a-millennium figure, and we can’t learn it. This is a typical extreme nationalism and hero-centric historical view.
This topic is quite interesting, so I will write a bit about my own experience.
In the first year I truly came into contact with Marxism, I stepped out of my home. From the moment I became independent, working to earn my own living, my attitude towards relatives fundamentally changed. Before I was introduced to Marxism, when I was very young, I enjoyed a harmonious relationship with relatives. They treated children like toys, finding it amusing. At that time, I didn’t understand much, and we all played happily together, clueless.
Later, around middle school or high school, I also got annoyed when relatives asked about everything, and I was tired of their occasional comparisons during New Year celebrations, full of vulgar and petty talk. They talked about climbing the social ladder or getting rich and making money, behaving like feudal parents in front of the younger generation. When my family went bankrupt, they liked to mock me, scolding me and saying I should be successful in the future, to repay the family. Relatives tried to boost their own sense of superiority by helping me.
But I was just a petty-bourgeois student at that time. My family was bankrupt, and I still relied on relatives for support. I was very serious about studying to get into a good university. I just felt disgusted when I heard their words, but I would also put on a fake smile, flattering them. If I got angry enough, I would throw a tantrum, but they just saw it as a child’s mischief because they knew that such tantrums would end when I ran out the door. They knew I couldn’t survive on my own, and I would come back eventually.
Later, I got into a good university, which was the best among my family members. During festivals, I became a role model in the eyes of relatives. I became their reliance, and amidst their flattering praise, their vulgar words no longer sounded so harsh. I also flattered them, and our relationship became more harmonious.
Later, I read Mao’s selections and became a leftist who liked to shout “Long live the people” (here I won’t detail how I became a leftist). At that time, I didn’t understand class analysis and thought my relatives were mostly rural folks, so I thought I could communicate with them. I myself came from a rural background, and some relatives were quite simple. But after more contact, I discovered that some of those simple relatives had even been barefoot doctors. When I was in university and still a leftist, I once had a pleasant conversation with that aunt-in-law and learned many tragic stories.
At that time, I disliked relatives who insulted Chairman Mao and the Communist Party. I even angrily threw dishes and left the table. They were actually paper tigers and didn’t dare criticize me. In the end, they even apologized, saying they wouldn’t talk about these things at the dinner table anymore, “self-reconciliation.” This might also be because I was seen as a “top scholar” by them.
Later, after truly coming into contact with Marxism and going out to work, I cut off contact with relatives in my first year back home, severing my parasitic dependence. We no longer had much to do with each other. In the second year, due to special circumstances, I went home for two days, making various excuses and not visiting relatives much. In the third year, I didn’t go home at all, not even greeting them during the New Year, only saying Happy New Year to my mother and grandparents. Until now, I haven’t even called them.
Now, many people’s Spring Festival isn’t so much about celebrating the holiday as it is about gathering for revelry and religious rituals, so many dislike it. But they still depend on their families, with strong Confucian ideas, always feeling it’s not good to tear faces, so they can’t truly resist. Even when working outside, without the guidance of correct theory and relying on individual effort, they will eventually return home. This ultimately proves that what they said — “it’s still necessary to have relatives’ support” — is correct.