Foreword: A few years ago, I worked together with sanitation workers in my community and at school, and I also wrote an article exposing the living conditions of sanitation workers. Seeing JQR’s factory diary, I also want to share and communicate with everyone. However, because it has been a long time, the content is no longer timely, and the situation of sanitation workers may have changed. Moreover, the level of Marxism in this article is relatively low and does not serve much to motivate workers; it mostly covers things workers already know. As Lenin said, workers are “wanting to know everything others know, wanting to understand all aspects of political life in detail, wanting to actively participate in all kinds of political events. For this, intellectuals need to speak less of what we already know and give us more of what we do not know, and which we can never know based on our experience in factories and ‘economic’ experience—that is, political knowledge”[1]. This article does not cover much of this aspect and is actually quite superficial. For privacy reasons, the city where I am located is called “a certain large southern city.”
(Image source from the internet)
In the community, sanitation workers are usually the most inconspicuous role under capitalism; they deal all day with foul odors, garbage, and even excrement. They work desperately every day but can only earn wages barely enough to sustain their lives. This is because sanitation companies extract a large amount of surplus value, while sanitation workers suffer from this work. However, influenced by the capitalist ideological system, people despise labor and also look down on these “dirty” workers. I have interacted with them for three to four months and have some understanding of them, so I want to expose their tragic situation under capitalism. Everyone should respect and care for these proletarians who serve us every day, understand their hardships, and do some propaganda and agitation work.
The Hard Life of Sanitation Workers
In my community, the working hours of sanitation workers are from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., with a two-hour break at noon, then continuing work until 5 p.m. Their tasks include cleaning the corridors, stairs, and areas downstairs of one or two buildings, as well as wiping windowsills and glass. Capitalists do not allow them to take elevators to improve efficiency. After the barbaric garbage sorting policy was implemented, the burden on workers increased: they are forced to do garbage sorting from 7 to 9 a.m., leaving only six hours for cleaning during the day. Capitalists are aware that six hours are not enough to finish cleaning but prefer to save variable capital rather than hire more workers. If workers do not complete their work, they are fined, so they are forced to start work one or two hours earlier to finish a day’s work.
Although sanitation workers nominally have two hours of rest at noon, in reality, they have none. Some workers need to use their break time for cooking (even in underground garages). Some bring food prepared the night before, but still spend their rest time sorting the received garbage. Moreover, the disgusting sanitation company also requires workers to clean during this time, which can lead to scolding or even deductions from wages! So workers often have to put down their bowls and rush to clean, unable to eat normally.
However, this exhausting job only pays 2900 yuan, which cannot even guarantee basic food and clothing. Originally, sanitation workers could make a living by collecting and selling recyclable trash, but after China’s fascist government barbarically promoted garbage sorting, abolished trash bins, and centralized waste disposal, it became very difficult for workers to find recyclable trash during the day. The 2900 yuan salary is impossible to survive on in a large southern city. Under these circumstances, workers can only do some part-time jobs or work an extra three hours of garbage sorting after finishing their shift at 5 p.m., earning only 400 yuan extra per month (year-round, no rest, about 4.4 yuan per hour).
After the barbaric garbage sorting policy was introduced in a large southern city, entire households in one or two buildings had to throw out garbage within these three hours, and sanitation workers had to further sort the garbage before collecting it, greatly increasing their labor intensity. They not only help some “germaphobic” “giant babies” throw out kitchen waste but also endure various harsh environments, rummaging through residents’ garbage for items to sell. For particularly dirty or unsellable trash, they have to take it out and pack it, piling it like a mountain, then transport it with a cart. If there is a lot of trash, they spend two hours sorting it (usually flattening and compressing cardboard to save space). By this time, it is usually 11 p.m., and since most sanitation workers live far from the community in the urban villages, and public transport is mostly shut down, it takes an hour to go home, leaving little time for sleep. To finish the next day’s work, some workers even have to shower in the toilet and sleep in the underground garage! The environment in the garage is appalling: air mixed with exhaust fumes and decay, with occasional noise from passing cars. Besides, the worst problems are the stench and flies caused by stagnant water, making sleep impossible. But this hellish environment is where sanitation workers live every day under capitalist barbaric persecution.
When working with sanitation workers, I often feel their hardships and the extreme wastefulness of the bourgeoisie. Workers have to pick up discarded but unopened food, as they don’t carry water and are unwilling to buy it, they drink milk from garbage, and even unopened but expired infant formula is considered a rare find. They even want to take home expired but unopened zongzi (rice dumplings) and mooncakes, showing that under China’s fascist government’s plunder, workers cannot even afford their own festivals. When residents throw away meat and vegetables, workers try to stop and eat them, but some bourgeoisie just throw away all food in the fridge because it’s broken. In capitalist society, there is extreme poverty and hardship on one end, and extreme waste on the other!
The Poisonous Bourgeois Art
“Bourgeois ideology spreads among workers through various means, creating ideological confusion within the workers’ ranks, destroying the unity of the proletariat, and weakening their fighting spirit.”[2] I mostly see middle-aged female sanitation workers, among whom the most widespread are Confucian short videos, clips of various family ethics dramas, borderline content, or entertainment videos. These undoubtedly have a very harmful influence, mostly promoting how wives scheme within families, obey the “Three Obediences and Four Virtues,” become family slaves obedient to husbands and elders, and ultimately enjoy harmony with their masters—promoting the idea that women should be weak slaves, obeying oppressors’ words to live peacefully, openly advocating women give up resistance! As proletarians, these sanitation workers are already modern wage slaves, “since the rise of large-scale industry forced women out of the home into the labor market and factories, often turning them into breadwinners, the last remnants of male dominance in proletarian families have lost all basis”[3]. One sanitation worker’s husband is also proletarian—a bus driver—and their relationship is much more equal; he also does household chores, and they married without bride price. But even so, influenced by Confucian short videos and family ethics dramas, they have developed the idea of treating women as commodities, bought through marriage. Recently, the same sanitation worker was worried about her son’s bride price, and when I exposed that bride price is essentially selling women into households as slaves, she said, “Girls shouldn’t do housework, just play all day,” supporting the idea of women as family slaves. This shows how seriously these workers are harmed by spiritual opium, causing severe ideological confusion.
The Relationship Between Sanitation Workers and Other Residents
In my community, the work of sanitation workers is almost unorganized. Besides chatting, they have little contact with other workers. Moreover, most are bankrupt small farmers who came to a large southern city to seek a living, with strong petty-bourgeois habits. They also have some “private property” in their work—empty bottles and cans that can be sold—giving their work a small-scale production nature, making it difficult for them to unite and act together.[4] For example, to prevent their garbage from being stolen by some opportunistic sanitation workers or security guards, they hide or lock their trash, rather than unite to fight the sanitation company for higher wages, so they don’t have to do the 400-yuan-a-month garbage sorting job out of necessity. But even so, most workers are sincere, actively seek out security guards, and chat with other workers and some familiar residents. Compared to petty-bourgeois individuals who treat each other as strangers, they are much more sincere. Because their work has a small-production nature and low cooperation, they find it hard to realize the need to unite and fight against capitalists. For example, when facing the capitalist’s two-month wage arrears, and the despicable practice of paying May wages in July, they are dissatisfied but think, “They will definitely pay,” and “We have no choice,” and if not paid, they consider fighting alone through arbitration. The strength of sanitation workers is weak and dispersed, and their wages are pushed to the lowest by the bourgeoisie, barely surviving.
Their relationship with residents is more complex, mainly because the class composition of residents is also complicated. In my community, which has many bourgeois and bourgeoisie, many residents look down on sanitation workers. Due to their disdain for labor, individualism, petty-bourgeois attitudes, etc., they think sanitation workers are “too dirty” and have low cultural levels. But they only see their immediate interests and do not realize that without sanitation workers, residents would have to pile up garbage daily, making life impossible. The daily discrimination and being treated as invisible by residents make sanitation workers uncomfortable, and many are unwilling to accept this treatment. Some workers angrily say, “What will you (residents) do if we (sanitation workers) are not here?” Some residents hypocritically give workers things they don’t want to eat or that are expired (like slightly rotten rice rolls), pretending to be “selfless” good people. But in reality, they are hypocritical private owners, “possessing only class prejudice but no ideas, only vanity and no conscience”[5], extreme individualists. Some residents hold petty-bourgeois-style sympathy for sanitation workers, often chatting with them and not despising them for being dirty. But such people are very few in my bourgeois capitalist community.
How to Propagate Marxism to Them
“Not propagandizing, not inciting, not speaking, not investigating, not asking, not caring about their pains and pricks, being indifferent, forgetting that you are a Communist Party member, confusing a Communist Party member with an ordinary citizen—that is the seventh kind.”[6] When facing the sanitation workers we see every day in the community, we should follow Chairman Mao’s teachings more strictly, care for them, conduct political exposure, and promote Marxism.
We should care about their lives, speak honestly with workers, and understand what happens in their lives. Without this foundation, all the reasoning in the world is empty talk; workers will not listen. This is actually the most difficult step because most of us, as petty-bourgeois intellectuals, have a weak feeling for the working people. Chairman Mao said about this: “I am a person from a student background, having developed a student habit in school. When doing some labor, like carrying luggage myself, I feel it’s not proper. At that time, I thought the only clean people in the world were intellectuals; workers and peasants are usually dirtier.”[7] Most of us still live parasitically and know little about workers’ lives, often not knowing what to talk about, leading to two situations: one is journalists who ask a bunch of questions and then leave; or they talk a lot of empty Marxist phrases without connecting to workers’ lives. Both show a lack of concern for workers. Asking questions and reciting Marxist phrases without emotionally approaching sanitation workers means they won’t speak openly or accept the reasoning. So, we should help them in work, like picking up trash; in life, like buying them water when they have none. Only then will workers sincerely answer questions and truly listen to the reasoning.
Through long-term parasitic life and practical experience in the university, students often carry the attitude of petty-bourgeois intellectuals, rarely listening to workers, only wanting to speak themselves. This can only make them like Plekhanov’s “teachers and masters of workers,” not comrades. Therefore, we must put down our intellectual arrogance. If we do not understand workers’ lives, we should care about their lives, let them tell their experiences first, and if they are unwilling, we can tell ours first. “From the masses, to the masses”[8] is a basic principle of Marxist line. Only after understanding workers’ lives can we connect their lives with political exposure and persuade workers to abandon low-level tastes and promote Marxism.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, Chinese workers are the most oppressed and miserable among imperialist countries, and sanitation workers are the most tragic and least dignified among workers. Therefore, once they “also regard philosophy as their spiritual weapon,” recognize that their situation is caused by China’s fascist government and capitalism, Marxist theory “will also turn into a material force”[9]. After they master Marxism, it will surely become a heavy fist, smashing against capitalism.
Lenin: What Is to Be Done? ↩︎
Flame: The Road of Future Revolution in China ↩︎
Engels: The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State ↩︎
But currently, sanitation workers are gradually organizing, such as working together with garbage trucks, and some communities are also organizing sanitation workers to work collectively, partially breaking the nature of small-scale production. ↩︎
Marx: The Civil War in France ↩︎
Mao Zedong: Against Liberalism ↩︎
Mao Zedong: Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art ↩︎
Mao Zedong: On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People ↩︎
Marx: Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right ↩︎